Jamming the KGB's Ploys

A year ago this week, I wrote about Sasha, a village neighbor of mine, who had given a number of icons to the local church, only to see them stolen. He went to look for them at Izmailovo and in the antique shops of the Arbat, and though he was harassed, threatened and given little police assistance, he found most of them and had them returned. It was an act, I said at the time -- given the strength of the icon mafia -- of unreasonable bravery.


Now Sasha is an expert on icons; and during the Brezhnev years -- when it was completely illegal, of course -- he used to deal in them. All in all, during those years, he was, by his own admission, a bit of a chancer. He drank; he partied; he in effect dropped out. But then, after his brother died of an overdose, he suddenly decided to change his life. He sold off the collection of icons he had put together and he bought instead, almost on a whim, rock instruments. With a friend from his school days, Peter Mamonov, he started a rock band called Zvuki Mu -- roughly translated: "The Sound of Moo-sic." And it was this band that was the occasion, here in the village, of another act of unreasonable bravery committed by Sasha 10 years ago this year: a concert.


The early 1980s did not, of course, look kindly on Soviet underground rock bands like Zvuki Mu. But 1984 was a particularly bad year. Old and powerful men were railing at rock and the KGB had launched an especially vicious campaign against it. So there was virtually nowhere where Sasha et al could play in public. The debut of Zvuki Mu was forced to take place at a class reunion at the high school from which both Sasha and Mamonov had been expelled. The school director, conned by Sasha, no doubt expected waltzes and polkas: acceptable Soviet fare. But Sasha gave him instead, not only Zvuki Mu which, as someone said, sounded like a cross between The Doors and Captain Beefheart on acid, but also other outrageous bands from Moscow and Leningrad. It was a riotous evening -- and there were, of course, repercussions. The director was hauled up in front of the KGB and Sasha was briefly arrested on a trumped-up passport charge.


With this first concert under his band's belt, Sasha looked around for somewhere else to play. And his eyes fixed on the little classical music festival that used to be held every summer out here in the village, in the collectively owned summer house on the village green. Somehow he managed to convince both the festival organizer and the local police that he was once more the right man for the occasion. And after they had inexplicably agreed he could provide the music for a concert, and that he "and his people" could play till 11 P.M., he gleefully called up the usual suspects from Moscow and Leningrad and told them to get ready.


The KGB, though, were listening in. And they soon went into action. Some of the bands they visited and threatened; some they warned off; some they intercepted en route. And when the bravest of them -- the survivors -- finally arrived in Nikolina Gora by bus, the "friends" were hard on their heels. Six or seven black Volgas suddenly appeared through the trees around the green. And a colonel in charge, getting out, announced that what was intended was clearly a diversion and provocation from the West. There was going to be no concert.


Sasha held his ground and demanded to see the colonel's instructions. There was some to-ing and fro-ing. But then the colonel simply got bored. He announced that everyone would be instantly arrested if the concert were given anywhere else but up the road at Sasha's dacha.


And that in the end was how it was. The bands, and 100 or so fans who were with them, trudged up the hill to Sasha's house, followed by the KGB, who remained on duty at the gates till the evening of the following day. As the rain came down, terrified of a Politburo house next door, they set up amplifiers on the steps and played. It was one of the most famous concerts in Russia's rock history, and Sasha's grandmother, a well-known actress who had spent years in the camps after Stalin's purge of those who had contacts with the West, said later that she had had a very good time indeed.


It's all now Famous Long Ago, I suppose. But when I hear on Artemy Troitsky's television program a spoiled American rocker bad-mouthing a Russian rock star -- who was there at the concert, one of Sasha's brave survivors -- I want to tell him to wash his mouth out with soap. Happy anniversary, Sasha!