Tag: articles
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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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Rovesnik: The Soviet Teens’ Window to the World
Rovesnik — launched in July 1962 and published until 2014 — was a Soviet youth magazine intended for readers aged 14 to 28. With print runs in the millions during its…
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The Club and Amateur Performances: Another Brick in the Wall
It was the only magazine, apart from Krugozor, that featured flexible covers. Despite the period of Brezhnev-era stagnation, the magazine’s covers in the 1980s stood out for their interesting graphic…
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Angliya (England): The British Invasion No One Talks About
From 1962 to 1993, a curious magazine quietly circulated through the Soviet Union — Angliya (England), the British counterpart to Amerika, a US-published magazine printed in the USSR as part of a Cold…
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Student Meridian: A Soviet Youth Magazine at the Crossroads of Culture
Student Meridian was one of the leading Soviet youth magazines, founded in 1924 and published monthly from the 1970s. Mixing literature, social commentary, and pop culture, it became known for…
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Krugozor: The USSR Magazine That Let Soviet Youth Hear the World
Krugozor, a portmanteau meaning «horizon», “outlook” or “panorama,” was created in 1964 in the Soviet Union. It was an innovative monthly publication that combined literature, music, and socio-political commentary. What…
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Who is Kolya Vasin?
Kolya Vasin was a music collector, underground concerts manager and one of the main popularizers of the Beatles‘ creative work inside the USSR and Russia, born on August 24, 1945. He…
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The Artists Behind AnTrop’s Covers (Kibalchich & Trifonov)
At first, AnTrop’s bootleg records looked like perfect copies of the originals. But a closer look revealed subtle — and sometimes not-so-subtle — differences. Two artists in particular became AnTrop’s…
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Russian Disc (Soviet Music Label)
In the mid-1980s, Perestroika began: private business was partly legalized in the form of “cooperatives.” The Soviet Union was trying to adapt to a free market and democracy. Authorities and entrepreneurs started…