The Hatters are a gypsy-folk rock band that was started in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2016. The five main members of the band include: Yuri Muzychenko, Pavel Lichadeev, Alexander “Kikir” Anisimov, Dmitry Vecherinin, and Anna Muzychenko. The group of musicians officially formed their band in 2016 when they released their first song, “Russian Style” online. […]

The brief list of online resources has been compiled for those interested in understanding late-Soviet music movements, particularly for rock and punk movements of Leningrad.   I. Resources in English   A. Lecture on Russian punk In the above virtual lecture, Brandeis University PhD candidate and writer Alexander Herbert explores themes detailed in his book […]

Starting in the late 1970s, Leningrad’s rock scene introduced a new wave of western culture to the Soviet public. For some, this wave was a dangerous cultural phenomenon that went against Party norms, but by Perestroika, Soviet rock was well established and had captivated and inspired young listeners. It also created a new sphere of […]

Late-Soviet Siberia fell in love with punk. While rock bands like Kino and Alisa were making waves in Leningrad, the major industrial and scientific centers of Central Russia produced an underground punk genre that grasped audiences in the USSR and post-soviet diaspora. The cities of Tyumen, Omsk, and Novosibirsk were the centers of this movement. […]

Noll (“Ноль,” meaning “Zero” in Russian) is a Soviet and Russian rock group founded by accordionist “Uncle” Fedor Chistyakov (“Дядя” Фёдор Чистяков), Alexei Nikolaev (Алексей Николаев) and Anatoly Platonov (Анатолий Платонов) in the fall of 1985. The group first appeared at the Leningrad Rock Club with songs from their first album, Music of Fighting Flies […]

Automatic Pleasurers (Автоматические удовлетворители) was a seminal Russian punk rock band. Though the band was active for some 19 years, they never released an official album or single during that time. The group had a fluid membership, serving more as a music club with dozens of musicians than a band in the traditional sense. Several prominent Russian […]

Grazhdanskaya Oborona (Гражданская Оборона; translates as “civil defense”), also known as GrOb (ГрОб, “coffin” in Russian), was one of Russia’s earliest and most influential punk bands. Their earlier work is very minimalist, lo-fi punk rock, while the group began to verge toward noise rock and finally shoegaze in the 1990s. The band’s frontman, the poet […]

Last Tanks in Paris (Последние Танки в Париже, or П. Т. В. П.) is a Russian post-punk band originally from Vyborg, near Saint Petersburg. The band plays a style of music heavily influenced by bands like Joy Division, and has come to be known for their outspoken political views. They have taken a strong stance […]

And My Friend the Truck… (И Друг мой Грузовик…)is a Ukrainian indie rock band who sing almost exclusively in Russian. They are noted for their minimalist instrumentation, consisting of only drums, bass, and vocals.  The band was formed initially in 1997 as Me and My Friend the Truck (Я и Друг Мой Грузовик) for a […]