how the beatles rocked the kremlin
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Artemy Troitsky, my essential guide to the Soviet Beatles generation.
A star in his own right, he was a celebrity in Russia, when “celebrity” was an unfamiliar label. He was a fearless impresario of Soviet rock when that could be costly, exploring and promoting the scattered, chaotic rock scene from the Baltic states to Georgia and Siberia. In 1985, Troitsky had been exiled from the official state press— what he called “the comfortable swamp of the Soviet cultural elite.” Soon after Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader, his cultural commissars had announced an official “Rock club” in Moscow. It seemed an encouraging sign, but Troitsky was immediately suspicious. “The club was arranged by the usual impeccably official organizations,” he said, “the Communist Youth organization Komsomol, along with the Moscow city cultural department and the trades unions—so I didn’t have much hope.” Art was duly ejected from the door of the Orwellian “House of People’s Creativity.” For Moscow’s rock community, it was not an encouraging introduction to Gorbachev’s new Russia. Troitsky responded by mounting a huge benefit rock concert in