The West has a nostalgia problem. The past is alternately romanticized and rejected. Young people embrace it, ironically or not, through cyclical trends; 2020 saw 1980s-style synth-driven hits, a disco renaissance, and the continued popularity of referential indie-rock.1 At the same time, young people also feel alienated from the experiences of older generations. For historians, this framework presents a fundamental problem, as it allows our relationship to the past to exist only at two highly artificial extremes. Furthermore, if these same Westerners are unable to consider their own past with the requisite nuance, their perception of other societies is even more superficial. This problem is particularly acute in relation to the former Soviet Union, which already carries immense political baggage in the popular imagination.Young Westerners, afforded unprecedented access to international music by the internet and social media, have in recent years precipitated a new, global interest in post-Soviet bands. One such group is the Belarusian post-punk trio Molchat Doma (Houses Are Silent), formed in 2017.2 The year 2020 marked not only the release of their third album, Monument, but also a summer of viral popularity on TikTok and Spotify that brought Molchat Doma breakthrough international attention.Attention, however, does not necessarily bring understanding. Nostalgia is important to Molchat Doma—they (and their contemporaries, such as Ploho, Utro, and Buerak, across the former USSR) are reviving the post-punk and new wave scene of the 1980s fundamentally to represent the Belarusian experience and make meaningful connections to the past. Western listeners interpret the music more ironically, almost fetishistically. For Molchat Doma, nostalgia is a means to connect the contemporary Belarusian struggle for dignity with the very same experience of their forbearers, which the West aesthetically misappropriates in service of its own nihilism. This is not to say outside attention is unwelcome, it brings not only success for the band, but also increased awareness of the ongoing struggle for democracy in Belarus; however, the band rightfully rejects the ironic, Western interpretations of their material.Indeed, without a more earnest engagement with history, Westerners will continue to simply exploit Belarus for Ostalgie and political leverage, rather than genuinely sympathize with Belarusians’ push for lasting change. Molchat Doma’s use of nostalgia operates outside the Western canon, drawing on a more hopeful philosophical history, even though their music is at times quite nihilistic. In this manner, the band demonstrates how post-Soviet peoples can use nostalgia in a productive, non-fetishistic way to create meaningful, enduring art that imagines a better future.The lead single off Monument, “Ne Smeshno” (Not Funny), is broadly critical of Belarusian society in a manner that, while eliding explicit political references, candidly expresses disillusionment with an overall social malaise. The song describes an oppressive environment, where everyone laughs at jokes that are not funny, is needlessly ambitious when complacency will win the day, and lies to themselves first before all others.3 It is not hard to imagine this describes Belarus, a landlocked, Russian client state with a declining population and no significant natural resources of its own. The country’s first and only president, Alexander Lukashenka, has been in power since 1994. In the music video for “Ne Smeshno,” the band rides a night bus, dressed in yellow hazmat suits. The band must help, or otherwise carry, the listless, half-asleep riders off the bus and into a darkened concert hall to watch Molchat Doma perform. As most of the crowd dances mindlessly, in unison, one woman opens her eyes and pulls back a curtain, causing the vocalist Egor Shkutko to collapse in her arms, lit by sunlight.4The metaphor here is clear, and poignant. The band, careful not to become infected by lethargic complacency, voice their dissatisfaction with an unchanging existence to a largely unseeing crowd. However, all it takes is the awakening of one audience member to pull back the curtain and illuminate the scene, in turn lifting the burden from Molchat Doma’s shoulders. They are free to rest, having awakened civil society.This kind of awakening, one of mutual recognition, harkens back to the concept of “solidarity of the shaken,” originated by the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka in 1975, and demonstrated by his public defense of the underground rock groups Plastic People of the Universe and DG 307 in 1976.5 Regarding this defense, Patočka wrote, “the only real help and care for the other comes when I step forward and do what I have to do, whether in hiding or out in the open, whether anyone knows about it or not, and perchance let my awakened conscience awaken the