Rock&Roll takes off in Soviet Russia among the youth in the early 1970’s

Rock Goes Red

It did not take long for rock and roll culture to begin to permeate the Iron Curtain. The 1960’s spawned the era of rock with the advent of some of the most influential bands, such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, producing some of the most famous music in modern history. The west was producing great bands and great music, exporting yet another form of cultural imperialism around the world, but the west was not the only place where rock and roll gained momentum and popularity. Behind the Iron Curtain the youth of Soviet Russia began to party, and not in the communist way, pioneering yet another underground movement that put rock in full swing by the 1970’s in Russia.

Rock music was very similar to other forms of western influence in the Soviet Union. The Soviet party did not allow for the distribution of records, airing of songs, or performance of any of the music that was becoming so popular in the west. Rock and roll became popular and proliferated through the country the same way that most other illegal things did, such as American blue jeans, secretly, and underground. Although the state controlled record label and largest controller of music, Melodiya, did eventually allow some hits to air and be sold on record, the hunger for more music was already set in motion and Russian bands began forming across the country.

Beatles album distributed by Melodiya. The record label is still alive today.
http://melody.su/en/

Early music emulated the sound of their western originators and found success in the underground scene by primarily performing rock and roll covers of popular western music, undoubtedly the performers were blue jean Levi clad and away from the prying eyes of officials. The first band to eventually popularize and champion true Russian rock would be a Moscow based group named “Mashina Vremeni“, or Time Machine, in the 1970’s. Rock was not allowed to be performed publicly, and bands did not receive permission from the state to participate in festivals or concert series for quite sometime. Not until the 1973 did Russian rock make it’s first actual appearance by official channels. The song “My Address is the Soviet Union” was a break through, overly patriotic song, that made Soviet approval while maintaining the rhythm and sound of early western rock. Shortly after, rock bands were allowed to perform under the state approved category of VIA (Vocal-Instrumental Assembles), a title less offensive and less western than Rock and Roll.

So what is the big deal? Why should anyone care about rock and roll invading Soviet Russia? The issue was never necessarily the music itself, but rather the message that rock and roll carried. Rock wasn’t an all age phenomenon in the west either, largely championed by the younger generation, but Soviet’s saw rock as yet another conduit towards the rebellion and materialism that they categorized as their capitalist western counterparts. However, Russian rock was actually unique and should be considered a source of national pride. Elsewhere in Europe, rock was considered an English language phenomenon and was reproduced, written, and created primarily in English. Russian rock took the lead in producing the genre in their own language, with a message for their own people.

Russian rock breaks out and hits the west later on in the 1980’s, carrying with it an organic sound that is unique and completely their own.

Early Russian Rocker sporting a Fender Stratocaster prototype guitar featuring three pickups, 6 strings, but with no whammy bar installed, or electricity invented yet for the amplifier

*** Side note, Time Machine actually sounds pretty good. Kind of like a Russian version of The Beatles…kind of. Here’s a Youtube link to one of my new favorite songs.

Works Cited

http://soviethistory.macalester.edu/index.php?page=subject&show=music&SubjectID=1973rock&Year=1973&navi=byYear

http://soviethistory.macalester.edu/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1973rock&Year=1973

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_rock#The_late_1960s_and_1970s:_First_signs

http://www.russia-ic.com/culture_art/music/380/#.VGlKMvkc60E

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_rock#mediaviewer/File:Beer,_Russian_boy_with_balalaika.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_rock

Krushchev looking at corn as if it were made of pure gold on his trip to the US in 1959. Campaign to bolster his own program for USSR corn production.

 Corn seems fairly common place to just about anyone who grew up in the western world, especially the United States. We are used to seeing the familiar crop in brands such as Corn Flakes, movie theater snacks in the shape of pop corn, or off the grill as “corn on the cob”. Simply put, corn is not that big of a deal to us and it is basically every where. If you have ever traveled by air and been over one of the many marvelous “fly over states” that the US has to offer, you may have noticed fields upon fields of corn being grown. Corn is virtually grown every where there is land to do it in the United States. We pioneered high fructose corn syrup and all the super healthy products that come from it, we can even power our vehicles with the ethanol produced from the crop. Believe it or not though, there was a time when the Soviet Union deprived their people of the illustrious corn life, that was until the 1960’s when Khrushchev saw that corn was the way of the future, and an absolute necessity for his people to have in order to compete with the west.

