The Komsomol and Punk Rock

Gee, I would have thought that Krokus singing “Eat the Rich” would have been thoroughly endorsed by the Komsomol …

or not.

Some of these groups were hopelessly out of date in 1985. Kiss and Village People, for example. I think western pop culture made it through the Iron Curtain, albeit slowly. Many of these musicians were well past their prime, and the heavy metal bands such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, AC/DC, and Krokus all peaked in Western Europe and Japan in the early 80s, before they became popular in the US.

I’m surprised The Scorpions didn’t make this list, actually. I guess the album “Virgin Killers” with its infamous cover weren’t graphic or violent enough.

The Scorpions are there. #16. They were condemned for violence. Overall, you are right, the penetration was slow, but rock and punk are always conducive to revival. Just look at all the Ramones t-shirts nowadays. And Joey is dead!

This reminded me how I ran a disco in mid 80-s in Moscow. It was already Gorbachev’s time so the dictate was loosening. A woman from the local raikom paid us a visit and demanded our playlists to be delivered to her for approval, indicating that 80% of our repertoire must be Soviet music.

We basically ignored her and never heard from her again, maybe because the disco did not last long.

As for the list, do not forget the origin. Moscow and Leningrad were quite quick to get the latest, Nikolaev would not be. Also, remember that in the West concert tours were huge promotional vehicles, while all this oozed into the USSR as contraband records and existed mostly in tapes (a record would cost about $40 at what much later became Gorbushka).

As for Komsomol leaders on obkom or even raikom level, most of them were not of Komsomol age, but rather already Party apparatchiks. What young rank and file Komsomol members new quite well – the Western music, the 35+ party ideologues did not.

I always wondered who and how decided what to bootleg and publish in the USSR. For example, the first “singles” (33 but the size of 45) were of CCR of all bands. Then a couple of Beatles, T.Rex, Swift and Rolling Stones. Only names of artists were on these discs – Fogerty, Lennon, Bolan, Jagger… All of these were published by Melodia and since USSR only signed the copyright convention in 1973 – all that was released prior to 73 was fair game. At least that is what someone from Melodia explained to me much later.

Correction – 40 roubles of course, about $10 by then official exchange rate of 4/1

Sean, if you want to learn more about what young people were listening to in the USSR in the 1970s and the 1980s, I recommend Miroslav Nemirov’s notes on russ.ru (“??? ? ??????”) and his LJ, nemiroff.livejournal.com .

Ahhh, you are right … Scorpions are right there, I just missed them. The code is confusing … I know how blogger can lock up when code errors appear also, can be a pain to edit it later.

Cyrill – You mean you dont know it was all the CIA selecting the music to smuggle across the Iron Curtain to corrupt innocent Soviet youths? I’m shocked … shocked I tell you! CCR sings about smoking the devil-weed marijuana! What did you think they were “rolling” on the river anyway? Big fat doobies, that’s what!

(obviously joking, although I am sure both the CIA and KGB explored such things)

Gee, I thought all that Soviets listened to in the 70s was Alla Pugacheva. Actually that Miroslav Nemirov’s LJ sounds promising

I just realized the code was all fucked up. I use Firefox and it looked fine. IE didn’t translate the code well. Anyway, I’ve fixed it, but now there is a huge white space that I can’t get rid of. Blogger sucks. I gotta find a way to switch to Wordpress.

Dee Dee’s dead too. So’s Tommy.

This list wouldn’t surprise me coming out in ‘85. The authorities are always the last to catch on to what the kids think is all right. I never really thought Tipper Gore was up with the music scene in her hey-day of condemnation.

What’s interesting is how Putin’s government has made an effort to reach out to Russian rock and roll bands as an effort to woo the youth towards their government.

No doubt Doug. I couldn’t help being reminded of Tipper Gore and that Congressional hearing Frank Zappa and Dee Snider testified at.

Governments using rock to attract youths is an interesting and recent development. I was surprised to learn how many Christian groups are using punk and hip-hop.

How Putin is using rock is worthy of further investigation.

Yes, indeed. I know Surkov did some work to form relationships between bands like Zemfira and Splin and several others last year, but most folks are pretty tight-lipped about it. But Zemfira did rock out for Nashi, so who knows…

I actually read a book recently about the life of Dean Reed, the American who was co-opted by the Soviet authorities to reach the youth and seem “hip”. The book itself wasn’t very good unfortunately, but the story was intruiging. You got the sense though that the Soviet’s putting forth Dean Reed was analogous to them thinking Donna Summer was cool in 1985, “erotizm” aside. i.e fairly out of touch. Politicians are getting more savvy in this department and it seems like its time has come, although I don’t know whether that speaks well of the idea or ill of the times.

Alexei, thanks for the links. Very interesting.

This was a very interesting post. It is fun to think about WHO in the Soviet Union sat and LISTENED to this music to decide how dangerous they were?!?

Thanks for the interest in the book (I’d be curious to hear comments/questions) and in the Komsomol list of the rock bands to control. Since you did not find the original Novaya Gazeta publication of this list (which I used in the book) here is the link to that article in their archive (the document is provided at the very bottom): http://2003.novayagazeta.ru/nomer/2003/45n/n45n-s27.shtml

Good luck

Alexei Yurchak