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Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands from the USSR

Starting in 1984, aspiring American rock singer Joanna Stingray (1960-) began smuggling recording equipment into Leningrad's rock community, orchestrating the first-ever Western release of Soviet rock music—the double album Red Wave (1986).

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Sergei Solovyov’s film “Assa,” 1987

The finale of Sergei Solovyov’s (1944-2021) film 1987 film ASSA features rock star Viktor Tsoi (1962-1990) performing his hit "Changes! [Peremen]" to a stadium crowd. The film’s record-breaking commercial success marked the moment when Soviet rock music transitioned from counterculture to mainstream. 

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Rashid Nugmanov’s documentary film “Yahha,” 1986

Kazakh film director Rashid Nugmanov's (1954-) final project for Sergei Solovyov’s (1944-2021) workshop at VGIK—the Moscow-based film school known in English as the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography—included some of the first film footage of everyday life in the Leningrad rock music scene. 

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Last issue of the samizdat “Roksi” magazine, 1990

The final print issue of the Leningrad-based samizdat rock journal Roksi, founded in 1977 by members of the rock band Aquarium and the future president of the Leningrad Rock Club (LRC). Considered the first rock publication in the Soviet Union, and subject to raids by the KGB, Roksi eventually became the official newsletter of the LRC—thus attaining legitimization by the state apparatus.

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Leningrad Rock Club at 13 Rubinshteyna Street, Leningrad/ St Petersburg.

This St. Petersburg graffiti wall, which commemorated the Leningrad Rock Club, survived for two decades until its 2010 erasure by the building’s new owners.

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