The rock band "Sektor Gaza" as a phenomenon of Russian (counter)culture

Beskov Andrey Anatol'evich ORCID: 0000-0003-4080-1614 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor; Department of Philosophy and Social and Legal Sciences; Volga State University of Water Transport 603950, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod, Nesterova str., 5, room 377 beskov_aa@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The title of this article may seem too loud, given that at the moment there are almost no scientific publications about the Gaza Strip group or its leader Yuri Klinskikh (stage name – Yuri Khoy). At the same time, the work of this group, which became famous in the 1990s, as will be shown below, is still popular today. This seems surprising if we take into account that the group had almost no clips, TV and radio broadcasts, little was told about it in the media, and during the years of its active existence, Russians were still practically unfamiliar with the Internet network, which provided modern performers with unprecedented opportunities to interact with the audience. Such popularity looks especially contrasting against the background of numerous musical "projects" created by professional producers, which do not pass the test of time and go into oblivion in a few years or months after the start. (At the same time, the term "project" itself, denoting in show business a certain "hyped" brand - a group or an individual performer – already hints at the temporary nature of such work and a pre–calculated return on the implementation of a business plan, which has little to do with the word "creativity" in its high sense, when the result of creative activity comes out Indeed, if we look into the newspapers of the 1990s and study the charts of those years, we will come across numerous forgotten names: Kai Metov, Professor Lebedinsky, Mr. Daduda, Vadim Kazachenko, etc. Some of them can still be seen on the posters of retrodiscos, others are completely forgotten. Years later, it becomes obvious that they had no influence on Russian culture. But Yuri Khoy's work has grown into our culture – the lines of songs are widely quoted (they can be mentioned by journalists, comedians, and even current students born after Khoy's death), recordings of songs are used as soundtracks to Russian television series, his music is performed by symphony orchestras. It turns out that the "Gaza Strip" is indeed an unusual phenomenon and deserves the attention of researchers of Russian mass culture.

However, I managed to find only four scientific publications about the group. One has a historical bias and was written by a student ^[1], the others were written by philologists, and one of them is also a student pen test and published in Belarus ^[2], the other two ^{[3, 4]} belong to Russian candidates of philological sciences, but published in the journal "Russian Rock Poetry: text and context", which is not included in the "List of the Higher Attestation Commission", which automatically puts it on the periphery of Russian science, regardless of the scientific merits of the articles published there.

Why has Yuri Khoy's work been neglected by scientists so far? It seems that the point here is in the history of Russian rock culture and in the force of inertia of Russian academic traditions. Studying the RSCI database, it is easy to notice that publications on rock bands are written mainly by students, respectively, they are published in little-known publications. Venerable scientists ignore these topics (perhaps due to the age threshold, since rock music in our country has become widely popular only since the 1980s and representatives of older generations have almost not been affected by it). Russian cultural studies is more focused on theoretical research and the study of samples of high culture, rather than on the study of phenomena and trends of mass culture and counterculture. The latter are more interesting to anthropologists (ethnographers), but they are focused more on a synchronous rather than a diachronic approach. Considering that the history of the group seemed to have ended long ago (due to the death of its leader in 2000), this approach is problematic to apply. As has already been shown, rock music is of some interest to philologists (it is appropriate to recall here that the American author-performer Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016), but they study primarily the lyrics of songs, and not the general impact of rock musicians' creativity on culture (although M. Y. Osokin demonstrates a good acquaintance with the general cultural context in which Hoya's work is inscribed ^[4]). As a result, it turns out that such a topic is a kind of no-man's territory, the invasion of which does not promise special benefits (it is unlikely that you will be able to get a grant to study such a topic), but it is associated with some worries (how will the scientific community perceive such a "marginal" study?). Nevertheless, I will try further to show that this topic has every right to exist. Ignoring such large layers of mass culture, we can hardly seriously count on a deep scientific understanding of the mass consciousness, spirit, and "nerve" of a particular epoch. And it is the work of the "Gaza Strip" that provides us with the richest material for studying the folk, deep life of the domestic post-Soviet society. A number of songs can be considered as historical and linguistic sources, and a retrospective look at Russian popular culture reveals that Yuri Khoy was the conductor of a number of innovations (rude humor, obscene vocabulary, mystical plots of songs), which later became fully entrenched in Russian music.

