Leningrad Rock Club

Serving as a counterexample to Tsoi’s Wall on Arbat Street, the Leningrad Rock Club (1981-1991) remained a cultural landmark in St. Petersburg for roughly twenty years after its closing. Located in the former Theatre of People’s Art (Teatr Narodnogo Tvorchestva) at 13 Rubinshteyna Street in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), a prominent wall of graffiti adorned the club’s back entrance in the courtyard of the building. The wall featured an array of self-replicating inscriptions dedicated to USSR's most revered rock-music collectives for most of the nineties and early 2000s. When the wall was painted over in 2010 by the building’s new proprietor, the loss of the wall and public access to the venue itself, caused an outcry from both rock fans and the many surviving musicians from the Soviet era, who sought to preserve the LRC's legacy and designate the wall and the building a historical landmark. After years of lobbying, a memorial plaque to mark LRC’s location is currently being developed by activist groups and municipal authorities in St. Petersburg, serving as a reminder that even under the conditions of a market economy, a symbiotic working relationship between the rock music community and the city’s officials persists to this day.