On Saturday Night Live, Wayne Campbell famously said: ‘the best thing about the collapse of the Soviet Union is that there would be ‘no more cheesy behind-the-iron-curtain metal bands like Gorky Park.’

Still the only ‘Soviet’ bands most Westerners can name are probably Gorky Park and the Leningrad Cowboys. Both were packaged with kitch Soviet-look logos and record sleeves. The Leningrad Cowboys cultivated the air of time-warp East Block hippies. Their slogan was ‘Make Tractors Not War‘ and they even had the Red Army Choir on backing vocals.

The funny part was that the Cowboys were actually Finnish and their ‘Total Balalaika Show‘ a total spoof. Gorky Park was the first real Russian band to ever make it on to MTV.

If it took until the late eighties to hear real Russian bands, it’s not surprising. Although groups had been around in the sixties, mostly playing covers of the Beatles, there wasn’t much of a recording industry in Russia at the time. Actually, that’s an understatement.

There were just six record pressing plants in the whole Soviet Empire. Instead of glossy photographic sleeves, LPs mostly came in plain cardboard factory wrap. Early Western vinyl albums were copied on to X-Ray film, then smuggled into Russia - later to be distributed ‘underground’ by fans on home-made audio cassettes. Bands risked jail by selling their recordings in this way. Even Western guitars were difficult to obtain in Russia until 1991. Before starting a band, you had to build your own Fender.

Many groups were forced to make their own instruments or purchase copies produced by unofficial manufacturers. One of these in 1969 managed to publish in a popular mechanical magazine a technique of converting an acoustic guitar into an electric one using a telephone voice coil, and shortly therafter there were reportedly no functioning public telephones in all of Moscow. Such activities only called more attention to the growing youth cultural trends, and caused the Soviet officials to call for anti-rock action.

The good groups were underground too. Especially once Chernenko placed a ban on playing and listening to rock & roll. Chernenko said: ‘Rock music, along with other elements of Western culture, is part of an arsenal of subversive weapons aimed at undermining the commitment of young Russians to Communist ideology.’

Probably the King of Russian Rock was Boris Grebenshikov, who founded the still-playing Aquarium. Mashina Vremeni was another band to come out of the Soviet seventies, while the Eighties were best remembered for the groups DDT from Ufa and Leningrad’s Kino. Kino’s lead singer, Victor Tsoi, inspired many following artists - including the legendary Igor Talkov. With the exception of Mashina Vremeni, all these bands featured lyrics with a distinctly dissident flavour. More about these icons here at Soviet record collector Denis’ page.

Still today we probably only get to hear Russian artists who record occasionally in English, like Tatu, but there are so many good groups around now. Gorky Park’s lead singer, Nikolai Noskov, went on to make one of the best solo albums anywhere of 2002: Dichu Tichinoi. (Though it isn’t exactly rock.)

You can always set your Internet dial to a station like Radio Baltik to sample the current scene.

..Now Playing. A-Studio ‘Ulitsayu’ (2005)