In the late 1980s, Viktor Tsoi and KINO captured and advanced the spirit of perestroika and the hope of a new Russia emerging from the wreckage of the USSR.
While it was not an overtly political band, as the Russian music critic Artemy Troitskii contends, KINO’s lyrics, music, and style reflected individualism, freedom from state control, and shared globalism.
And the band was certainly anti-war, with many songs about the soldier experience in Afghanistan in their stadium-filling repertoire.
Many have asked what Tsoi, who died in 1990, would have said about Russia’s War on Ukraine. Other famous musicians of that era, including Boris Grebenshikov, Yuri Shevchuk, and Andrey Makarevich, as well as Alla Pugacheva, have all left Russia and spoken out against Vladimir Putin and his “special military operation.”
Given KINO’s enduring popularity and its songs demanding change and decrying the insanity and brutality of war, one could imagine the Kremlin wanting it to fade away too.
But its music not only lives on; the state is actively promoting it.
Pro-war correspondent Mariana Naumova has produced several videos on Tsoi, including a visit to his snowy gravesite, and the three surviving band members have reunited to play live shows across Russia, broadcast on national television. They perform with recordings of Tsoi’s voice dubbed in and a gigantic video screen showing the singer and his band’s videos.
On June 21, they performed at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, the site of one of their most memorable concerts, when they played a televised show in front of thousands of fans in 1990, just weeks before Tsoi’s death in a car crash.
Why is Putin’s regime actively encouraging Russians to love and embrace KINO as a national treasure, rather than banning it like other artists for its anti-war positions and lack of patriotism?
First, the band is being presented without reference to its politics. For example, at the Luzhniki concert, the video graphics accompanying the potentially charged topics of “War” and “Changes” were Tsoi-inspired artistic representations that appeared intentionally amorphous and disconnected from reality.
It seemed to be geared less at recruiting people for the war in Ukraine than at numbing them against its effects. The audience sang along and swayed with raised lighters without the energy or conviction of the 1980s concerts.
This was not a crowd that was going to head from the show straight to the barricades.
Second, the Kremlin is seeking to associate itself with the band’s popularity, especially among middle-aged professionals for whom KINO was a vital part of their coming of age.
The regime is playing not so much to Soviet nostalgia, but to youthful optimism and cultural pride in Russia. Tsoi and Kremlin propaganda chief Sergey Kirienko were born one month apart in 1962, and Kirienko will almost certainly have been a KINO fan in his earlier years, or at least will have positive memories of their music.
At the same time, Putin’s regime is mainly about control. With other late Perestroika cult bands such as Akvarium, Mashina Vremini, and DDT off-limits for political reasons, KINO’s popularity can be managed.
While the band once represented change and hope, today the regime allows KINO to play so society won’t demand change. And, with Tsoi long dead, there is no risk of him speaking out to contradict them.
Matt London was an exchange student in Moscow in 1989. Since then, he has worked for NGOs, the US Government, and private businesses connected to Russia and the Former Soviet Union. He is currently affiliated with Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
