It wasn’t tuneful, but it was memorable. I was chairing a conference about `Empire”‘ in Sweden and on the final evening I got bored with the official entertainment and suggested a sing-song. These are ...

A portrait film of the Soviet popular music. Popular performers and composers talk about their work. The film includes, both on the screen and behind it, the songs “A Song Is Going in a Circle”, “A ...

They don’t know the words. They don’t speak Russian. Still, millions of TikTok users keep hitting replay on a 1938 Soviet song about a girl on a riverbank. “Katyusha” arrived on the platform not as a ...

In the late 1970s, Central Asia could seem to some like just another stagnating Soviet backwater. News of the day praised economic achievements that weren't real — just as local communist leaders ...

Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktronica, Uyghur Rock & Crimean Tatar Jazz from 1980s Soviet Central Asia is out now through Ostinato Records. By Katie Bain The former USSR might ...

A pro-Kremlin lawmaker spawned a tsunami of scorn in Russia this week by alleging that Soviet rock star Viktor Tsoi's Perestroika-era anthems were composed by CIA operatives trying to destabilize the ...

Three weeks into Russia’s war against Ukraine, the chorus and orchestra at Odesa’s opera house gathered outside the building to send a message to fellow Ukrainians, to the Russians and to the rest of ...