The USSR did its best to control culture and make it serve the needs of the state. However, culture, like life itself, finds a way of spreading, evolving, and surviving, often against all odds. Rock music had, by the 60s and 70s, become a cultural phenomenon in Europe and America and its spread to the […]

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. […]

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. […]

SRAS bought us concert tickets as part of our cultural program. It was an exciting opportunity to see modern Russian popular culture. I had never been to a rock concert before, and I especially had no idea what to expect of one in Russia. Our eager guide, Alina, told us that we’d be going to […]

Sergei Chigrakov (Сергей Чиграков, also called Chizh / Чиж) is a Soviet and Russian singer, songwriter, poet, and guitarist best known as founder and frontman of Chizh & Co (Чиж & Со). He has also participated in Different People (Разные люди), The Colonel and Fellow Soldiers (Полковник и Однополчане), and Shiva (Шива). Born to a […]

Lube (Любэ; also recognized as Ljube or Lyube) is a Russian rock band that formed in the Moscovian suburb Lyubertsy (Люберцы) in 1989. Contrary to the sugary-sweet style saturating pop music at the time, producer and songwriter Igor Matviyenko (Игорь Матвиенко) wanted to incorporate elements of rock, Russian folk music, and Soviet military songs with […]

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 […]