But before proceeding to the presentation of the material, it is necessary to determine the methodological premises of the study. What is a cultural phenomenon and how can it be studied? When one speaks of a cultural phenomenon, one usually does not mean the Kantian distinction between a phenomenon and a noumenon, but simply "a rare, unusual, exceptional phenomenon" - this is the dictionary meaning of this term. Of course, there are no clear algorithms and protocols for the research of unusual cultural phenomena, to which the group "Gaza Strip" is attributed here. Every researcher of such phenomena should think for himself what and how exactly he is going to study. To begin with, let's define the object and subject of study. The object is the Russian culture of the post–Soviet period. The subject is the Gaza Strip group as a cultural phenomenon that has influenced Russian culture in general. It is possible to study a cultural phenomenon, as mentioned above, in its various aspects, and then the research will have a sociological, cultural-anthropological, literary, musicological or some other specific scientific character. But if, instead of individual aspects, we are interested in the phenomenon in its entirety, its very essence, then the study naturally acquires a philosophical character. It does not have a clear methodology, which we have the right to demand from specific scientific disciplines, but is based on the erudition of the researcher in the field of those cultural products and practices that he undertakes to consider. As an example (or, a buzzword from the world of cultural industries, a reference) of works of this kind, one can point to a number of essays by Mircea Eliade devoted to explaining how fashion works in culture (for example, the reasons for the popularity of the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin and Levi Strauss) ^{[5, pp. 12-37]}, essays by Roland Barthes known under the generalizing title "Mythology" ^[6] or even to M. M. Bakhtin's monograph "The work of Francois Rabelais and the folk culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance" ^[7], the author who, in an attempt to understand the reasons for the originality of the famous and bizarre novel "Gargantua and Pantagruel" went beyond literary studies or historical science and moved on to philosophical generalizations. (By the way, we'll remember about Rabelais later.)

What is the basis of the author's erudition in this case? Based on the study of numerous newspaper notes and interviews with print media and TV channels (they have appeared in considerable numbers in recent years due to the digitization of archives of Russian newspapers and old videos and their placement on the Internet; 10-15 years ago, many of these materials could not be found), books about the "Gaza Strip" (about them below), a good acquaintance with the lyrics of the band's songs, as well as on my own memories, since my school years fell just in the era of the gradual growth of the band's popularity. Thus, this study combines the analysis of texts (written and audited) and self-reflection (autoanthropology), which allows us to trace the possible perception of song lyrics and analyze the general cultural context in which the band's creativity existed and continues to exist.

It was mentioned above that despite the scanty number of scientific publications about the "Gaza Strip", there are a number of books about this group. At the moment there are five of them ^[8-12], in general they are similar, since they are made, for the most part, according to a single pattern. These are compilations from the memoirs of people who knew Yuri Khoy, newspaper publications about him, his interviews, as well as the authors' own impressions and reasoning. The books trace the main stages of the group's history and the biography of its leader, but in general it is necessary to be aware that the final results do not meet the criteria of scientific rigor and objectivity. These are not studies, but sources of information that can be classified as memoir and documentary prose. Also, an informative source (but not a study) is a collection of transcripts of various interviews with Khoy published informally, in the form of an electronic file ^[13]. "The Gaza Strip" may also be mentioned in books dedicated to other bands or the Russian rock scene in general ^{[14, pp. 178, 183, 187]}, but such mentions do not look valuable enough.

However, this list of books is interesting, at least because by the years of their publication we can see the fact of a surge of interest in the group – three out of five books were published in 2022 and 2024. Moreover, the authors of such books are quite well-known personalities. One of them is a candidate of philological sciences (although he retired from active scientific activity) and music columnist Denis Olegovich Stupnikov, the second is a fairly well–known writer and journalist Roman Sergeevich Bogoslovsky (the eldest daughter of Yuri Klinskikh, Irina, is also listed as a co–author). It is also interesting to observe how the name of the author of the book ensures the favorable attention of the literary community to it, and then to the subject of the author's interest. This is clearly visible in the reviews that appeared on R. Bogoslovsky's book in the Literary Gazette ^[15] and the Teacher's Gazette ^[16]. This book is benevolently placed on a par with other modern books dedicated to Russian singers or, more often, written by them themselves – as follows from another review, this time on the book by the popular rapper Basta (V. Vakulenko) ^[17].

