From Craig Brown's "150 Glimpses of the Beatles."
Mikhail Safonov was a schoolboy in Leningrad when Soviet radio played ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ as an example of a capitalist song about the relentless pursuit of money.... but before the end of 1965 he had become caught up in a particularly perilous form of Beatlemania. He and his school friends would copy Beatles records and exchange them on the black market. All over the Soviet Union, young fans like Mikhail would write out Beatle lyrics and pass them around, learning English from them. The most rebellious liked to switch the names of Lenin and Lennon, even though discovery could cost them any hope of further education. One school staged and broadcast a show trial of the Beatles, with a prosecutor railing against them as ‘Bugs’. At the end of the trial they were found guilty, in their absence, of antisocial behaviour. But this verdict was set to backfire: ‘The more the state persecuted the Beatles,’ recalls Mikhail, ‘the more they exposed the falsehood and hypocrisy of Soviet ideology. And in attacking something the whole world had fallen in love with, they isolated themselves even more. It made us more doubtful that our beloved country was right after all.’
Mikhail’s nickname at school was ‘Ringo,’ because he aped his hairstyle. Having won a silver medal at school, he was obliged to go to the Palace of Culture to collect it, his banned Beatle hair glued down and parted with sugar and water to replicate an approved cut. But as he was leaving, a group of policemen spotted its true length and chastised him for being a long-haired deviant, setting him free only after he had shown them his silver medal.
As an adult, Mikhail became a senior researcher at the Institute of Russian History in St Petersburg. Looking back, he believes that ‘Beatlemania washed away the foundations of Soviet society … One could argue they did more for the destruction of totalitarianism in the USSR than Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov.’
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40 comments:
But they meant Dylan.
I-uh-I-I-uh-I-I dig a potato...
>>Putin, who told him that hearing the Beatles as a boy growing up in the Soviet Union was 'like a gulp of freedom.'<<
Even a good commie can only take so much Shostakovich.
Pathetic!
Mikhail Safonov was a schoolboy in Leningrad when Soviet radio played ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ as an example of a capitalist song about the relentless pursuit of money
You'd think this song would be a much better example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_awAH-JJx1k
Paul and Putin in Red Square, back in the USSR
The Beatles: more revolutionary and anti-revolutionary than Jesus.
My parents preferred ABBA... boys chasing girls chasing boys pro-life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Also, Boney M.
Frank Zappa was a huge symbol to Anti-Communists in the GDR.
Zappanale
There is also a memorial him in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Dylan made me think, but the Beatles made me happy. We were lucky to have 'em.
"And in attacking something the whole world had fallen in love with, they isolated themselves even more. It made us more doubtful that our beloved country was right after all.’ "
But it still took decades to overturn the system. What a nightmare.
"One school staged and broadcast a show trial of the Beatles, with a prosecutor railing against them as ‘Bugs’. At the end of the trial they were found guilty, in their absence, of antisocial behaviour."
Quit writing erotica AA.
The libs on this blog are all having simultaneous orgasms about the way things once were, and the way that they could be again...
Sounds like whichever group was biggest in West would have influenced Soviet youth. Happened to be Beatles. Of course they were biggest for a reason.
I orgasm easily.
"I orgasm easily."
That's what your mom told me.
Don't get it.
"Don't get it."
Of course you don't.
So the Soviets even beat us in discovering the Streisand effect.
Music can be liberating, esp if forbidden.
Like the Springsteen concert in East Berlin before the wall came down: Bruce when he engaged in some
International Diplomacy with an oppressed fraulein (at the 5:00 mark)
Disinformation was the one seamless transition from USSR to Russia. Putin would only tell McCartney what he wanted McCartney to tell others.
An American supermarket taught former president Gorbachev there is another life.
And the Beatles were channeling American blues, rock and roll, and country.
They used to get American records from the crews of ships that brought cotton to the mills of the Midlands from New Orleans and other ports, unloading at Liverpool.
Narr
American subversion!
Browndog, I think you're thinking of Yeltsin's unscheduled visit to that supermarket in Texas that convinced him that communism is a lie.
Tom Stoppard's Play "Rock 'N' Roll" about Prague in 1968 and the Plastic People of the Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plastic_People_of_the_Universe says much the same. He worked from those actually present in Czechoslovakia to script it. Westerners don't really understand what it was like, so we make up stories we like better.
Donatello Nobody said...
Browndog, I think you're thinking of Yeltsin's unscheduled visit to that supermarket in Texas that convinced him that communism is a lie.
Ah. Thanks for the correction.
Wait.
So Putin is cool again?
Biden can do anything. He’s so dreamy.
Like the Springsteen concert in East Berlin before the wall came down: Bruce when he engaged in some
International Diplomacy with an oppressed fraulein (at the 5:00 mark)
I'm reminded of the Scorpions song, and the fall of the Wall.
Pope John Paul II, Thatcher, Reagan....what a time to be alive.
I can imagine that Freedom infection from John, Paul, George and ringo, because they surely had that effect on me. I found them always joyfully loving on freedom-seeking women, touched by their tough choices, championing their courage. I could imagine it wasn't just a gagillion teeny bopper girls like me that heard that call for themselves.
and yeah, then there's dylan. like PM said, we were lucky to have them.
Yeah, the John Lennon Wall in Prague is a tourist must-see . . . though a lot of tourists must wonder, "What's the fuss?"
The famous pink tank was only about a half-mile from there.
Narr
What, you don't remember the pink tank?
One could argue they did more for the destruction of totalitarianism in the USSR than Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov
Sir James Paul McCartney......what else do I need to explain?
I think there were better results when Paul visited Antioch.
"Lenningrad girls really knock me out, they leave the west behind..."
Vladimir Putin is a lover of freedom...
...for Vladimir Putin.
Mikhail Safonov was a schoolboy in Leningrad when Soviet radio played ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ as an example of a capitalist song about the relentless pursuit of money
Yeah, I think Taxman kinda balances things a bit.
Let me tell you how it will be
There's one for you, nineteen for me
Cause I'm the taxman
Yeah, I'm the taxman
That's what your mom told me.
Roll up your sleeves, raise the Jolly Roger, and start slitting throats!!
Sean Connery lives!!
Back in the '70s, I was dating a girl from Moscow. he said there were two things the government couldn't prevent from coming into their country, Levi jeanss and Beatles albums.
McCartney: talented entertainer, gifted musician, 2nd best songwriter in his band, and a nitwit with the worst political instincts. Back in my hometown,'a jagoff'. In his hometown, ' a toff'.
Spot on, MadAsHell.
Althouse fails to explain how Beatles records were sometimes produced in the USSR by fans of the banned music. "Bone music" (roentgenizdat) are recordings pressed on discarded (or stolen) x-ray images. Many plastic materials were used to make records that could be played at least a few times before degrading.
The vinyl original, smuggled into Russia, was used to create copies, using a pantograph-style lathe that scored the music onto the xray film.
We will only mention the Solzhenitsyn samizdat written on toilet paper for ease of transport and difficulty of discovery. Travelers in the USSR routinely brought their own roll of TP along, as there were often shortages in hotels.
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