Popular music is an important field for symbolic resistance to political power in post-Soviet countries like Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, experiencing protests during the past years. Symbolic uses of popular music in post-Soviet space includes the singing revolution in Estonia, music for two revolutions in Ukraine and protest by rappers Oxxxymiron and Face in Russia. Still, popular music’s current sounds, lyrics, performance, audiences and production as well as media and cultural contexts are understudied in the post-Soviet space.

This research network aims to bring together contributions currently made by scholars to studies of post-Soviet popular music’s political and aesthetic meaning in the 21st century, and provide unique knowledge production about popular music. In times when authoritarian and illiberal governments are expanding or defending power in post-Soviet space popular music enables circulation of meanings seldom studied as political participation.

The network has a committee of established researchers and will hold a workshop on the topic in Mannheim, Germany in October 2022, and pursue publication and further applications to expand this research area in international scholarship.