Maybe it's just a coincidence? The obvious demand for the creativity of the "Gaza Strip" in modern Russian culture prevents us from thinking this way. I will demonstrate this with several different examples. Despite the fact that many prominent figures of the Russian music market (including Mikhail Krug, Nike Borzov, Sergey Shnurov, Mikhail Gorshenev) spoke negatively about the "Gaza Strip", there is also a considerable selection of statements that are purely complimentary (for example, the music columnist of the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets A. Gasparyan called the "Gaza Strip" the greatest Russian Russian rock band of the 90s ^[18]). R. Bogoslovsky cited in his book information that the band's songs are heard in no less than 17 Russian feature films and TV series ("DMB: back in Battle", "Hop-stop", "Balkan Frontier", "How I Became Russian", TV series "Policeman from Rublevka", "Physical education teacher", "Real boys", "Tolya the robot", "Roots"). This list can be supplemented with more recent data – the 2024 TV series "Sergius against evil Spirits" and "How Derevyanko Lomonosov played" (in the latter, the song "Lyrics" is the musical leitmotif of the entire series). The mentioned song (the only "slow song" of the group with love-themed poems) is generally extremely well-known and popular, and it is no coincidence that it was destined to find a second wind after 2016. a musical project (let's remember that this word now often replaces the concept of "musical group" that is disappearing into oblivion) Filatov & Karas, together with singer Maria Kachalova (Masha), made a cover version of it, which became very popular. It is noteworthy that the popularity of the cover version, unlike the original, as it happens with most of the pop hits, quickly subsided. But the position of the original is popularly characterized by a recent joke performed by the KVN team "Atomic Team" (the first 1/8 finals of the top league of the 2024 season). In an improvisational competition, where it was necessary to wittily answer the question that the famous politician Elena Mizulina would not be able to ban, the cavemen answered: ""The Gaza Strip", "Lyrics". He won't dare!" By the way, poetic or musical quotes from the work of the "Gaza Strip" in KVN are not uncommon, as you can easily see by searching for them on the Internet. For example, in another recent major league game (Moscow Mayor's Cup, broadcast on Channel One from 09/02/2023), the Red Fox team performed the song "30 years" together with singer Denis Maidanov. Sometimes the comic effect is based on the recitation of poetry and a spectacular pause, during which the audience speaks to themselves an indecent continuation, which for some reason turns out to be known to everyone. And this is also evidence of the interweaving of song lyrics into everyday life, into the fabric of the living spoken Russian language, into our notorious "cultural code", which is often recalled, but which has been so little studied.

In 2020, on the anniversary of Hoya's death, a tribute album of the band was released (not the first in a row), where her songs were performed by various rock bands. Perhaps the most famous of them is DDT. Its leader, Yuri Shevchuk, chose to perform such a hit of the "Gaza Strip" as "The Night before Christmas".

But these are not all examples of the continuing life of Hoya's work after his death. The singer's eldest daughter, Irina, is now continuing her father's work, organizing concerts in his honor. The apotheosis of this activity was a concert held in one of the largest Moscow concert halls, Adrenaline Stadium (now VK Stadium) in 2022. In the spirit of modern fashionable technological trends, the highlight of the program was the holographic image of the singer, who literally resurrected him on stage. The show attracted considerable media attention, and the experience turned out to be so successful that it was approvingly mentioned by a columnist of the respectable Rossiyskaya Gazeta ^[19].

The performance of the band's songs as instrumental compositions with the involvement of symphony orchestras is also in line with fashion trends. So, on the web we can find a video clip where the musicians of the Voronezh Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Voronezh Philharmonic perform the melody of the song "Fog" (2022). The same melody, as well as the melody of the song "It's Time to go Home" is performed by the consolidated military orchestra of the Military Educational and Scientific Center of the Russian Navy, which was timed to celebrate the day the Russian Navy (2022). This is no coincidence, since these songs, attributed by fans and music critics to a small number of "serious" and "civic" songs of the band, have long been rooted in the army. (I remember how, as a schoolboy, in some TV report about the military operation in Chechnya, I saw that while the correspondent was telling something, a group of young soldiers accidentally got into the frame, ignoring journalists and singing "It's time to go home.") As you can see, against the background of the special operation in Ukraine, these songs suddenly turned out to be in demand not only among the people, but also at the official level (especially considering that some Russian rock stars, habitually referred to as "legends", spoke out against the special operation and took an openly anti-patriotic position). Perhaps this situation opens up some new page in the posthumous life of the band and its work.

Finishing the theme of the symphonic processing of the band's songs, it should be added that this did not become a one-time patriotic action. The Voronezh Orchestra has gone further and is now touring with an entire concert based on the band's songs. So, on the web you can find a recording of the concert in Minsk on March 15, 2024. You can hear how the audience periodically gets into a rage and starts singing in chorus to the accompaniment of the orchestra. In this example, it is also noticeable that the band's work is popular not only in Russia. (It is worth mentioning here that Hoi has repeatedly performed in the border regions of Ukraine and noted that he was very well received there.)

This lengthy introduction shows that the band's popularity has not faded at all over time. Moreover, her creative legacy seems to be turning into a classic (no matter how strange it may sound to those who are used to considering the "Gaza Strip" as a group for collective farmers, urban punks and vocational school students). The opinion has already been firmly established in newspaper articles and books about the group that the "Gaza Strip" is a phenomenon, a vivid and original phenomenon in Russian (rather, even Russian–speaking post–Soviet) culture. To continue to ignore this phenomenon from the scientific community becomes even indecent. The relevance of its study is long overdue. It is reinforced by the fact that in 2024 it would have been 60 years since the birth of Yuri Klinsky, and in 2025 it will be a quarter of a century since his death. These are suitable reasons to fill the scientific vacuum around the group.

But before proceeding to the analysis of this phenomenon, it is worth giving some historical and biographical information. Although the songs of the Gaza Strip are widely known (even among those who do not like them), information about the band is less well known. This shows at least the unfortunate blunder of a journalist from Komsomolskaya Pravda, who called it a Siberian group ^[20].

