Aleksandr Bashlachev (Александр Башлачёв), nicknamed SashBash (СашБаш, for Sasha, the common nickname for Aleksandr) was a Soviet/Russian singer-songwriter, poet, and bard, a popular performer in the Soviet underground circuit. Born in Cherepovets, Vologda oblast, Bashlachev went to school and university there and initially worked in metallurgy. He later moved to Sverdlovsk to study journalism but […]

Mikhail Boyarskiy (Михаил Сергеевич Боярский) is a Soviet and Russian actor and singer. Best known for his work on historical action-adventure films, Boyarsky rose to nationwide fame for his role of d’Artagnan in the 1978 Soviet adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers. He is also well known as a singer and became an Honored Artist […]

Larisa Dolina (Лариса Александровна Долина) is a celebrated Russian jazz singer, pop singer, and actress. In 1998 she was named a Folk Artist of Russia, and she is also a three-time recipient of the Russian National Ovation (Овация) prize. Dolina was born in 1955 in Baku, Azerbaijan, into a European family. By age three she […]

Igor Krutoy (Игорь Яковлевич Крутой) is a Ukrainian-born Russian composer, music producer, and promoter. He has been named a People’s Artist of Russia (Народный артист России) in 1996 and a People’s Artist of Ukraine (Народный артист Украина) in 2011. He publishes bands under his eponymously titled label. Born in 1954 in the city of Gaivoron […]

Svetlana Surganova (Светлана Яковлена Сурганова) is a Russian singer, musician, soloist, poet, and band leader most famous for her role in the Night Snipers (Ночные снайперы, 1993–2002) and as leader of the group Surganova and Orchestra (Сурганова и оркестр). Surganova, born in 1968, is originally from Leningrad and started to write songs at the age […]

Yulia Rutskaya (Юлия Руцкая) is a Russian-Kyrgyz pop singer, television host, and model who sings in Russian, Belarusian, and Kyrgyz. Originally from Vitebsk, Belarus, her family moved to Kyrgyzstan when she was five. She is a member of the significant Belarusian diaspora in Kyrgyzstan and has embraced her Kyrgyz side, singing in Kyrgyz at least […]

Vyacheslav Butusov (Вячеслав Бутусов) is a Russian rock singer who started during the Soviet period and has been known for many bands, among them the seminal Nautilus Pompilius (Наутилус Помпилиус), U-Piter (Ю-Питер), and his own solo work. Butusov was born in a village near Krasnoyarsk in 1961 and grew up in various cities all over […]

Katerina Golitsyna (originally Yakovleva; Катерина Голицына/Яковлева) is a Russian shanson singer. An ethnic Kuban Cossack, she was born in Omsk, a large Siberian city, but the family soon returned to their roots in the Russian Caucasus and then moved on again to Moscow. Golitsyna started playing music almost as soon as they got there, when […]

Mikhail Shufutinsky (Михаил Шуфутинский) is a Russian jazz and shanson legend. Growing up in postwar Moscow, he was drawn to music from his early childhood, learning to play the accordion—which was considered a “bourgeois” instrument in that Soviet era. He switched to the similar button accordion (баян), which he was able to learn at school […]