A gopnik is a member of a

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subculture A subculture is a group of people within a culture, cultural society that differentiates itself from the values of the conservative, standard or dominant culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures ...

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, and in other former Soviet republics—a young man (or a woman, a gopnitsa) of urban

working-class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

background.
The collective noun is gopota (). The subculture of gopota has its roots in working-class communities in the late

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and gradually emerged underground during the later half of the 20th century in many cities in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. Even before their heyday in the 1990s following the

dissolution of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...

and the associated rise in poverty, there was a "gopnik" culture in the Soviet Union. Young men from working class areas rebelled against ''neformaly'' (non-conformists) and harassed the lovers of Western music, which had become popular in the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Etymology

Folk etymology Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a mo ...

connects the word to the ''GOP'', the

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

for ''Gorodskoye Obshchestvo Prizora'' (municipal welfare society), an organization to provide shelter for the destitute. An alternative origin is the

onomatopoeic Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...

br>гоп
''(gop)'', 'jump', 'leap', cf. the slang terms ', 'gopat', or ', 'gop-stop' which means mugging or robbing.

Stereotypical appearance and behaviour

Gopniks are often seen wearing

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tracksuits, which were popularized by the

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Soviet team. While

sunflower seed A sunflower seed is a seed from a sunflower (''Helianthus annuus''). There are three types of commonly used sunflower seeds: linoleic (most common), high oleic, and sunflower oil seeds. Each variety has its own unique levels of monounsatura ...

s (colloquially �емкиor �емечки are a common snack in

and

, chewing ("cracking") them in public and spitting out the shells on the ground is characteristic of gopniks. A stereotypical image of a gopnik is one of being conservative, aggressive, homophobic, nationalist and racist, as well as holding strong anti-Western views. Gopniks are also stereotyped as being prone to

substance Substance may refer to: * Matter, anything that has mass and takes up space Chemistry * Chemical substance, a material with a definite chemical composition * Drug, a chemical agent affecting an organism Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ' ...

and

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crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definiti ...

and

hooliganism Hooliganism is disruptive or unlawful behavior such as rioting, bullying and vandalism, often in connection with crowds at sporting events. A hooligan is a person that engages in illicit reckless behaviors and is a public nuisance. Etymology ...

.Ханипов Р. «Гопники» – значение понятия, и элементы репрезентации субкультуры «гопников» в России // "Social Identities in Transforming Societies" It is claimed that the originators of the hardbass style of music initially intended it as a parody on the behavior of gopniks.

Squatting

Gopniks are often seen

squatting Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building (usually residential) that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there wer ...

(Russian slang terms for the position are "на кортах", ''na kortakh'', a truncation of "na kortochkakh", Russian for "squatting") or "doing the crab" ("на крабе", ''na krabe'')). It is described as a learned behavior, attributed to

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

and Soviet prison culture, which avoids sitting on the cold ground. This habit of squatting, known as "słowiański przykuc" is a new stereotype of Russians in Poland, gaining popularity in 2019, along with being drunk and speaking in ''

mat A mat is a hard or soft floor covering that generally is placed on a floor or other flat surface. Mats serve a range of purposes including: * serving to clean items passed over it, such as a doormat, which removes dirt from the soles of shoe ...

''. The "Slavic squat" or "Slav squat" was also popularized in the West in early 2010s.How the “Slav squat” became an internet sensation
''

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'', September 10, 2019

Notes

References

External links

* {{Commons category-inline, Gopnik Class-related slurs Criminal subcultures Culture of Russia Social class in Russia Culture of the Soviet Union Stereotypes of suburban people Stereotypes of the working class Working class in Europe Socioeconomic stereotypes Counterculture of the 1980s Russian counterculture of the 1990s Counterculture of the 2000s