Loopholes in the Iron Curtain: Obtaining Western Music in State Socialist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s
Abstract
In common notion, the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 is perceived as an immense historical break separating two different eras in several aspects. The new political elite imposed tougher ideological control affecting many spheres of the Czechoslovak society.
Within the new conditions, traveling and foreign relations became one of the more restricted areas: as a step to "consolidate" the political situation, contact with the West was about to be more restricted than in the late 1960s. But despite travelling restrictions and border controls, the infamous Iron Curtain was not by any means impervious.
Informal contacts with the outside world thrived and smuggling scarce goods became a common practice. Within my paper I will focus on the different ways how Czechs and Slovaks could obtain western music in the 1970s and 1980s.
One of them was the organized smuggling on a large scale. Bands of traffickers smuggled tons of LPs (later also audio cassettes) through the iron curtain in many, sometimes very inventive ways.
After passing the obstacles of border controls, huge profit was awaiting, because of the enormous demand and high prices of foreign LPs. Apart from organized smuggling, many individuals developed alternative strategies how to get to the commodities they sought after.
Some tried to bring music records on their own. Experienced smugglers, as well as "occasional offenders" had to undergo a certain set of rituals at the international borders.
This included strategies such as corruption leading to turning a blind eye from the custom officers, using of elaborate hiding spaces in cars, false album covers, etc. But individual smuggling of records as described above was just one of many forms of obtaining sought-after (pop)cultural artefacts.
Other ways of unofficial music transfer included relatives living abroad, illegal music markets, which took place regularly in big cities, home-copies of borrowed albums, just to name a few. People from the border regions could tune West German/Austrian radio stations or music shows broadcasted on the TV, in spite of state-sanctioned jamming.
And then there were the cultural institutes of the brotherly socialist states, which sometimes, somewhat surprisingly, offered quality records from the West besides their own music. The main goal of my paper is to analyse various ways of circulation of otherwise hardly accessible goods.
I will examine the origin of the records which were brought to Czechoslovakia and also the question of how particular smuggling networks and other unofficial mechanisms were established and maintained. I will also describe what the possession of precious records actually meant to their owner in terms of generating different kinds of capital (in the Bourdiean sense).
My text will also deal with the different motivations for participating in such actions as smuggling or buying, selling or trading of western records. Besides true music fans, there were also pure profiteers involved.
Nevertheless these historical actors developed a pragmatic relationship which worked to the satisfaction of both "parties". The selection of sources consists of oral-historic interviews as well as of other materials (police documents, memoirs, etc.).