Deterritorialized Nationality: Viktor Tsoi Saves the World

Abstract

This article uses Alexei Yurchak's account of late socialist performance and the deterritorialization of authoritative discourses to discuss the half-Korean identity of Viktor Tsoi, the most prominent rock start emerging from the perestroika period. It uses representations and perceptions of Tsoi from the 1980s to argue that in this period, it was possible to perform the nationalities listed in each Soviet citizen's passport, as well as official slogans like “the friendship of peoples,” in ways that allowed for flexible understandings of group identity—what the article conceptualizes as “deterritorialized nationality” via overviews of Soviet nationalities policy and the history of Soviet Koreans. The article illustrates deterritorialized nationality through readings of the landmark films Assa (1987), which concludes with a performance by Tsoi, and Needle (1988), which stars and features the music of Tsoi. In both films Tsoi's racial difference is evident in ways not possible in his music alone, but race takes on unanticipated meanings—hearkening to radical internationalisms that help us to think beyond our ever more polarized discussions surrounding identity in the west, as well as the renewed polarization of Russia and the west.