According to Robert A. Rothstein, this terminological fluidity: "reflects the fact that what makes a song blatnaia is more a question of style and tone than of literal content.
"Klezmer-blatnoi hybrids" continue to be performed today, such as the Yiddish satire "Mein Yihus" ("my elder brother is a card shark, my mother is a prostitute").
The relative relaxation of censorship, and loosening of social control during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras, gave rise to an illicit and underground second culture, of which blatnaya pesnya were an important part.
These songs were sung in homes and clandestine concerts, and secretly recorded and distributed in order to circumvent the backlash of political authorities (a practice known as magnitizdat).
[2] The repression under Stalin, as well as the experiences of many Soviet citizens in the gulags, led to a distinct form of blatnaya pesnya that depicted the terrors of this period while simultaneously mocking them.
Russian writer and dissident Andrei Sinyavsky (8 October 1925 – 25 February 1997) argued that blatnaya pesnya represented the true music of the Soviet people, where criminalization and imprisonment served as the only bond among citizens.
These songs, along with other banned cultural products, made their way back to the USSR via sailors and diplomats, and several performers based in New York City became émigré stars in Russia, including Mikhail Shufutinsky, Willi Tokarev[2] and Lyubov' Uspenskaya.
Several popular blatnaya pesnya are recognized as Odessa folklore, and have been recorded by numerous artists including Leonid Utyosov and Arkady Severny.
"Na Moldavanke muzyka igraet" ("Music is Playing in Moldavanka")—a reference to an historical part of Odessa—is also known as "Pesnia o Kol'ke-Shirmache" ("The Song About Kol'ka the Pickpocket") and dates from 1931 at the earliest.
[12] In this song, Kostia, the boss of the Odessa underworld, sends Mania to the labour camp at the White Sea–Baltic Canal in order to help Kol'ka escape.