Music Samizdat as Zines? The Case of “Ot Vinta” from Soviet Latvia

The conceptual problem this article aims to research is how zines (of the Western or “the first world”) and music samizdat (of socialist countries or “the second world”) should be analysed. Thus far, they have been regarded as separate phenomena; however, do these two forms of underground literature differ so greatly that they should be analysed using different theoretical approaches? The subject of the paper, От Винта (Ot Vinta), is a Russian-language music samizdat from the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic which was published in the late Soviet period. It came out in Riga between 1987 and 1991 and was closely connected to the local underground and semi-official rock scene. As Soviet music samizdat is an under-researched topic, and the Latvian one is practically unexplored, an important part of the paper is devoted to a description of this field and the context in which it appeared. The paper also explores the history of Ot Vinta, which is based primarily on original interviews, and an analysis of the content of the publication itself. Ot Vinta was the
central magazine of the Riga Russian language underground music scene of its time and is closely linked to the unofficial rock music subculture of the whole Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, making it a very important historical source for this time and for this music. The final conclusion is that there are no significant differences between Soviet music samizdat and Western zines. There are differences in design, determined by the different means of production and reproduction, as well as by the poor circulation of information about Western underground zines until the late 1980s. There are also differences in the attitude of the state towards zines and samizdat. The political resistance of music samizdat, which until recently was the dominant thesis in samizdat research, is now being questioned. Such discussion is also taking place in zine research (and in the sociology of culture and taste in general), which is a further reason why research of these forms of alternative press in the two worlds of Christian civilization (the “first” and the “second”) should not be separated.