We All Live in a Yellow Submarine

ys_02 The Yellowish Submarine'southward log volume. Epitome courtesy of Felix and Marina Vinogradov

We All Live in a Yellowish Submarine
Ekaterina Nezvankina
Islands of Freedom (Iofe Centre)

Bearing the proud name Yellowish Submarine, the commune at 28 Primorsky Prospect [in Leningrad] arose in August 1977 and lasted for just i yr. Its organizers were academy classmates Alexander Skobov and Felix Vinogradov, who had dreamed about a place where everyone could experience personal freedom, where anybody could distance themselves from the current authorities and express themselves freely.

The history of the district'southward emergence every bit a nonconformist association and, simultaneously, a haven for free thinkers originates in western culture. However, equally Skobov notes, at that place were no physical prototypes, meaning that its inner workings were shaped by the intuition of the people involved in it.

And so, a district. What the heck is that, and what has brought u.s.a. here? For nearly a yr, several of the states had been building magnificent castles in the air, which unexpectedly caused an extremely business firm earthly foundation. Commencement and foremost, who are We? Let's place ourselves in full: students Marina Nikitina (Vinogradova), Felix Vinogradov, Tatiana Komarova, Alexander Skobov, Igor Malsky, Andrei Antonenko, and Alexander Volkov (aka Lupus).[From the commune's log book]

The commune was located in a private, two-story wooden house (something rare for Leningrad) on Primorsky Prospect that Felix and Marina Vinogradov had rented non long before their son was born. The get-go people to join them in the commune were Skobov'southward university crowd and several acquaintances from their school days. Later, Andrei Reznikov, one of the founders of the and then-called Leningrad School, and Alexei Khavin, who was involved in creating the dissident magazine Perspektiva, joined the commune. Then the district gradually became a refuge for Petrograd hippies and various acquaintances who were looking for temporary housing or simply а "crash pad."

1009_cr Alexander Skobov and Felix Vinogradov outside the St. petersburg University history section, circa 1976–1977. Photo courtesy of the Iofe Foundation

1 of the motives for founding an "island of liberty" like the commune on Primorsky was the desire to live an independent life and get out home.

"It was a way of dropping out of society," Skobov said in a 1991 interview.

The commune was created non but as vehicle for internal emigration and distancing from Soviet reality, but likewise every bit an alternative cultural and ideological infinite based on establishing sure shared values of freedom and mocking sure existing official norms. This was expressed even in the commune'southward interior decor, including yellow walls with wild strawberries drawn on them and bootleg ironic posters that played off Soviet and western symbols. The parodic decrees and decisions issued past the Yellow Submarine and its divide "holds," besides every bit poems and songs that turned propagandistic clichés within out, were an ironic response to the meaningless words of the official Soviet discourse. One inhabitant of the commune on Primorsky, Igor Malsky, fifty-fifty claimed that the communards collectively invented the folklore genre "sadistic verse." The height of the commune's creative powers is considered the "rock poem" "Lazha" ("Crap"), amid whose characters one tin recognize the residents of the Yellow Submarine.

ys_10 Felix Vinogradov, Seal of the Yellowish Submarine commune, 1977. Image courtesy of Felix and Maria Vinogradov

In an interview with us, Skobov said that his idea, subsequently, of engaging in political activity, printing flyers, etc., came to him while living in the commune. Many participants named every bit their motive for moving into the commune the "total crap," i.e., the lies that surrounded the celebrations of the October Revolution's sixtieth anniversary and the adoption of the new Soviet constitution [in 1977]. As for revolutionary sentiments, Skobov said that those went no further than kitchen tabular array conversations "berating the regime."

Daily life in the commune took shape as in a large family unit: arguments periodically arose amid its inhabitants. The commune was supported by various means, but everyone tried to contribute in accordance with the master dominion, "a trivial scrap from everyone each mean solar day": 1 person received a university stipend, some other was working, while a third person "dragged it out of their parents." The refuge itself was a two-story wooden house whose starting time floor belonged to the "dissidents," and the 2nd to the "hippies."