So, Yuri Nikolaevich Klinskikh (07/27/1964 – 07/04/2000) was born, lived (except for tours and business trips to Moscow) and died in Voronezh, which immediately gives him a touch of "specialness", since most of the "legends of Russian rock" relate to his three capitals – Moscow, Leningrad and Sverdlovsk. He grew up in a very typical Soviet family: his father was an aviation engineer at the Voronezh Aviation Plant, and his mother was an employee (riveter) the same company. He graduated from 10 grades of school, had no other education. He served 2 years in the tank forces as a driver. Before the army, he worked as a repairman at the Voronezh Semiconductor Device Factory. After the army, he worked as a traffic police inspector for three years. In 1988, he was an apprentice operator of a CNC machine at the factory at the Research Institute of Household Video Equipment, in 1989 he was a loader at the Voronezh branch of the Research Institute of Synthetic Rubber.

The beginning of Yuri's adult life is typical for millions of Soviet young people. But it is atypical that a teenager from the working-class outskirts of an industrial city, who did not have much success in his studies (he studied average), read a lot, loved poetry and himself, at the suggestion of his father, wrote poetry. This hobby has not died with time. Back in 1981, he recorded several of his songs with a guitar on a tape recorder, these recordings have been published and are widely available. (When listening to some of them (for example, "Six-string Guitar"), it is easy to notice the influence of V. Vysotsky's work, both in the manner of performance and in terms of poetics. We will remember Vysotsky later.) At the end of the 1980s, in the wake of the legalization of rock music in the USSR, Voronezh had its own rock club and Yuri took an active part in its activities. In December 1987 He performed his songs for the first time on the stage of a rock club. There was no band yet: Yuri himself played guitar, he was helped by a bass guitarist from another musical group. However, the name "Gaza Strip" has already been announced from the stage. The group, which so far consisted of only one person, was born. (Its name is ironic. It was born in Voronezh as an unofficial toponym designating the area of the city where the main industrial enterprises polluting the atmosphere were concentrated.) At that time, Yuri Klinskikh also acquired a stage name. "Hoi!", in his opinion, which he voiced in his interviews, was an exclamation accepted in the punk subculture. And although Hoi himself did not fully belong to this subculture, he was keenly interested in such a subgenre of rock music as punk rock.

By the end of the eighties, Yuri had already accumulated dozens of lyrics. In 1989, 27 songs were recorded on cassettes and began to be distributed in nearby cities with the help of acquaintances and nonresident rock musicians who visited Voronezh.

Already in 1990, Moscow learned about the group and began to offer cooperation. Show business in the country was just emerging, the first producers and specific business schemes appeared, in particular, related to the tours of several bands under one "hyped" name. A similar role was reserved for the "Gaza Strip", which, however, Hoy strongly opposed. In 1990, as evidenced by the entry in the workbook given in Bogoslovsky's book, Klinskikh was accepted into the Gala cooperative for the position of "artist". The cooperative soon turned into a recording studio (label) Gala Records, which since 1993 has become the official representative in the CIS countries of one of the world's largest record companies EMI Group. In 1991, the band held a concert at the Luzhniki Stadium, followed by a large-scale tour of Russia and the near abroad. So the group began to gain national fame. It is inappropriate to describe in detail the further creative path of the group in this article, since this is not a historical or biographical study. But in short, it should be noted that despite the widespread popularity among teenagers and youth, its demand and commercial success (which, however, was felt more by the label than by the musicians), the group remained underestimated during the lifetime of its leader. Hoi remained a stranger in Moscow, did not enter into any creative "hangouts", the band's songs did not sound on Our Radio, which united the whole color of Russian rock music around itself (rumor has it, due to personal antipathy to the work of the group of the general producer of the radio station). Due to the presence of profanity in many songs, the band was considered underground. They tried not to invite her to the central TV channels (official censorship was replaced by self-censorship by media managers).

Here, the author again needs to resort to the method of autoanthropology: I remember how in the late 1990s, we high school students, "fanatics" of the band's songs, experienced an acute information hunger, actually knowing nothing about it. At that time (from July 1998 to October 2000), the youth information and entertainment television program "Tower" was broadcast on the RTR TV channel. Responding vividly to the requests of their audience, young journalists aired music videos and interviewed many fashionable musicians at that time. As a result, I managed to see Khoy and his clips or fragments of concert performances several times in this program. This was accompanied by words that his appearance was connected with the numerous wishes of the audience (these video clips are easy to find online today). In the same program, shortly after the artist's death, perhaps the most honest story about him came out in hot pursuit, from which we learn that in the last years of his life he had another woman, as well as drugs (in R. Bogoslovsky's book, drug addiction, contrary to the unanimous confessions of loved ones reflected in the video, is denied, and almost nothing is said about the mistress, who, in the opinion of many people who knew Hoya, played a fatal role in his fate).

The circumstances of the singer's death and the reasons that led to it are still vague. This is largely due to the fact that all his biographies rely only on narrative sources – stories of acquaintances, interviews, etc., but not on official documents.

