A plea from “Beatleologist” Kolia Vasin

In April 1992, the self-described “Beatleologist” Kolia Vasin (1945-2018), a major personality in, and driver behind, Leningrad's rock music community, typed up a petition addressed to the “entrepreneurs, officials, and thinkers” of St. Petersburg. The document, stamped with an official-looking seal, exhorted the city’s leadership to “take part in the defining spiritual event of our era” by sponsoring the creation of a “John Lennon Temple of Rock-n-Roll” (Khram Rok-n-rolla imeni Dzhona Lennona).

 

Vasin considered himself the official Soviet historian of the British pop-rock band The Beatles (1960-1970), and was, in fact, responsible for popularizing “The Fab Four” in the USSR. An avid collector of Beatles memorabilia, he promoted their music in Russia in many ways, including by translating their song lyrics into Russian for Leningrad’s underground rock musicians. As a self-proclaimed Soviet hippie, Beatles fan, and vocal pacifist, Vasin had long dreamed of a temple to John Lennon. He believed that The Beatles, and Lennon specifically, were akin to deities who had massively influenced Soviet society by inspiring the underground rock music movement. Perestroika itself, Vasin maintained, had only become possible through the intercession of The Beatles and Russian rock-and-roll. 

 

Emboldened by the surge of new religious ideas and organizations flooding Russia immediately following the collapse of the USSR, Vasin decided that the budding free-market economy and the newfound freedoms of religious expression made for an opportune time to solicit support for his temple. The extravagant wording of Vasin’s petition sends up official Soviet language, infusing with elements of stiob an entirely earnest appeal that forms the core of his life’s work. The activist’s commitment to Soviet hippie culture is evident in the temple’s heart-shaped stamp, with its peace sign and reference to the Beatles’ anthem “All You Need Is Love” (1967). 

 

Unfortunately, Vasin’s dream never came to full fruition, despite a mural and plaque dedicated to the temple being installed at the Pushkinskaya 10 Art Center in St. Petersburg. It was at this location, which had also housed an influential underground artist squat, that Vasin placed his Beatles Museum. It remained there until Vasin’s apparent suicide in 2018, and has since relocated to Ligovsky prospekt 53 as “Kolia Vasin’s Beatles Museum.” Vasin’s suicide note read, in part, “It’s impossible to live in a country where nobody supports a Temple to John Lennon.”