Russian

Russkoe Radio plays pop music exclusively in Russian. What’s big in Russian-language pop and dance music? Russkoe Radio’s pop playlists can tell you. Once a month, SRAS provides a snapshot of what’s at the top of their charts, with YouTube videos and links to our Russian music site. Here is their lineup from July 28, […]

The Leningrad Rock Club (Ленинградский рок-клуб) was the first legal rock-club in Leningrad, formed in 1981 under Leonid Brezhnev. Located in the city center, the LRC inspired similar clubs across Russia, most notably in Moscow and Sverdlovsk. None, however, rivaled the success of the original, perhaps due to its proximity to Finland and easier access […]

Neuromonakh Feofan (Нейромонах Феофан) is a mysterious and extraordinary product of the Russian club scene. The name “Neuromonakh” is derived from “Neurofunk,” a subgenre of drum and bass, and the Russian word for “monk.” The band sings exclusively in Russian, but mixes contemporary language with obsolete words and Old Church Slavonic to create epic verses […]

Bitva Extrasenov (Битва Экстрасенсов), Battle of the Psychics, is a Russian-language TNT (ТНТ) TV show based on Britain’s Psychic Challenge. Running since 2007, the show reached peak popularity in November 2013 with a season dedicated to the death of Vladislav Listyev (Владислав Листев), a Soviet TV personality and journalist killed by two unknown assailants in […]

The Zolotoi Gramofon (Золотой Граммофон, lit. “Golden Gramophone”) is one of the most important music award ceremonies in Russia. It was established in 1995 by Russkoe Radio, a Moscow radio station that specializes in Russian pop music. The awards were then attached to a the Russian Hill (Русская Горка) radio show, which aired the 12 […]

Гостья из будущего (Guests From the Future) is a five-part children’s science fiction television mini-series from 1985. Based on Kir Bulychev’s popular 1978 children’s book One Hundred Years Ahead, Guests from the Future became an instant classic. Produced by the prestigious Gorky Film Studio, the show featured, for its time, convincing sets depicting the far […]

Prisoner of the Mountains (Кавказский пленник) is a 1996 film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1872 war novella “Prisoner of the Caucasus.” Directed by Sergei Bodrov (Сергей Бодров) and starring Oleg Menshikov (Олег Меньшиков), Sergei Bodrov, Jr. (Сергей Сергеевич Бодров), Dzhemal Sikharulidze (Джемал Сихарулидзе), and Susanna Mekhralieva (Сусанна Мехралиева), the film was nominated for an Academy […]

Nashestvie (Нашествие), or “Invasion,” is an annual Russian rock music festival held over a three-day weekend in the first half of July. Since launching in 1999, Nashestvie has become one of the largest open-air music festivals in Russia with a record 205,000 in attendance during the 2016 season. The first Nashestvie was organized by Nashe […]