During its active operation, which fits into one decade, the band has released 13 albums. (Formally, we have to talk about the band all the time, but at the same time it is quite obvious, and this is noted by the artist's biographers, in reality "Gaza Strip" was the author's project of Hoya, who wrote poetry, melodies and sang. The composition of the band has changed over the years, while some musicians could record albums in the studio, and others could go on tour.)

It is not easy to determine the musical style in which Hoy worked. Considering that the musician himself spoke about his passion for punk rock, and also that one of the most famous hits of the band is called "Collective Farm punk", often the band's music is called collective farm punk. However, the music of the band often does not correspond to the musical style of punk rock, and in general there are not so many original melodies in Hoya's work, but there are many musical borrowings, mainly from songs of foreign and domestic rock and pop groups. This gave rise to the desire of music critics and fans to find some better definition of the band's style, among which there were such tricky definitions as: "tavern rock", "Russian folk punk" or "drunken pops". In an interview, Hoi himself called his style the word "fusion" (from the English fusion, "alloy"), which very correctly reflects the essence of his creative techniques. In his trademark ironic manner, he listed the ingredients of his work in the song "From what", parodying a Soviet children's song: "From syringes, from khanki, plan / From bottles and a glass / The Gaza Strip is made. However, this is pure outrage. The singer himself said the following on this topic: "I have never done a single thing under any kind of high, either under drugs or alcohol. (…) I tried to do it once under drugs. I woke up in the morning and went crazy, such stupidity turned out" ^{[13, p. 239]}.

In his interviews, Hoy has repeatedly told me what kind of music he grew up on and what he likes. So, in 1997, he identified the following sources of his work: "Combining Vysotsky and the rock of the 70s is the "Gaza Strip"" ^{[13, p. 87]}. However, this is clearly not all of what influenced him. Hoy was an avid music lover, was aware of all the novelties in Western rock music and did not intend to adhere to any patterns at all. He said that in his youth he loved "Aquarium" and "Civil Defense" from Russian rock, but after he became a rock musician himself, he did not find anything worthy of attention on the domestic stage. At the same time, he clearly outlines what he always liked: "... I listened to such rhythmic music in general. I didn't like a particular style. But actually, I've always liked rock. (...) Turn on the West, the music sounds good there, there is pressure, movement, they work there, sing from the heart, shout, and not that they barely die like ours" ^{[13, p. 168]}. We find additional touches to the ideal of rock music, to which the musician himself was heading, in other interviews: "It's very difficult for me to call the Beatles rock, except for some things. (...) There was rock, it was "Slade", it was "Rolling Stones", it was real rock. And they are still holding on. Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne. These are my idols. I especially like that they are old men now, they are 50-something years old, and when you watch the clips, they have such an energy that just drives the roof off" ^{[13, p. 122]}. "If you sing rock, then sing something like that, you know, I'll crush, strangle there, well, such an aggressive, powerful something" ^{[13, p. 130]}.

But at the same time, Hoy was not trying to blindly imitate someone else's style. His tastes gradually changed, and he tried to do exactly what corresponded to these tastes. In a 1999 interview, he said the following: "I like, for example, rap, lately, heavy – that's what I'm going to do in heavy rap, although no one likes it" ^{[13, p. 217]}. Rap combined with rock music became the new ideal: "now I've moved into heavy rap, because there's a clear rhythm and plus rocker guitars" ^{[13, p. 122]}.

These explanations seem to be one of the keys to unraveling the popularity of Hoya's work among teenage and youth audiences. In Soviet times, there was no such thing as music for teenagers. There were children's songs (unfortunately, they almost disappeared after the collapse of the USSR as a genre, as a special musical niche) and there was a stage designed for the tastes of an adult – calm, melodic, let's say, "cultural" music. The niche of teenage music was filled with yard songs, as an alternative to what could be heard from the stage. Russian rock began to be perceived for a while as youth music, too, due to its alternative, novelty. But in general, Russian rock is characterized by the melodiousness and seriousness of the themes raised in the lyrics. It is difficult to call such music teenage, it is hardly suitable for dashing dancing in clubs, it does not "go crazy". The music of the Gaza Strip has found a completely new niche for itself in the Russian music market. It clearly provokes the excitation of the nervous system, motor activity (there is scope for research by neurophysiologists, who quite often turn to studying the influence of music of different genres on the brain). My personal memories of how we teenagers literally jumped, "broke away" and "rocked" under the "Gaza Strip" find full agreement in the descriptions by journalists of the atmosphere that accompanied the band's concerts. In one of the notes, we find mention of three warning shots in the air that a policeman had to make to hold back a crowd of fans in Irkutsk ^[21]. In another, the journalist contrasts the concert of the Gaza Strip, where "there was a complete mess in the hall" and the police had to intervene again, with the combined concert of three other punk bands: "unlike the concert at the Baltika k/t, there was complete order here" ^[22]. The very pressure, energy, or as they say now, "drive" that Hoey liked so much are fully present in his music and probably simply correspond to the psycho-emotional characteristics of teenagers, who eventually became one of the target audiences. This was fully realized by the artist. In the song "Hello guys, good afternoon", which is the introduction to the album "The Night before Christmas" (1991), the words sound: "Guys, I'll give you some advice / Spin us without dads and moms / So as not to grab your ears / They don't like such a shame!"

