"MADE IN RUSSIA" AS AN AESTHETIC: WHY REPRESENTATIVES OF THE Z GENERATION ARE PROUD OF BRANDS THEY DID NOT NOTICE

Abstract

The article is devoted to an analysis of the consumer paradox: growing interest in Soviet visual aesthetics among representatives of the Sumer generation (20-30 years old), whose socialization took place in the post-Soviet period. The starting point of the study is to observe market practices. The author asks a research question: is this a phenomenon of pride in the Soviet legacy or a post-ironic game with symbols whose original meaning has been lost. The theoretical framework of the work combines the concept of imagined communities by B. Anderson, the theory of identity by D. Holt, the concept of reflective nostalgia by S. Boym, the concept of simulation by J. Baudrillard and the effect of knowledge by R. Zajonc. On the basis of five cases - brands "Volchok" and "Gosha Rubchinsky", games "Tetris", perfume "Red Moscow" and project "North-7" - several key needs served by Soviet aesthetics were identified: search for cultural identity in the context of globalization, The demand for authenticity in the world of simulacra, the desire to demonstrate cultural capital through belonging to an imagined community. The author concludes that the consumption of Soviet aesthetics by a generation that did not force the USSR is not so much a rational choice as a way to cope with "cultural weightlessness" - a situation in which globalization offers an excess of identities, but none of them is perceived as being quite proper.