Russian lady celebrating a most bounteous harvest of corn, most likely from a field in the Ukraine. Propaganda poster circa 1956. “Hybrid seeds are the rule for high corn growing!”

In the propaganda poster to the right, there is a woman holding up an ear of corn showing that the harvest was good, and that there is plenty of food to go around. The poster is from 1956, two years after Khrushchev initiated the virgin land campaign to add to the production of grain crops to alleviate hunger throughout the USSR.  Corn was not a staple of the Soviet diet, but with the ever so common trend of food shortages continuing, and the virgin lands campaign in full swing, Khrushchev turned to introducing corn as a kind of savior crop to the people. He even established a corn research institute in the Ukraine, while the United States had things like Virginia Tech since 1872 that researched corn on the side.

The picture above,Time magazine cover, depicts Khrushchev in 1959 still on the campaign to improve the notion that corn production and consumption in the Soviet Union would be a good thing. The bottom line, if this build up isn’t indicative enough, is that corn pretty much failed to become of any note in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev saw corn as the salvation of the Soviet people. The crop was intended to greatly bolster the livestock industry and produce greater amounts of meat and dairy products as a secondary affect while providing another grain option for consumption.

Corn actually began to ruin agriculture production. The crop itself takes a significant amount of water and fertilizer to produce effectively. The seed was not native to the region, and the affects on the soil made crop rotations produce less yield than before in other crops that had done fine in previous harvests. Corn harvests went from 4 million tons in 1953 to 14 million tons in 1965, but the price to do so was staggering. Labor input was roughly three times higher than that of wheat, and the plant itself was not accustomed to surviving the harsher climates of the USSR, although much of the agricultural belt is on the same latitude as that of the American plains, the Soviets planted the crop in strange places, like Kazakhstan, the Caucasus, and even parts of Siberia…mostly because they were virgin lands, and why not,it’s not like Siberia was a hot spot of contested resources.

However, with terrible droughts and food shortages being a constant reminder to the Soviet regime of their failure at central planning, corn was not going to the wayside easily. In a 1962 news article named “Bounteous Corn”, the dream is set forth by a Russian columnist about the future possibilities of corn.

“The Ministry of Trade has given orders to several state farms and to the Russian Republic Ministry of Production and Procurement of Agricultural Products for the delivery of 40,000,000 tons of corn ears for Moscow, Leningrad, Sverdlovsk, and other industrial cities. It must be hoped that lightly salted boiled ears-tasty, succulent and nourishing-will be sold at stands, on pushcarts and in stores. There should be no fewer such pushcarts and stands than there are for ice cream.”  http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/doc/13789239

Once cannot be certain as to whether or not the author of the article was paid off by Khrushchev, but there is a good chance. Trying to mobilize the people and the state to buy into the corn fad was a work in and of itself. It is somewhat comparable to President Nixon saying that Nebraska should grow nothing but beats, and that everyone in D.C., New York, and L.A. should be excited and ready to eat borscht and see borscht stands become more common place than hot dog stands.

The greatest line in the article “Bounteous Corn” sums this up nicely, “The propoganda of corn and its products is a matter of great importance, which demands daily attention and control. Let all of us together help corn take its deserved place on our dinner table.”http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/doc/13789239

So long story short, corn and Khrushchev shared a similar fate. Neither had a legacy that made a great impact in the Soviet Union. Corn faded away around 1965, and never really became the cash crop instant sensation that Khrushchev had hoped for. Although his intentions were noble in that he wanted to provide a steady source of grain that would provide abundantly for his people, his efforts were miscalculated and proved to be a historical flop.

Khrushchev visiting Iowa. http://www.weirdir.com/weird-ir/khrushchevs-diplomatic-overture-to-iowa

Works Cited:

http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/doc/13789239

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Lands_Campaign

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Khrushchev

http://soviethistory.macalester.edu/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1961corn&Year=1961

http://www.weirdir.com/weird-ir/khrushchevs-diplomatic-overture-to-iowa