Shame is not mentioned here by chance, since obscene vocabulary became a real hallmark of the group in the early years of its existence. This, of course, contributed to the growth of the scandalous fame of Hoya's brainchild, including among teenagers – the forbidden fruit is sweet, this is understandable.

However, popularity among teenagers is by no means the solution to the phenomenon of the "Gaza Strip", and outrage is not the main means of achieving this popularity. The mat began to penetrate into Russian-language songs even before Khoy (for example, some of the mat ditties voiced by him were directly borrowed from the untitled album of the group "Agas", released in Kazan in 1988) ^{[4, pp. 264-265]}, existed in parallel with him (for example, the group "Red Mold") and is actually completely legalized today, appearing in the works of various famous performers of various genres (from Boris Grebenshchikov to Grigory Leps and Egor Creed; even Alla Pugacheva did not disdain to sing obscene ditties, which again can be seen online). In fact, from an element of counterculture, the mat in songs has become almost mainstream.

However, in relation to Hoya's work, it draws attention to the fact that he did not use the mat exactly the way it is used by modern "stars". Yes, sometimes, as in obscene ditties, this is pure hooliganism, a slap in the face to public taste. But it is noteworthy that Hoi was not at all a popularizer of the mat, did not try to fill his work with it to the maximum and included mostly "decent" songs in concert programs. This sometimes even surprised journalists, as, for example, it was after a concert in Kharkov in March 1998. Hoi said about this: "It is necessary to maintain correctness – elderly people, both aged and with children come to the hall. So it is necessary to observe subordination" ^{[13, p. 114]}. The artist generally clearly tied the permissibility of such expressions to a specific situation: "... it depends where and how. If you are in good company, then, of course, you will not swear" ^{[13, p. 64]}. Answering the question of another journalist why there is less and less mat in his songs, Hoi replied: "No, why, there is sometimes, but only less often. And only when it sounds too fucked up without a mat. (...) an extra checkmate, it is inappropriate. When mate, he's in the vein, then in the vein. And how the "Red Mold" sings.... It's not in the vein, so no one really likes him (the Red Mold collective – author)" ^{[13, p. 167]}. When asked why he includes obscene words in the lyrics, ot replied: "But because this is our life. Because go out on the street and you will immediately be covered with matyuk" ^{[13, p. 64]}. "If I sang something there, or I sing something with expressions, with obscene language, then I insert it only in those places where this abuse should be. So, if you listen carefully, there is practically no mat there. He is very rare, but very accurate. If it is replaced with another word, it will no longer be the same" ^{[13, p. 186]}. As we can see, Hoi justifies the use of mat in songs in exactly the same way as all other "masters of culture" do – writers, poets, directors, etc. The logic is that if you strive to depict life as accurately as possible, then you should not resort to self-censorship. And although this logic itself can be disputed, it must still be recognized that specifically in the songs of Khoy, who grew up in a working-peasant environment and drew his plots directly from life (his own and his friends), mat in most cases serves as an organic means of reflecting the social environment in which the lyrical hero is located. In such cases, the obscene vocabulary no longer looks shocking, but just a cast of reality, which (most often satirically) is depicted by the poet.

So, the mate in the songs, if he could at first draw attention to the band, he could not keep it. Hoy understood this perfectly well himself: "... as I understand it, this (using a mat in songs – ed.) is no longer a joke. (...) everyone likes songs like "Bum", "Took the Blame on Himself". Well, such normal, good things, but to cover with a mat, it's no longer interesting to anyone, we've already given Gary, that's enough" ^{[13, p. 227]}. The secret of the band's popularity is clearly not in this. What are the good things about "normal" Hoy songs?

It seems to me that the main ingredient of his success is the widest range of topics covered in the songs, as well as a simple, understandable presentation. Just a quick look at what topics are covered in the songs. Environmental Problems ("Gaza Strip") is one of the very first songs, and immediately a thematic innovation. Domestic violence ("Lullaby"). Corruption ("Bribery"). Abuse of power ("Cop"). The plight of the people, the working class ("Walk, man!", "I'm tired", "Popets", "Fools"). The hard life of the village workers ("Collective farm", "It's good in the village in the summer", "Ploughs"). Hyperinflation ("Piece", preface to the song "Bum").

