Category: Culture
The broader sociocultural context in which Soviet music existed—from youth movements to censorship, ideological clash, and shifts in public consciousness.
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The Beatles Official Releases in the USSR
People in the USSR first learned about The Beatles in the early 1960s, at the peak of beatlemania. At that time, newspapers wrote sarcastic articles criticizing pop music. Soviet articles…
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The Sound of Misunderstanding: Misheard Lyrics, Beatles Homophones & Memes in Soviet Russia
Things like homophonic translation, soramimi and Soviet mondegreens is very interesting. Especially Soviet mishearings of English songs. This article aims to tell the history and evolution of mishearings (mondegreens) in…
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Melodiya and its Plants in USSR
Most of the technically complex goods in the Soviet Union were copied from the Europeans, Americans and Japanese. In rare cases it was licensed, like Zhiguli cars, but often it…
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Piracy and Theft — Two Sides of the Same Record
At the start of the 20th century—just as today—recording companies, wholesalers, and retailers suffered heavy losses not only from piracy but also from good old-fashioned theft. Most of these cases stayed…
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Russian Audio Piracy in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1900s
Moscow Pirates There was a time in Moscow when visiting merchants were wined, dined, taken for a good steam in the bathhouse, and then tricked into selling their goods for…
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History of Music Piracy in Russia, 1898–1917
By the end of the 19th century, almost simultaneously with the invention of sound recording, the world learned of “music piracy.” And if it took civilization three millennia to deal with pirates…
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How Yellow Submarine Changed Soviet Animation
Did you know that Yellow Submarine was only shown in the USSR once in 1975, but the Beatles had a noticeable influence on Soviet cartoons? They’re so psychedelic! The Box…
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Cultural Continuity in Russia
I recently realized that there is no cultural continuity in Russia — there is simply nowhere to get it when any attempt to create any links has been suppressed for…