Kino’s last concert (Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow)

Kino’s final concert roughly a month and half prior to frontman Viktor Tsoi’s tragic death in an automobile accident in August of 1990. The event took place at the Luzhniki sports arena in Moscow on June 24, 1990. The sold-out show was envisioned as the final celebratory event for the annual music festival of the Soviet newspaper Moscow Komsomol (Moskovskii Komsomolets) and is representative of the tremendous influence rock music was wielding both culturally and politically during the last years of Soviet rule. The recording is noteworthy as a document of Soviet rock music’s trajectory from an underground phenomenon to officially supported form of artistic expression. The concert footage contains numerous markers of Gorbachev’s glasnost policies somewhat clumsily and paradoxically coexisting with the Soviet regime. The footage shows Tsoi and his band at the very height of their popularity, as well as offering an unencumbered look at a country in transition. The concert shows a very visible and vaguely menacing Soviet police presence, whose job it is to ostensibly ensure the band’s protection while personifying the echoes of the Soviet surveillance state. Tsoi's performative demeanor suggests an understanding of his own cultural authority and wide-spanning influence, which is contrasted with the preemptively anachronistic presence of old-order law enforcement and officialdom at the open-air event.

On the political front, there is footage of fans waving both the red hammer and sickle banner to signify the might of the USSR, which coexists in the same crowd with the Russian tricolor flag, which in a matter of sixteen months would become the symbol of the averted government coup [3:47-4:00; 24:27]. To further highlight the extent of Kino’s popularity and Tsoi’s status as a nationally recognized rock hero, the Olympic flame is lit in honor of the concert, a first-time occurrence since the 1980 Olympic games [0:52]. Apart from the band itself, the Luzhniki footage also features key cultural figures: Natalia Razlogova, a fixture of the Soviet cinema community and Tsoi’s partner, and Kino’s manager, Yuri Aizenshpis, trailing the band with a handheld camcorder, who will later make an even larger fortune and name for himself for discovering and producing the post-Soviet pop sensation Dima Bilan.