The latter deserves special attention. M. A. Shelenok, in my opinion, misinterprets the song "Bum" as satirical, ridiculing this character. Apparently, he came to this conclusion because of the excessive absolutization of an observation he quite rightly made: "Most of the songs of the "Sector" (not only satirical) are made in the form of a self-revealing monologue of a certain social type (usually negative), under the mask of which the author hides" ^{[3, p. 212]}. M. A. Shelenok sees the words "But I'm happy, in my own way, believe me" and "Don't feel sorry for me - I live a wonderful life" as a marker of the author's allegedly traceable irony in relation to the lyrical hero. However, this interpretation should probably be rejected. Firstly, there are simply no other "deception songs" where irony is deeply hidden in Hoya's work. If we accept the proposed interpretation, then this song will turn out to be completely unique. Secondly, the intonation of the singer does not hint at an epical attitude towards the lyrical hero of the song, there are no comically colored rhymes, words, images, as is inherent in the obviously satirical songs "Popets", "Bribery", "Cop", "Prostitute", etc. Thirdly, "Bum" differs in chant, sincerity, which is also not typical for the band's satirical songs. Fourthly, we saw above that this song was described by the singer himself as "normal". At the same time, "Homeless Man" is mentioned along with "Took the blame on himself", which is noteworthy, since in it the narrative is conducted in the first person (a person serving a prison sentence for someone else's crimes, but who did not betray his friends), the song is chanted and when performed in both of these songs, the singer's intonation is clearly there is a mental anguish, which is not at all typical of his satirical songs. Finally, we can add that at the Moscow concert at the Gorbunov Recreation Center on 07/05/1996 (the recording is available online), Hoi noted that the song "Bum" is a continuation of the song "Walk, Man" performed in front of her, which reflects such realities of the early nineties as the collapse of the economy, impoverishment and alcoholization of the country's population. During other concerts, where the song "Bum" was performed, the author presented it with the words "dedicated to dudes without a fixed place of residence" or "boys who, as always, are unlucky." Again, no irony. And the contradiction that confused the philologist, that the homeless man complains about fate, but at the same time "happy in his own way" can easily be explained either by the remnants of self-respect that the lyrical hero has not lost, or simply by an author's flaw that Khoy has (for example, the drowned man in the song of the same name simultaneously exists in the abyss of the sea and in a freshwater river or a swamp). All this combined makes us take this song extremely seriously.

However, why did this article require such a detailed analysis of one single song? On the one hand, using this example, we see that to evaluate the creativity of a musical group and the intentions of a particular song text, intra-textual analysis alone is not enough, and the study of meta-textual material is mandatory. On the other hand, this digression is necessary in order to better understand the acute social message of many of Khoy's texts. His work cannot be perceived only as loneliness, banter, irony, it is much broader and deeper. In the mentioned songs, we can find the very "little man" that students are told about in literature lessons and who is not at all typical of modern mass culture. There is a sincere feeling, the author's mental pain due to the difficult fates, the joyless existence of hundreds of thousands of such small people, among whom he himself was born and grew up. Perhaps it is this humanistic pathos, stubbornly peeking through the punk, "black", scabrous packaging, that makes Hoya's work a phenomenon.

As for this package, it should be especially noted the simplicity, clarity, and unambiguity of the absolute majority of texts. While a huge number of songs of the "legends of Russian rock" are overflowing with symbolism, allegories, metaphors, Hoi expresses his thoughts "weightily, crudely, visibly" and this, of course, impressed a large number of listeners. This is the "truth-uterus" that people used to appreciate. There are poems in prose, but here we see the prose (of life) in verse. Yes, from the point of view of a connoisseur of fine literature, Hoya's poems are not made professionally enough. But let's remember that poetry was perceived as a gift from the gods long before it acquired modern complex forms. The "honey of poetry" and the scalds who drank it were appreciated even by rude Vikings. Hoi spoke in the poetic language that the masses were ready to accept and that no one but him addressed them.

However, the truth of life is constantly mixed in Hoya's work with the theme of mysticism ("The Night before Christmas", "Drowned Man", "Vampire Bite", "They are waiting for us out of the dark", etc.). This generally corresponded to the mood in society in the wake of the abolition of atheistic ideology and heightened interest in religious topics. And this is another reason for the popularity of the group among teenagers who are traditionally interested in mysticism and "horror movies". (Based on the exploitation of this topic, a little later, after Hoya's death, another punk band, The King and the Fool, achieved great popularity.)

Another obvious component of the overall success was the presence of a large number of humorous and satirical songs ("Socks", "Rural toilet", "Pigeon", "Java", "Dispute" and many others). Today, many people cultivate this niche (for example, "Leningrad", "Sharpening"), but Hoi was, in fact, the pioneer of this genre. Satire is another key to a more adequate understanding of Hoya's work. He does not "glorify" various unsightly aspects of life, but castigates them, doing this usually, as M. A. Shelenok correctly noted, "in the form of a self-revealing monologue." Many of the characters in Hoya's songs behave immorally to one degree or another, for which they end up being ridiculed.

