Jazz in the USSR: Freedom, Popular Culture, and ‘the Decadent West’

March 29, 2019 Dora Vrhoci

Still from Valery Todorovsky’s 2008 musical Stilyagi. Image source: http://popkult.org/hipsters/. — Still from Valery Todorovsky’s 2008 musical *Stilyagi*. Image source: http://popkult.org/hipsters/.

Feeling a bit jazzy today? Not in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The USSR and jazz had a love-hate relationship ever since the country’s formation in the early 1920s: the officials hated it, the youth loved it.

‘Reinventing the Wheel’: How the Current Anime and Manga Scene Is Drawing Its Inspiration from the Theme of ‘the Doppelgänger’

January 26, 2019 Dora Vrhoci

Anyone who has ever read Sui Ishida’s popular dark fantasy manga series Tokyo Ghoul or watched at least one episode of its anime adaptation probably noticed that the series largely builds its plot around the theme of the so-called ‘(evil) double’ or ‘the Doppelgänger’.