The sixties might be those who were born in the sixties. Why not? Quite a defining name for an entire generation. But this is not the case. The sixties are a myth. Despite the fact that some of those who are commonly called that are quite real people and still live among us.
Who are the sixties? Are they people of the same generation or worldview? Maybe this direction in art, well, like the Wanderers, for example? What were they doing and where did they suddenly disappear? There are many questions. The most interesting thing is that all these questions were asked and continue to be asked by not only those who come across this term, but also those who, in passing and en masse, were ranked in this, let's say, direction.
Undefined
Someone once called a large group of very different people, the beginning of their creative path or their creative peak in the 60s of the last century, a subculture. And the term went for a walk on the net. But this definition is careless, since it is correct only in one aspect that defines the term subculture: indeed, everyone who is usually called the sixties differed from the dominant culture by their own system of values. Different from the ideological system of values imposed by the state. And it's all. To classify very different, often radically different people, to a certain “subculture” is the same as calling all Christians of the world, regardless of confession, a subculture. Why not? After all, they have almost the same value system. But it's not right.
Among those who are ranked among the sixties, the most famous are, of course, those who were engaged in poetry and songwriting or writing. Speaking about the sixties, the first to come to mind are the names of bards and poets: Bulat Okudzhava, Alexander Galich, Alexander Gorodnitsky, Yuri Vizbor, Gennady Shpalikov, Bella Akhmadulina, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, or prose writers - Vasily Aksenov, brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Vladimir Voinovich. I remember directors and actors: Oleg Efremov, Kira Muratova, Georgy Danelia, Marlen Khutsiev, Vasily Shukshin, Sergei Parajanov, Andron Konchalovsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, Mikhail Kozakov, Oleg Dal, Valentin Gaft. And, of course, Vladimir Vysotsky, who is not clear where to be attributed, was so versatile. But we must not forget about those scientists and human rights defenders without whom the sixties could not have arisen: Lev Landau, Andrei Sakharov, Nikolai Eshliman, Gleb Yakunin, Lyudmila Alekseeva and many others.
Unfortunately, there is no exact answer to the question - who are the "sixties". Or you can put it this way: the sixties are an era. The people who created it are very different, and we are all lucky that they, starting from the principles of freedom of creativity, created this era that continues to influence the minds and moods of society.
Atlanteans hold the sky
First of all, those same mythological sixties are creative personalities. Whatever these irreconcilable lyricists and physicists are doing: poets, scientists, bards, writers, painters, architects, actors, directors, geologists, astrophysicists and neurophysiologists, navigators and mathematicians, sculptors, philosophers and even clergymen, they are Atlanteans of the twentieth century. Atlanteans, who gave birth to a civilization of people of valor and honor, for whom the yardstick of everything is freedom. The only possible cult: the cult of human dignity.
The totalitarian system rode over the best of them with a tank and someone became a dissident, because once faced with the choice to go out to the square or stay at home, protest against the arbitrariness of the system or continue whispering in the kitchen, they chose an action: going out to the square, meeting and supporting friends at unjust processes. Otherwise, they would not have been able to live on, like the poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya and the writer and neurophysiologist Vladimir Bukovsky.
Many of them tried to stay out of politics, in the space of freedom of spirit and creativity, until politics took them closely and they were forced to emigrate later - in the seventies: Vladimir Voinovich, Vasily Aksenov, Andrei Sinyavsky, Andrei Tarkovsky.
Those who remained in the USSR drank in full the suffocating terry stagnation of the 70s and the timelessness of the early 80s: someone integrated into the system and became an artisan from creativity, or a human rights activist-functionary, like Vladimir Lukin, someone burned out early, urging the body with various substances that could not stand passed away voluntarily.
They are not all people of the same generation. Among them were those born in the late twenties, most of them in the thirties, and some in the mid-forties of the last century. The beginning of the activity of each of them also does not coincide exactly in 1960. For example, one of the brightest creative collectives and the spokesman for the ideas of the sixties - the Sovremennik Theater - was born in 1956, almost after the death of Stalin, when in a short period of the thaw the repressive-terrorist smog melted over one-sixth part of the land. Yes, it was then that they began to appear - the sixties.
Is it possible to touch that era? Try to feel it? Why not. This can be helped by films in which time is best reflected: "I am twenty years old" by Marlen Khutsiev, "My older brother" by Alexander Zarkhi, "Journalist" by Sergei Gerasimov, "Short meetings" by Kira Muratova, "There is such a guy" by Vasily Shukshin, “The story of Asya Klyachina, who loved but did not marry” by Andron Konchalovsky, “I walk around Moscow” by Georgy Danelia, “Aybolit-66” by Rolan Bykov.
Top secret. Burn before reading
The sixties of the last century breathed the spirit of freedom throughout the world. These were the years of global changes in outlook.
USA, Western and Eastern Europe, Japan, Guatemala and Angola, Australia and Thailand, China and Argentina, Mexico and Brazil … Resistance to repressive systems generated fires and barricades, Molotov cocktails and massive anti-war demonstrations, guerrilla wars and ethnic uprisings. The student intellectual-workers French revolution of 1968 and the invasion of the Soviet Army into Czechoslovakia in the same year - these two facets of democratic thinking and totalitarianism for a long time determined the progressive and regressive paths of development, which manifested themselves exactly twenty years later.
Humanistic ideas, sexual and technological revolutions (the creation of the first computers) - all this also comes from the 60s. And also the music of The Beatles, rock, film masterpieces and a surge of intellectual and philosophical thought, the cultivation of democratic and libertarian democratic principles and values.
The 60s of the last century changed the world. Ideas that originate there continue to change it. Even despite the stagnation of the 70s and the timelessness of the 80s, the launched mechanism of the renewal of social thought continues to exert a tremendous influence on progressive trends and trends in different countries of the world, encouraging people to protest, solidarity and action.
The sixties with one-sixth of the land have long become urban legends. Those of them who survived, like those who leave one after another, but who have preserved their ideals as true mythological Titans, by fortitude, youthful soul and thought, influence and aim the younger generations on action. This means there is hope for a revolutionary and evolutionary social breakthrough.