In this regard, it is worth noting that despite the hooligan image of the group, Hoi was a law-abiding person. In an interview, he quotes Tsoi's song and develops this idea: "as Viktor Tsoi said: "Watch yourself, be careful." Well, because in order to avoid any crime when drunk, do not go to jail, do not rob, do not beat, do not kill. You know, most of this happens when you're drunk. The most important thing is to follow and be ... and not abuse" ^{[13, pp. 32-33]}. In another interview, he said the following: "I'm most afraid of prison, imprisonment, captivity, because we performed in some of the zones, and it was enough for me to look so that I never wanted to go there again. In general, I am in favor of taking schoolchildren on excursions to zones and prisons from school age, and I think no one would have become a criminal anymore" ^{[13, p. 112]}.

Returning to Hoya's humor, it must be said that this humor is very characteristic. He is rude, vulgar, "salty" – here is a rotten rural toilet in which his mistress drowns ("The moral of the song is: neither dead nor vampires / They are not as dangerous to life as rotten toilets"), and socks that have become so hard from sweat that they become an unintentional murder weapon ("they made the dude's skull burst into pieces"), and a vampire who died after drinking the blood of an alcoholic, and mosquitoes that in every possible way interfere with love intercourse in nature… This is (just) folk humor, which we find not only in Russian ditties, but also in the same Rabelais or Chaucer. These and other humorous plots of Khoy's songs would be perfect for buffoons or farcical touts who performed at fairs in medieval Russia.

As a result, this combination of the primordial folk linguistic and cultural element, the bearer of which was Yuri Klinskikh, with fashionable musical trends gave rise to a curious phenomenon that exists in three dimensions at once – counterculture, grassroots, folk culture and "big", nationwide mass culture. R. Bogoslovsky quite rightly writes in his book that creativity Hoya is sustained in the postmodern paradigm (with its trademark irony and a combination of the seemingly incongruous). It really is. However, it is not known whether such a concept was known to Khoy himself. This is clearly not the refined and calculated postmodernism that we find in fashionable writers like V. Pelevin. It's just that the meeting of Russian folk culture with rap and heavy rock itself generates postmodern effects, regardless of the intentions of the one who organizes this meeting.

These effects do not make it possible to unambiguously define either the style of the group or its place and role in Russian culture. The answer to the question "what is the Gaza Strip made of" looks much more complicated than the lines quoted above from Khoy's song. His work is so multifaceted that it can easily generate a variety of ideas about the group, depending on which layer the listener will encounter and whether or not he will continue to explore this creativity further.

Of course, it is impossible to analyze in detail in one article the entire complex and controversial phenomenon that the Gaza Strip group turns out to be. My goal was mainly to show that in order to better understand the processes unfolding in the field of culture, more in–depth research in the field of counterculture and mass culture is needed. Instead of complaining on duty about the decline of culture, it is necessary to overcome a certain scientific snobbery and long-term inertia, which impose an unspoken taboo on the study of the issues raised in this article. The philosophy of culture should not be based on bare theorizing, but on the contrary, it must keep its finger on the pulse of culture, feeling its changing rhythm.

Yuri Khoy was one of those people who can not only feel, but also quicken this pulse. His example is completely unique – a simple Russian peasant, the author-performer of "from the plough", who remained completely alien to the capital's bohemia, managed to become the most popular musician. This happened without anyone's protection, without investing in the "promotion" of the band, in spite of the undisguised antipathy of many colleagues in the rock scene. His songs, saturated with provincial flavor (in particular, Voronezh dialectisms) can serve as a historical source for the reconstruction of the national life of Russian society in the 1980s and 1990s.

20 years after his death, Hoi is one of the most famous Voronezh natives in Russia (only a couple of living and actively working comedians from the TNT TV channel are more famous than him, but this is clearly not for long) ^[23]. It would seem that nowadays a famous person is an additional means to strengthen the recognition of a regional brand. But the city authorities clearly do not know what to do with the memory of their famous countryman. For many years, there has been a sluggish debate in the city regarding the possibility of erecting a monument to the artist ^[24-26]. Fans of his work do not even ask for money (they find it themselves), they only ask for permission to install the monument. According to the results of local opinion polls, the majority of citizens are in favor. Some representatives of the local intelligentsia are against it. The government is at a crossroads. These fluctuations are easy to understand, because the monument is a marker of official recognition. Can the authorities, even regional ones, officially recognize the merits to culture and society of a person who has a trail of scandalous fame? I think so, since in many cities there are monuments to V. Vysotsky, a number of whose songs during his lifetime were also criticized in the press for vulgarity and immorality, for the decomposition of youth, and whose drug addiction is also well known. However, for a cultural researcher, it does not matter at all whether a monument to Hoi appears or not. The posthumous popularity of Khoy's creative legacy shows that he erected a monument to himself not made with hands. Whether we like it or not, this is a fact that has to be reckoned with and should be explained. That's exactly what I've tried to do in this article.