conscience of others.”6 Patočka speaks of the moral necessity of living in accordance with one’s beliefs, not only in defense of like-minded individuals, but in the hope that it will show others how to live truthfully in turn. In “Ne Smeshno,” Molchat Doma beautifully reenact this transference.Molchat Doma are not always so reliant on metaphor. In more informal contexts, they openly confess to being opposed to the current Belarusian regime, which came under unprecedented international scrutiny in 2020. Lukashenka initially drew attention for his inadequate, misinformed response to the coronavirus. Then, in August, seeking his sixth term as president, he declared victory in an election that international consensus deemed undemocratic.7 Immediately after Lukashenka was announced to have won, protestors took to the streets in the capital, Minsk, and other cities. Since then, unprecedented protests and general strikes have spread throughout the nation.In a recent Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) question and answer session with fans, Molchat Doma say of the 2020 Belarusian protests, “people are doing the right thing. People should change the person who has been in power for 26 years.” When asked to pick one thing to change about Belarus, they openly proclaim, “we would change the president.”8 The band also contributed one of their earlier and more political songs, “IȂ Ne Kommunist” (I Am Not a Communist), to the digital benefit album For Belarus.9 Fortunately, they state, there has been “no problem for us yet” from the government.10However, in a more traditional, magazine-style profile, “out of fear for their own wellbeing,” the band declined to speak about the political situation in Belarus, except to say that it is “fucked up.”11 In another, Russian-language, article, Shkutko reiterates twice that the band does not discuss politics “on principle” and requests that the interviewer not ask questions related to the subject.12 Molchat Doma are most willing to make explicit political statements in informal contexts where they (and their interpreters) have complete control.13 Their reluctance can at least partially be explained by the fact that many opponents to the Lukashenka regime, in the cultural field or otherwise, find themselves imprisoned on ideological grounds. Foreign Policy reported that 3,000 people were arrested the night of Sunday, 9 August alone.14It is also important to consider the way politics have traditionally operated in post-punk music. The genre is considered to be a matured version of punk, more deft and intellectual in its political articulations. In her recent book, What is Post Punk?Genre and Identity in Avant-Garde Popular Music, 1977-82, the musicologist Mimi Haddon argues that “post-punk holds more symbolic capital than punk; to identify as a post-punk fan is akin to saying you are more intellectual, more complex, and more socially progressive than punk,” though she by no means discounts the fact that the genre replicates rock’s historic exclusion of Black people and women.15 The musicians’ beliefs are not shouted or emphasized with expletives, but are communicated more subtly through the tone of the music and thematic motifs. In this manner, Molchat Doma’s political recalcitrance is conducted not only in service of the band’s own safety, but also to increase the perceived artistry and sophistication of their music.Molchat Doma’s oblique approach to politics meets their constructive style of nostalgia in the band’s frequent use of brutalist imagery. Their bassist, Pavel Kozlov, guilelessly claims that the band is attracted to this design sensibility simply because “it is also an art form, especially Soviet modernism. It is music that you can see.”16 Indeed, while Molchat Doma certainly reject some aspects of the Belarusian existence, they in equal parts fetishize it. All their releases thus far feature tastefully kitschy black and white images of brutalist architecture and constructivist art. The cover of their second album, Ėtazhi (Floors), depicts the brutalist Panorama Hotel in Slovenia, while Monument trades tourist resort for Communist sculpture, featuring an illustration based on the Workers’ Party Foundation Monument in North Korea.17 On the cover, the monument is set in the middle of an endless sea. It is no stretch to point out that this imagery is evocative of the symbolic isolation that literally landlocked Belarusians face, but the guitarist Roman Komogortsev insists that “there is no political subtext in the cover of the new album” and tells listeners not to insist on metaphorical interpretations that imply an isolated Lukashenka or Belarus broadly. “For us,” he says, “it’s visually pleasing to see some sculptures.”18 While this may in part be a cautious deflection, it serves the dual purpose of asking the reader to consider a deeper meaning to the band’s