How Azerbaijan's 1960s KGB waged war on jazz and Western youth culture
In the autumn of 1959, Moscow was forced to replace the head of the Azerbaijan SSR. He was sent to the Belgorod region as deputy head of the regional KGB directorate. Fyodor Kopylov, who had overseen the republic since September 1956, was replaced in August 1959 by Alexander Kardashov, an aide to the head of the Ukrainian KGB. He arrived in Baku in September 1959.
Kardashov had spent many years working as a mechanic in the Urals. He completed a correspondence course at the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, and also graduated from a factory technical school after seven years of formal education. He had little knowledge of Azerbaijan.
Soon after taking up his post, KGB officers arrested the chairman of a collective farm in connection with a fatal incident in one of the republic's border regions, the Nakhchivan ASSR. During questioning, the man swore that only Hazrati Abbas - a sacred figure in the Shia Muslim tradition - knew he had nothing to do with the case. When his testimony was translated into Russian and passed to Kardashov, he wrote a note on the document: "Hazrati Abbas must be found immediately."
The first major initiative by Alexander Kardashov as chairman of the KGB in Azerbaijan was a republic-wide meeting of KGB operational staff, special departments of the Baku Air Defence District, intelligence officers of the 4th Army stationed in Azerbaijan, and representatives of the Azerbaijani Border District. The meeting lasted three days, from 21 to 23 June 1960.
On 25 May, Kardashov informed the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan about the meeting's agenda in a letter. The document bore a note from Vladimir Semichastny, the second secretary of the Central Committee.
At the meeting, which focused mainly on strengthening efforts to counter Western "ideological subversion" in line with KGB Order No. 00225, as well as on personnel matters and structural changes, Kardashov stressed the need for the security services to be ready to confront phenomena such as the stilyagi subculture and jazz music, which were seen as expressions of Western cultural expansion, alongside what was described as a religious threat.
The stilyagi - a subculture associated with imitating American styles of dress - and what officials described as a "jazz expansion" were treated by the security services as emerging threats. While the KGB continued its uncompromising struggle against nationalism, foreign intelligence services and anti-Soviet activity, by the early 1960s it faced a dual challenge: a growing "religious threat" on the one hand, and Western cultural "expansion" on the other, manifested in the stilyagi subculture and jazz.
In Baku, the number of stilyagi had grown to such an extent that even at republican KGB meetings it was acknowledged as a serious problem. A significant share of young people, drawn to the subculture, were said to be falling under the influence of the Western way of life. A detailed report on the issue was delivered by Mamed Avdiyev, a senior operative in the 4th department of the republican KGB. He noted that the security services needed to take urgent measures to prevent the influence of the stilyagi on young people, who stood out for their appearance and behaviour as they followed the latest Western fashions.
In his view, bourgeois ideology and the Western way of life were manifesting themselves among young people in their most distorted form, expressed through the stilyagi subculture, which in turn promoted the American way of life as an example of what he described as "spiritual poverty."
Citing Nikita Khrushchev, Avdiyev said:
"Stilyagi culture represents complete moral decay and a harmful fascination with the American way of life. It draws part of the younger generation away from broader state goals and sows the seeds of parasitism in relation to productive labour. Ultimately, it is an expression of servility and subservience to all things foreign. In the words of Comrade Khrushchev, stilyagi culture is a form of struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat. Khrushchev's assessment of this phenomenon as a form of worship of foreign ways further mobilises us in the fight against it, which manifests itself among young people as a harmful phenomenon."
Avdiyev noted that efforts to combat the stilyagi should not be limited to the methods of the security services, but should also involve strengthening political and educational work among young people through the Komsomol and other public organisations. He stressed:
"We must do what public organisations cannot. We can and must identify the most active stilyagi, their overt and covert meeting places, as well as the initiators and organisers of these gatherings, and expose them. With the help of the press, the Komsomol and other public organisations, it is necessary to shape public opinion around them in order to prevent the spread of this harmful phenomenon."
At the time, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published an extensive article targeting the stilyagi.
Despite a number of administrative bans, it proved impossible to halt the spread of jazz in Azerbaijan, and after Moscow and Leningrad, Baku emerged as the Soviet Union's third centre of jazz.
