An online video created by a group of teenagers in the dormitory of their aviation institute has unexpectedly become a symbol of resistance to Russian officialdom.
Fourteen aviation cadets at the Ulyanovsk Aviation Institute filmed themselves dancing suggestively in their underwear to the song Satisfaction, while performing various household chores. The video, called “How pilots entertain themselves in their free time,” went viral. Now offline, the original video has been reposted countless times.
The video evoked a stern, emotional response from the institute’s head, Sergei Krasnov, who lamented that the teens had desecrated an institution of learning and offended the entire aviation industry (to say nothing of aviation veterans) by wearing their pilot caps in the video.
“How can you ridicule what is sacred!” Krasnov exclaimed. A special commission descended on the school, and rumors flew that the cadets would face expulsion.
But then young people all across Russia started to make videos of their own in solidarity with the young men. There were versions by future emergency service workers, construction specialists, medical students, and many others. Dozens of clips proliferated on the internet.
One of the videos showed two pensioners dancing in their bathrobes around their communal apartment, licking soup ladles in the kitchen in mock eroticism.
Another showed swimmers, gyrating underwater.
Yet another featured young men in a riding club outside Moscow, dancing in a stable, including dancing on a horse.
Eventually, the videos became less funny and more commercial, with an auto repair shop in St. Petersburg offering up its own take.
A petition against expelling the Ulyanovsk cadets gathered over 90,000 signatures. “The video was just a joke and didn’t have any subtext,” the petition said, complaining that the cadets were removed from their classes, which “violates their right to an education.”
Ulyanovsk Governor Sergei Morozov weighed in, opining that “expulsion would certainly not contribute to their patriotism and character,” suggesting instead a lighter punishment, one that would instill respect for their uniforms in the boys.
Many felt that the authorities had completely overreacted to a harmless video, forgetting that Russia had moved away from the strict morals of the Soviet Union, where such eroticism would be taboo.
“I don’t think it’s some kind of desecration,” said Stas Belokon, one of the youths who filmed a spin-off Satisfaction video in a stable. “Viewers left comments, such as ‘in our time this was unacceptable,’ but we live in the twenty-first century, and now people can do things like this.”
“I think that, today, reacting as if this were the Soviet Union doesn’t work.”
Other commentators ridiculed how officials took offense at the cadets’ behavior while ignoring the pitiable conditions of their housing. The spate of viral videos, said oppositionist Maria Litvinovich, “fulfilled an important investigative task: exposing the condition of dormitories at educational facilities in various Russian regions.”
In an interview with Coda Story, the two dancing pensioners added their own take: “[Viewers] told us we should change our stove and refrigerator. Well, please come, change them, and paint the walls while you’re at it! But then, it’s considered completely normal for two people to live on top of one another in a communal flat. Half the country lives this way!”
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