SNC Records (Stas Namin Center) was one of the first serious attempts to run a legal, private record label inside the late-Soviet system—and make it work on a large scale. The story is about musician and entrepreneur Stas Namin (birth name: Anastas Mikoyan), who learned the hard way how state monopolies worked, then found pressure points and pushed.

Namin first came to the fore as the leader of the band Tsvety (“Flowers”), which formed in 1969. By the mid-1970s, the group was releasing 7-inch EPs while fighting censorship and ownership issues that would sound surreal anywhere else. In the USSR, there were no private trademark rights for band names. As Namin later put it, when he brought Tsvety under a state concert bureau (a “Philharmonia”), he and several members were expelled—and the institution kept exploiting the name commercially.

After working under the name Stas Namin Group from 1977 to 1983, alternating between releases on Melodiya (the Soviet state label) and new bands, Namin changed tactics. In 1986, he opened the first private, independent recording studio in the USSR and started recording artists for free. Perestroika opened doors: Tsvety toured the world, meeting Western managers and musicians along the way. Then, in 1989, he started SNC Records to press vinyl and sign international licensing deals. He teamed up with Alexander Morozov (who would later start Moroz Records), who took care of contracts and money stuff, while Namin used his connections with musicians and officials.

At first, the usual logic of record deals was flipped by market dynamics. Morozov said that some managers even offered to pay the label just to make sure the album came out on vinyl. They were so afraid that the Melodiya arts council would kill the album that they offered to pay for it. In just a couple years, things changed again. Artists realized records could make money, new competitors popped up, and SNC started paying for releases like any normal label.

Cracking the pressing bottleneck

The issue was that the pressing plants that could make records were still under Melodiya’s control. They had gained a little autonomy by the late 1980s, but not enough to take straight commercial orders. Sintez Records (a previous private label) learned this when the Aprelevsky plant refused to press a 1988 Nautilus Pompilius album at regular rates.

Namin figured out a way to solve it in that system that worked every time — got everyone to sign. Melodiya’s director, Valery Sukhorado, SNC, and the Riga pressing plant (which was considered the most advanced in the USSR) signed a three-party contract with Melodiya. That deal let SNC move from talk to production.

Licensing Western catalogs

What set SNC apart from a lot of other companies at the time was that it aimed to operate legally. Namin worked with Melodiya, and he also secured licenses via Castle Communications in the UK. He negotiated the rights to release albums by Western artists like Frank Zappa and David Bowie. The resulting records were legit — usually a notch below the original Western editions in terms of jacket and vinyl quality, but real licenses all the same.

SNC’s catalog quickly filled with high-demand backlist titles. The label put out almost all of Uriah Heep and a bunch of Black Sabbath albums through Castle’s reissue program. It was the kind of stuff Soviet listeners wanted, and they could finally buy it at home.

What were the audio sources?

Even now, collectors are still debating about what materials were used for the SNC pressings from the early 90s. There are all kinds of rumors flying around—from straight CD transfers to shipments of master tapes or even ready-made metal parts. Morozov’s account is more down-to-earth. Chances are it was DAT (Digital Audio Tape) or whatever digital program masters were around at the time. He doesn’t remember the days when lacquers or wide 38 ips reels would arrive from abroad. By the early ’90s, CDs and DAT decks were readily available and good enough for transfers. The studio didn’t need a complete overhaul—just a few workable masters to cut copper and press records.

STANBET

There’s a lot of false information floating around in Russian-language forums, and one of the most common is that STANBET was a cement factory. It wasn’t. STANBET was a joint venture that was started in 1988 by Stas Namin, Dennis Berardi, and Trez Thomas to handle international business. In the U.S., the partners even launched a line of balalaika-shaped guitars and other projects; over time, STANBET became a holding company for several ventures.

STANBET was key in breaking the monopoly of Mezhdunarodnaya kniga, the Soviet agency that controlled foreign contracts in culture and the arts. When Namin put together Gorky Park (the Soviet hard-rock band) and negotiated with PolyGram for their album, the deal was signed directly, without Mezhkniga. In the late Soviet days, that was a pretty revolutionary move.

Legitimacy, skepticism, and legacy

Namin has always said that SNC never pirated, and he points out that it became the only Russian company to get a Gold Disc from Castle. Even so, the growth of Namin-affiliated entities and strangely named imprints raised some eyebrows at the time. One early-’90s publication accused SNC of “skirting the law” by citing a license from a supposedly “mythical” DAT/STANBET—a company the magazine claimed it couldn’t find in specialist directories, unlike Black Sabbath’s well-known rights holders. Whether that criticism was fair or just a by-product of a chaotic transition era, it captures how opaque the business looked from the outside. SNC published some music without a license in the mid-1990s.

It found a legal way to get around the system that was supposed to stop private labels from existing — by teaming up with Melodiya when needed, locking in plant capacity through deals with three parties, and filling shelves with licensed Western back catalogs that people really wanted. STANBET was key in taking down some of the USSR’s gatekeepers, like Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga. At the same time, SNC helped transform the Soviet (and then Russian) recorded-music business from a monopoly to a market, one licensed LP at a time.

---

© 2024 Artur Netsvetaev, interview with Alexander Morozov