How do Soviet young

peo- ple feel about restruc- turing? What prob-

lems worry them today?

How do they assess their

role in society? Novosti

Press Agency (APN) of-

fers several interviews

with young Muscovites. Arbat Painters

Arbat is® one. .of Moscow’s: most. popular streets. On this color- ful mall artists draw por- traits of passers-by for a moderate price. We interviewed artice Sergel Rudin. He graduated from an art college two

years ago and teaches drawing at a children’s studio. In his spare time he earns a_ little extra by drawing por- traits in Arbat Street.

“T have a licence to en- gage in individual en- terprise and J] pay in- come tax. My profits are not steady. Sometimes I draw 10 portraits a day and at other times only one. The average price is 10 roubles.” Yakimanka Society

In a garden near the Oktyabrskaya Metro sta-

tions we arranged. to meet with Dmitry Za- kharenko. senior

engineer with the Aca- demic. Institute of the Lithosphere and = Chair- man of the Yakimanka Voluntary Society pro- moting the development of youth housing com- plexes.

“Muscovites, young people in particular. suf- fer from a shortage of housing.” Dmitry said. “We offer a_ solution to the problem.” In their free time soci- ety members reconstruct run-down old buildings in the city centre to live in. The society which was approved by the Moscow City Coun- cil Executive (municipal- ity) six months ago has 500 members. They

were given three build-

On the other side

ings which need a com- plete overhaul.

We offered to restore the whole city centre rather than residential buildings alone. In the past, housing young peo- ple in the centre was out of the question. Fortu- nately, the attitude to the matter is changing dramatically.

“According to Ruslan, people today are too pre- occupied with fashionable clothes, food and apart- ments, - whereas intellec- tual interests should come before material ones.”

Metallists against rou- tine

A year-old club of in- formal youth groups at the Gorky Cultural Cen- tre unites lovers of hard rock. punk rock. pop music and heavy meta. The Club is headed by a council that includes group leaders.

We arrived just in

time to see a group of “metallists” in their leather-and-metal jack-

metal bracelets member-

ets and applying = for ship.

“There is a protest in the way we dress.” Ruslan Tyurin admitted. “We protest against rou- tine and narrow- mindedness. How do most people live? From home to work and back

every day. Whereas we entertain ourselves. Sometimes we get our | thrills riding motorcy-

cles at night. I want to have more such experi-

SOVIET YOUNG PEOPLE TALK

ences to have something to remember in my. old age.”

Ruslan has a job as

an assistant salesman. He is the eldest in a group of 12 metallists,

including Yuri Mureyev a commercial artist, and

Andrei Leonov, Mikhail

Savin and Valery Parushkin who are stu- dents. The boys said

they did not take drugs or drink, except for beer.

According to Ruslan. people today are too pre- occupied with fashion- able clothes. food and apartments. whereas in- tellectual interests should come before ma- terial ones.

“When our move- ment was born. nobody took any notice.” Rus- lan recalled. “Then they banned it without trying to understand what. we were all about. Under

restructuring we've re-

ceived full freedom and

we like it. That’s the way it should be.

“Our group is moral. It’s: members who dis- tort its ideas who are to blame for our bad name.

They should be punished

and removed from the leading posts. : Punk accuses older generation Our con-

versation with metallists attracted the attention of another youth group. Member Aleksei Blinov. an engineer. is closer to punks in his views. He claims to be dissatisfied with the world. Alek- sei is an avid reader. His favorite writers are Jorge Borges. Julio Car- tazar and Gabriel Gar- cia Marquez. “The An- tumn of the Patriarch” and ‘One Hundred Years Of Solitude’ are real eye- openers.” he said.

“T don’t like the way

_ness is being married to

eS

the older veneration lives.

Aleksei said. “They accuse unofficial organi- zations of consumerism. but who makes them what they are? Who taught them that happi

a brainless doll, making good money and having acar and carpets? There must be a different goal in life.” Blinov

says. “The West has no fresh ideas to offer us. It has already built a cou-

= March 17th 1988

en