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Moscow Can't Stop the Music: The Kremlin is trying to suppress songs that defy Putin's rule. It isn't working.
From The Atlantic today:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/09/russia-banned-music-putin/684396/
Archive: https://archive.ph/XYF0o
-snip-
Putin’s regime is more aggressive. In August, FSB officers arrested the 37-year-old punk musician Vladimir Bolobolov, who has said that he was beaten and tortured. Authorities have accused him of storing explosives, but he insists that he was framed. Several weeks ago, law enforcement accused Aglaya Tarasova, a 31-year-old television and film star who has spoken out against the war, of smuggling 0.4 grams of hashish into Russia. A Moscow court has ruled that the actor can’t leave her home at night or use communication devices for more than a month.
Because of the Kremlin’s escalating repression, some musicians who still live in Russia keep a low profile. I recently heard a song written by an artist whose fans don’t publicize his music out of fear that the regime will imprison him; someone had to send it to me on Telegram, because it wasn’t available on YouTube. Russia’s war, he sings, has left Russians “as black as coal.”
Earlier this month, Alla Pugacheva, Russia’s most famous pop star, condemned the regime in a nearly four-hour interview with a popular Russian journalist. Pugacheva, who left the country in 2022, used the occasion to address Putin about the war: “Just end it.” More than 20 million people have watched it on YouTube. “To tell your homeland it is wrong, that is patriotism,” she said.
Yuriy Shevchuk, the now-68-year-old front man for a rock group the KGB banned in 1980, has been similarly outspoken. In the early days of the war, he told a stadium full of fans: “Motherland, my friends, is not the president’s ass that somebody has to constantly lick and kiss. It is a poor grandma selling potatoes at the railway station. That is your motherland.” He was fined 50,000 rubles (about $800 at the time) for “discrediting the army,” and some veterans called for the government to designate him as a foreign agent.
-snip-
Putin’s regime is more aggressive. In August, FSB officers arrested the 37-year-old punk musician Vladimir Bolobolov, who has said that he was beaten and tortured. Authorities have accused him of storing explosives, but he insists that he was framed. Several weeks ago, law enforcement accused Aglaya Tarasova, a 31-year-old television and film star who has spoken out against the war, of smuggling 0.4 grams of hashish into Russia. A Moscow court has ruled that the actor can’t leave her home at night or use communication devices for more than a month.
Because of the Kremlin’s escalating repression, some musicians who still live in Russia keep a low profile. I recently heard a song written by an artist whose fans don’t publicize his music out of fear that the regime will imprison him; someone had to send it to me on Telegram, because it wasn’t available on YouTube. Russia’s war, he sings, has left Russians “as black as coal.”
Earlier this month, Alla Pugacheva, Russia’s most famous pop star, condemned the regime in a nearly four-hour interview with a popular Russian journalist. Pugacheva, who left the country in 2022, used the occasion to address Putin about the war: “Just end it.” More than 20 million people have watched it on YouTube. “To tell your homeland it is wrong, that is patriotism,” she said.
Yuriy Shevchuk, the now-68-year-old front man for a rock group the KGB banned in 1980, has been similarly outspoken. In the early days of the war, he told a stadium full of fans: “Motherland, my friends, is not the president’s ass that somebody has to constantly lick and kiss. It is a poor grandma selling potatoes at the railway station. That is your motherland.” He was fined 50,000 rubles (about $800 at the time) for “discrediting the army,” and some veterans called for the government to designate him as a foreign agent.
-snip-
Much more at the links above.
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