Soviet rock journalism as a peripheral practice

The article deals with the being of Soviet rock journalism through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. The history of music journalism—both in Russia and the English-speaking world—has a sufficiently long tradition; however, historically, it has been focused on classical music. Therefore, most of the field’s agents have long treated popular music forms with a certain scepticism or completely ignored them. The vacant niche was occupied by «enlightened fans»: educated youngsters who shared and broadcasted the same values as the artists whose work was covered in the pages of their periodicals. English-speaking journalists, comprehending and explaining the new music, formed the mythology of rock. While the Soviet authors, being on the periphery of the cultural map, had an additional task: to adapt the new musical phenomenon to the surrounding reality, adjusted not only for the language but for cultural and ideological contexts.