A catchy trib­ute to mid-cen­tu­ry Sovi­et hip­sters popped up a few years back in a song called “Stilya­gi” by lo-fi L.A. hip­sters Puro Instinct. The lyrics tell of a charis­mat­ic dude who impress­es “all the girls in the neigh­bor­hood” with his “mag­ni­tiz­dat” and gui­tar. Wait, his what? His mag­ni­tiz­dat, man! Like samiz­dat, or under­ground press, mag­ni­tiz­dat—from the words for “tape recorder” and “publishing”—kept Sovi­et youth in the know with sur­rep­ti­tious record­ings of pop music. Stilya­gi (a post-war sub­cul­ture that copied its style from Hol­ly­wood movies and Amer­i­can jazz and rock and roll) made and dis­trib­uted con­tra­band music in the Sovi­et Union. But, as an NPR piece informs us, “before the avail­abil­i­ty of the tape recorder and dur­ing the 1950s, when vinyl was scarce, inge­nious Rus­sians began record­ing banned boot­leg jazz, boo­gie woo­gie and rock ‘n’ roll on exposed X‑ray film sal­vaged from hos­pi­tal waste bins and archives.” See one such X‑ray “record” above, and see here the fas­ci­nat­ing process dra­ma­tized in the first scene of a 2008 Russ­ian musi­cal titled, of course, Stilya­gi (trans­lat­ed into …