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Local Foreigners. Women's fashions have progressed from mere shapelessness to the Sack to the painted-on look for the rich and daring; necklines are plunging. At Moscow's heated open-air swimming pools, which are open year-round, Victorian-style swim suits have yielded to two-piece costumes for girls. "Janes," as Moscow University jets call their girls (after the heroine in antediluvian Tarzan movies that reached Russia after World War II), are discovering eye shadow, generally paint their nails; they most frequently sport bouffant or Bardot hairdos, though Audrey Hepburn cuts ($1.50) and permanents ($6) are gaining in popularity. Hip guys, or firmennye (literally, foreign firms), go for white shirts and solid ties from France; but hard-to-get button-down shirts and striped ties from the U.S. Ivy League are the most. Bell-bottom trousers, longtime mark of Soviet orthodoxy, are worn only by servicemen, hayseeds, and Nikita Khrushchev.
At the Metropole and National hotel dining rooms, and at the Budapest, one of the top Moscow restaurants, dance orchestras thump out the latest hits almost as fast as they come over the Voice of America's unjammed "Music U.S.A." broadcasts, which thousands of Russians record on tape. There are status-conscious college kids who try to impress compatriots by pretending they are tourists, usually Amerivantsy. Some even label themselves "local foreigners," call other baron (good guys) in their set by secret American names hybridized from Hollywood, e.g., Audrey Monroe, Charlee Taylor. A good many more-sober young Russian intellectuals scorn such fantasies. But they too look to the West, avidly devour the works of top Western authors.
Pelvic Polka. Youth's greatest malaise is simple Soviet boredom. Endless bitter jokes damn the drabness of life under Communism. Asks one: "Is there life on Mars?" Answer: "No, there isn't any there either." Asks another: "Is it possible to build Communism in only one country?" "Certainly, but who wants to live there?" Russia lacks the drugstores, coffee bars or bowling alleys where the young can congregate, although there is a scattering of ice cream parlors. Cinemas are few and crowded; getting tickets to the Bolshoi or Moscow Art Theater takes hours of waiting in line.
In the past year, the regime has cautiously permitted the opening of a few attractive clubs, such as Moscow's Aelita, where young people can sip soft drinks or wine and dance to Dixieland. The snag: Komsomol (Young Communist League) trusties at the door see that only the faithful get in. Young Russians yearn for spring, when they can flee jampacked apartments for the parks. Although Russia is generally a pristine society, on dance floors young couples often lock themselves in a pelvic polka that makes the twist look like a minuet.
Though the official press denounces writers who picture "angry young men" or a "disappointed generation," it is devoting an ever increasing amount of space to letters, articles and sermons on youth's problems. There has been a startling increase in alcoholism among the young (but a decline in adult drinking); Mos cow has twelve sobering-up tanks where grim pictures of passed-out repeaters are taken and pinned on the bulletin board at their factory or university.