Roksi Music Journal (Samizdat) (Vol. 15, 1990.)

From the 1970s through the 1990s, Russia and the former Soviet had a flourishing industry of privately circulated underground music journalism, which ranged stylistically, geographically, and ideologically. The present artifact is the final print issue of the Leningrad-based samizdat rock journal Roksi, which was founded in 1977 by members of the rock band Aquarium and the future president of the Leningrad Rock Club. Considered to be the first rock publication in the Soviet Union, which was subject to raids by the KGB, Roksi eventually became the official newsletter of the LRC, and thus legitimized by the state apparatus. The publication was highly influential and spawned dozens of samizdat rock magazines across the USSR, that sought to stylistically and ideologically expand on Roksi’s model, which by the 1990s was deemed by competing rock editors to be conservative in its scope and content. The structure of the journal follows a standard format of letters from the editor, reviews of concerts, interviews with musicians, album reviews, works of fiction, travel journalism, and reports regarding rock club governance. One of the most notable aspects of issue 15 is that it fully reflects the sociopolitical and economic changes of the late-Soviet period. The letter to the editor mentions grappling with a profit-driven model of music production and promotion, and veteran rock stars Andrei Makarevich (Mashina Vremeni) and Boris Grebenshchikov (Aquarium) discuss their respective US tours and the experience of working and living in a heretofore unattainable America. The issue lacks the journal’s characteristic cohesion and reads as symptomatic of the larger cultural shifts underway within the country, which ultimately pushed the publication out of print.