aesthetics, besides the immediate political situation. Komogortsev explains that, in choosing visual materials, the band decided to present a symbolic evocation of the USSR in a way that highlighted its “beauty,” because “no one wants to understand it in terms of beauty.”19 Therefore Molchat Doma’s appreciation of brutalism is a simple, nostalgic romanticization, but one that cleverly subverts both the usual portrayal of brutalism and its typical association with authoritarianism in contemporary political discourse.The nostalgic, if not outright joyful, subversion of national imagery is a common motif on Monument. In “Discoteque,” Molchat Doma’s most hook-driven, danceable release thus far, the narrator waffles between physical and spiritual escapism, both achieved through dance.20 The music video prominently features the National Library of Belarus—a 23-floor, glass-and-steel polyhedron—illuminated with patterned rainbow graphics. The video’s second set is the Memorial Museum-Workshop of Z. I. Azgur, a national Soviet sculptor. The band performs in a room housing dozens of busts and sculptures of communist figures and Party leaders, including Stalin, Lenin, Marx, and longtime Belarusian Communist Party Leader Pyotr Masherov, lit with flashing lights and decorated with a disco ball.21 By turning these sometimes-grim national icons into the set of a dance party, Molchat Doma once more implicitly indicate that Belarus is not a gray monolith. There is joy to be found there, especially when creative individuals like the band members are willing to make it.22Similarly, in another interview, with the independent Russian cultural publication Colta.ru, Kozlov and Shkutko excitedly announce that they have “finally” released an album on cassette tape, a medium that the band “has had a love for since childhood.”23 While in the West, releases on cassette or vinyl are sometimes seen as cash-grabs intended to ensnare image-oriented hipsters, for Molchat Doma and indeed many in the post-Soviet sphere, cassettes represent the magnitizdat (tape-publishing) culture of the Soviet Union. Tapes were the medium of choice for Soviet citizens to distribute inaccessible foreign music and, especially in the 1980s and into the 1990s, recordings of performances by underground bands, including the new wave groups that inspired Molchat Doma.24In this manner, even if the band cannot discuss the future, they can still communicate through the past. Nostalgia is politically useful for Molchat Doma. In a stagnant environment, references to the shared experiences of current-day Belarusians and late-Soviet citizens are galvanizing. In an interview with the Calvert Journal, Kozlov comments that Soviet new wave “bands and songs are still sadly relevant,” because “the people who are in power are changing but the regime is still there.”25 Nostalgia then, in this context, is not a tool for cheap reminiscence, but a kind of intergenerational solidarity of the shaken, a unifying force which shows that, though life’s struggle is consistent, so is its joy. Patočka defines history as “nothing other than the shaken certitude of pre-given meaning.”26 By redefining aesthetics and historical figures, Molchat Doma create not only a new narrative for the past, but also new possibilities for the future. They are comfortable with nostalgia and the role it plays in the reexamination of history, which is, consciously or not, undertaken continuously as time passes.By the same token, Western listeners are able to assign a completely different lexicon of meaning to the symbols in Molchat Doma’s work. One journalist claims that American Gen Z-ers, accustomed to inauthenticity, are attracted to Eastern Europe because it “is mostly too poor to keep up pretenses.”27 Another, in conversation with the band, determines that young people online are romanticizing “Soviet vibes,” which they find “exotic,” in an escapist fantasy from their capitalist reality.28 In these conceptions, Western listeners assign material poverty and its auxiliary, spiritual wealth, to Molchat Doma. Perhaps this is meant to be complimentary, but it largely comes across as patronizing and underinformed.Because Westerners have no experience with the lived reality of the (post-)Soviet experience, their interpretations are perhaps better understood through the concept of hauntology, rather than nostalgia. Hauntology, originated by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in 1993, is frequently used to examine the nostalgic afterlives of cultural phenomena. Derrida applied it specifically to the ghost of Communism, which he believed to haunt the West even after the end of the Cold War. He glibly defines hauntology as “staging for the end of history.”29 Indeed, Molchat Doma’s post-Soviet aesthetics are frequently invoked to add more mystique, or even danger, to a seemingly pedestrian American existence. Caleb