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Sergei Kuryokhin and Pop-Mekhanika on TV's "Musical Ring"

Making its debut in 1984, Musical Ring was a Perestroika-era Soviet television program, dedicated to showcasing new musical talent and fostering a live audience Q&A. This 1987 segment features composer and avant-garde jazz pianist Sergei Kuryokhin and his band Pop Mekhanika. Throughout the episode Kuryokhin artfully wields the postmodern rhetorical weapon of styob, imbuing formal musical discourse with farce, an artistic and communicative device that became one a defining mode of expression during perestroika and the early post-Soviet period.

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Rok Protiv Terrora Music Festival. April 6, 1991, Moscow.

A not-for-profit charitable concert that took place at Moscow's Kryl'ia Sovetov Stadium on April 6, 1991, concieved by the Garik Sukachev, the leader of the rock band Brigada S. Intially the event was meant to be an act of protest against police brutality, but grew to include all forms of state organized terror: political, social, and moral. The festival received organizational support from VID, Komsomolskaya Pravda and the Fili Cultural Center. Fourteen Soviet rock bands took part in the festival.

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Lyube performing "Atas" during a televised concert on January 1, 1990

The rock band, which Vladimir Putin would later count as among his "favorites," performing on late-Soviet television on the cusp of rock stardom.

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The World Made of Plastic Has Won

Egor Letov performs his song “Moia oborona” (My defense), during his “concert in the hero city Leningrad,” part of Grazhdanskaia oborona’s 1994 tour Russkii proryv (Russian breakthrough).

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Let's Go To War!

The model, writer, singer, and TV personality Natalia Medvedeva (Limonov’s third wife) performs her song “Poedem na voinu!” (Let’s go to war!), a countercultural hymn romanticizing war, violence, and rebellion.

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Mumiy Troll's Breakthrough “Utekai (Take Off)" Becomes the 1997 Song of the Year

Mumiy Troll’s 1997 breakthrough song “Utekai” (Take off) displayed the combination of surrealism, dark humor, and provincial romanticism that defined the band’s trademark style.

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