"Two rooms, two kitchens, a wooden staircase. All of it was quite exotic, except for the fact that the decor was even more exotic," Skobov said when describing the interior. The commune residents took care of decorating and the "cozy touches" themselves.

We tin can dissever the commune into two ideological centers: those who took function in publishing Perspektiva magazine (which was originally Skobov'southward initiative), and those who were "Soviet hippies." For example, Felix Vinogradov, one of the commune'due south founders, was interested exclusively in the cultural aspect of the procedure—fine art, music, lifestyle, and language. All of information technology was inspired by western ideas of nonconformism, hence his choice of name for the commune. His contrary number was Alexei Khavin, another hitting member of the Primorsky scene. He was actively involved in the protest movement: he typed up leaflets on a typewriter in the commune and wrote articles criticizing the government for Perspektiva. Khavin was eager to get across kitchen conversations and do something more concrete.

The confrontation betwixt the inhabitants of the offset and second floors of the commune—the more than bourgeois "upper level" and the anarchic "lower level"—at times began to resemble the intensity of a cold civil state of war, consummate with mutual insults, reproaches, and accusations. [Andrei Antonenko and Felix Vinogradov, press release for the exhibition The Yellow Submarine Commune, 1977–2007]

This internal division could non but determine the customs's fate. Felix Vinogradov was the offset to exit the business firm on Primorsky, followed past almost all the hippies.

The KGB took an involvement in our magazine: its destruction was imminent, and our commune was threatened along with it. They didn't nab united states at the house itself. The affair was that its residents felt that something was brewing and departed to their own homes. My friend from the university, an idealistic hippie, rented apartments for the commune with me, and his begetter was a colonel in the Border Guards, and they were under the KGB. He worked in [the KGB's famous local headquarters] on Liteiny Prospect. It was then a rather widespread phenomenon, not just here but also in Europe: the children of wealthy parents and security forces officers turned into hippies. And so this hippie's dad pulled up to the house in a small truck filled with soldiers. They loaded upward his things and drove him and his wife away. The others understood what was going on, and they left too. [Alexander Skobov, "Our Oppositional Communism Was an Oddity"]

ys_15 Alexander Skobov, Tatiana Komarova, and Felix Vinogradov, 1977. Photo courtesy of Felix and Marina Vinogradov

The only residents remaining were those who were primarily interested in publishing Perspektiva and were organizing a meeting of opposition groups, which the New Left group planned to concord on the Karelian Isthmus. But because information about the upcoming meeting was leaked to the KGB, the group's members were too forced to urgently remove everything from the district having to do with their political activities. Alexander Skobov and Arkady Tsurkov were presently arrested, and the apartments of other members of the New Left group were searched, while the house on Primorsky Prospect was completely abased. After the dissidents left their Yellow Submarine, the firm was razed, and no photos of it remain. Simply the miracle of the Yellowish Submarine district itself is 1 of the about striking examples of the "islands of freedom" afloat in the space of Soviet Saint petersburg.

Further Reading
Interview with Alexander Skobov, recorded at Memorial Research and Information Centre, 1991. Iofe Foundation Electronic Archive

Juliane Fürst, "We All Live in a Yellowish Submarine: Life in a Leningrad District," in Juliane Fürst and Josie McLellan, eds., Dropping Out of Socialism: Culling Spheres in the Soviet Bloc (New York, 2016), 179–207

Alexei Sochnev, "Our Oppositional Communism Was an Oddity," Russkaya Planeta, March 19, 2014 [Interview with Alexander Skobov]

A.F. Belousov, "Igor Malsky'due south Memoir 'The Crooked Mirror of Reality': On the Origin of Sadistic Poetry," Lotman Anthology, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1995), pp. 681–690

Thanks to Jenya Kulakova for the heads-up. Translated by Mary Rees