This article analyses a selection of Russian digital remix videos that are put together to argue for a sympathetic and affectionate memory of childhood in the late Soviet period and then posted online. In their imaginative and deliberate structuring of images these videos are meant to evoke resonant nostalgic recollections among viewers. Three themes emerge in these videos to suggest that this phase of life in the late Soviet Union had positive attributes: sociality and healthy preoccupations, the endurance and accessibility of things, and the historical specificity (in other words, the Sovietness) of that experience. The videos, with the comments below, constitute an emotional memory site where nostalgia is the paramount mode, but it must enter into a dialogue with other competing emotions about the Soviet past in the mnemonic space of video-sharing platforms. As a result, the emotional work online of remembering childhood becomes contested and deeply political.
The stuff of childhood memories: endurance and accessibility Post-socialist nostalgia has strains of moral anxiety about the commodification of culture, a pattern of thought also evident in other late modern societies. This is nostalgia triggered by a culture or an ideology that privileges our identities as consumers. But, paradoxically, there is also nostalgia for the things of earlier times, which are supposed to convey a more sustainable and healthier relationship with the environment. Soviet children needed no material things (the videos imply); yet it is material things, related and unrelated, that often figure in videos and give form to their intangible memories. It is common practice for nostalgia to invest objects that have endured with values considered lost (Baker and Kennedy, 1994). 21 22
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International Journal of Cultural Studies 22(1) Figure 12. a favourite childhood comestible chewing gum (video 1, Our Soviet childhood 70-80s, posted by Eto interesno!). Figure 13. assorted household objects (video 1, Our Soviet childhood 70-80s, posted by Eto interesno!). While the images in the camp, the school, the dvor and the woods anchor childhood memory in the outdoors, videos consist equally of images of artefacts that situate childhood indoors. For instance, in the videos it is common to remember school paraphernalia that usually include school props and supplies such as story books and textbooks, both common elements in videos (Figure 11). In video 1, the images are often collages of assorted objects of childhood: chewing gum packets, toys, blocks, Rubiks cubes, table-top hockey, paints, Konstruktor (a building set), play-doh, childrens books, an alarm clock, a phone, a tape recorder, perfume and
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Rajagopalan Figure 14. assemblage of iconic toys and games (video 1, Our Soviet childhood 70-80s, posted by Eto interesno!). Figure 15. a much-used box of paints (video 1, Our Soviet childhood 70-80s, posted by Eto interesno!). a milk bottle (Figures 12 and 13). These miscellaneous objects, particularly the household artefacts, situate the childhood memory in the home. For those remembering childhood, toys are a natural trigger for memories, as are other objects associated with that life-phase (Figures 14 and 15). Elizabeth Wood refers to these childhood objects, to which we now attribute values we claim to miss in the present, as 23 24
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International Journal of Cultural Studies 22(1) Figure 16. doll with superimposed text Every Soviet girl had such a doll (video 2, childhood and youth 70s, 80s, 90s, posted by elen19782008). Figure 17. a sewing machine (video 2, childhood and youth 70s, 80s, 90s, posted by elen19782008). toys of agency; these toys build conceptual bridges between personal identity and collective history (Wood, 2009: 119). Some video montages have textual interpellations that explicitly proclaim the superior quality and durability of past things. Video 2 has inter-titles and captions such as Every Soviet girl had a doll like this, And by the way these machines didnt sew too badly and They dont make cars like these any more to accompany the images (Figures 16, 17 and 18).
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