The sixties could be those born in the sixties. Why not? It is a definitive name for an entire generation. But this is not so. Sixties is a myth. Despite the fact that some of those who are called that way are very real people and still live among us.
Who are the sixties? Are these people of the same generation or worldview? Maybe this is a direction in art, like the Wanderers, for example? What did they do and where did they suddenly stock up? There are many questions. The most interesting thing is that all these questions have been asked and continue to be asked not only by those who come across this term, but also by those who, in passing and en masse, ranked in this, let’s say, direction.
Undefinable
Someone once called a large group of very different people, whose creative path or creative peak fell on 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 only true in one aspect that defines the term subculture: indeed, all those who are commonly called sixties differ from the dominant culture in their own system of values. Different from the ideological system of values imposed by the state. And it's all. To attribute very different, often radically different people, to a certain “subculture” is the same as that of all Christians in the world, regardless of confession, also called subculture. Why not? After all, they have an almost unified system of values. 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 of the sixties, the names of bards and poets first come to mind: Bulat Okudzhava, Alexander Galich, Alexander Gorodnitsky, Yuri Vizbor, Gennady Shpalikov, Bella Akhmadulina, Evgeny Evtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, or prose writers - Vasily Aksenov, brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatats,, Vladimir Voinovich. I recall the directors and actors: Oleg Efremov, Kira Muratova, George Danelia, Marlene Hutsiev, Vasily Shukshin, Sergey Parajanov, Andron Konchalovsky, Andrey Tarkovsky, Mikhail Kozakov, Oleg Dal, Valentin Gaft. And, of course, Vladimir Vysotsky, whom it is not clear where to take it, was so versatile. But we must not forget about those scholars and human rights defenders without whom sixties could not have arisen: Lev Landau, Andrei Sakharov, Nikolai Ashliman, Gleb Yakunin, Lyudmila Alekseeva and many others.
Unfortunately, the exact answer to the question - who are the “sixties” - does not exist. Or we can say this: the sixties is an era. The people who created it are very different, and we are all lucky that, starting from the principles of creative freedom, they created this era, which continues to influence the minds and moods of society.
Atlanta hold the sky
First of all, those same mythological sixties are creative personalities. Whatever these irreconcilable lyrics and physicists would do: poets, scientists, bards, writers, artists, architects, artists, directors, geologists, astrophysicists and neurophysiologists, navigators and mathematicians, sculptors, philosophers and even clergymen - they are twentieth-century Atlanteans. Atlantes, who gave rise to the civilization of people of valor and honor, for which the measure of everything is freedom. The only possible cult: the cult of human dignity.
The totalitarian system drove the tank along the best of them and someone became a dissident, because once having got up a choice to go out to the square or stay at home, protest against the arbitrariness of the system or continue to whisper in the kitchen, they chose the action: going out to the square, meeting and supporting friends on unlawful processes. Otherwise, they could not have lived on, such as 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 got to grips with them and they were forced to emigrate later - in the seventies: Vladimir Voinovich, Vasily Aksenov, Andrey Sinyavsky, Andrey Tarkovsky.
Those who stayed in the USSR took a sip of the completely stifling terry stagnation of the 70s and the timelessness of the early 80s: someone built into the system and became a craftsman 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.
All of them are not 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 beginnings of each of them also did not occur exactly in 1960. For example, one of the brightest creative groups and the spokesman for the ideas of the sixties - Sovremennik Theater - was born in 1956, almost after the death of Stalin, when the repressive-terrorist smog melted over one sixth in a short thaw period part of sushi. Yes, it was then that they began to appear - the sixties.
Is it possible to touch that era? Try to feel her? Why not. Films in which time is best reflected can help in this: “I am twenty years old” by Marlena Khutsiev, “My elder brother” by Alexander Zarha, “Journalist” by Sergei Gerasimov, “Short meetings” by Kira Muratova, “Such a guy lives” by Vasily Shukshin, "The story of Asya Klyachina, who loved, but never married, " Andron Konchalovsky, "I walk in Moscow" by George Danelia, "Aibolit-66" by Rolan Bykov.