Braaten, the founder of Molchat Doma’s American record label Sacred Bones, says that the band’s sound feels “like the ghost of what could have been…like there’s an alternative 1980s where Molchat Doma filled the malls of America.”30Foreign press wastes less time on American navel-gazing. The German publication Laut.de states simply that Molchat Doma’s material has been “stolen” from the band by American Gen Z-ers who “find the vibe of the supposed Soviet Union to be a little spooky and a little cool.”31 The implication, of course, is that American listeners do not actually want to live in the alternate reality where the Soviet Union won the Cold War; those imaginings are wholly ironic. However, they are more than happy to let the ghost of Communism haunt their suburban towns and shopping malls, as it is their conduit to “edgy” nihilism.This is not to say that the nihilism itself is a construction of Western listeners—it is a persistent theme on Monument, whether in relation to interpersonal relationships or, implicitly, something larger. “Udalil Tvoy Nomer” (Deleted Your Number), dramatizes a breakup, with the former lovers moving on into “the void” or a “great light.”32 The use of fatalistic imagery highlights the song’s nihilism. “Obrechen” (Doomed) moves at a more methodical pace; Shkutko’s vocals float above the steady drum machine beat in a sort of lackadaisically-tortured, Morrissey-esque fashion. The subject of the song—a lover who has given everything he has to his partner and longs only to be gently embraced, who is doomed to sacrifice in and become injured by love—befits this tone.33Nihilism, however, does not define Monument, and its presence is far less ubiquitous than on the band’s prior releases. Nonetheless, in the West, nihilism is what resonates most strongly. Molchat Doma are also often categorized as “doomer music.” The band confess they do not understand the meaning of the term, and mostly encounter it in interviews with foreign media. Komogortsev eventually concludes that doomers are “like hipsters,” listening to something because it is “fashionable.” Shkutko imagines the typical doomer to be “a man 18-25 years old, who is a little disappointed with life,” for whom doomer music is the “perfect soundtrack” to his gray existence; he is “a sad person, who doesn’t know what will happen next.”34 This is an honest evaluation. Doomerism could more charitably be described as a semi-ironic, ideological and aesthetic affectation popular primarily among Western teens, which involves a fundamental lack of hope for the future of humanity (in regard to environmental, sociopolitical, and/or economic collapse). Doomers often use imagery from (post-)Soviet states for its perceived apocalyptic “vibes.”The ethics and inevitability of this kind of aesthetic appropriation are broadly debatable. In the particular instance of Molchat Doma, it represents the West’s larger difficulties with nostalgia and empathy for the former Soviet Union. The British critic Mark Fisher justifies the application of hauntology to popular culture by pointing to the twenty-first century as the “moment when cyberspace enjoyed unprecedented dominion over the reception, distribution and consumption of culture—especially music culture” and the turning point when so-called “tele-technology” “radically contracted space and time.”35 The internet allows us to share experiences with people spatially and chronologically removed from our lived reality. This could be an opportunity for Westerners to genuinely engage with the ongoing democratic struggle and complicated history of Belarus. Could we not, after all, turn just as easily towards an international solidarity of the shaken, instead of superficial hauntology? Derrida, in exploring Patočka’s “history of responsibility,” poses the concept of “history as responsibility.”36 Do we not have an obligation to history (and indeed, the future), that requires us to act in service of solidarity, rather than entertain ghosts?Molchat Doma’s conceptualization of nostalgia embraces this responsibility. In its power to emphasize shared, intergenerational experiences and redefine established symbols, nostalgia can be used to envision a hopeful future. While the band plays with nihilism, they reject the ironic, Western interpretations of their more pessimistic material. Kozlov articulates the idea in its simplest form: “this is not the same music. We’re not doomers, we play post-punk.”37 Until Westerners can understand the experience of Belarusians as they themselves define it, the country will continue to be overlooked and stereotyped, to the detriment of not only its cultural future, but also its democratic one. Monument will, at least, live on as an incisively poetic articulation of the complexities of the Belarusian experience until such a time as general audiences and historians alike seek to reexamine it.