Russian

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 […]

Nashe Radio plays popular music that isn’t quite “pop.” What’s big in Russian-language rock, rap, punk, R&B, and alternative? Nashe Radio’s all-Russian and eclectic playlist 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.   1. […]

Cargo 200 (Груз 200) is a 2007 Russian thriller based on a true story. It was written and directed by Sergey Balabanov (Сергей Балабанов, who is most famous for the Brother (Брат) films. Cargo 200 takes place mainly in two villages, Nizhniy Volok and Leninsk, with some later action occurring in St. Petersburg, in 1984. […]

Kandahar (Кандагар; called The Crew in its English-language release) is a 2010 Russian drama. It takes place in 1995, unsurprisingly in Kandahar, a city in Afghanistan, several years after the withdrawal of Soviet troops after the end of the Soviet–Afghan War. The film is based on true events—the Airstan Incident. The film hewed pretty closely […]

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 […]

U-Piter (Ю-Питер) is a Russian rock band formed in 2001 by Vyacheslav Butusov (Вячеслав Бутусов), who is best known for the popular Soviet rock band Nautilus Pompilius (Наутилус Помпилиус). The band usually writes their name in the Greek alphabet, to cement their connection to the god Jupiter (… who is Roman, but the point still […]

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 […]