The Songs of Protest

In just over a decade, Yegor Letov has gone from being Public Enemy No. 1 of the late Soviet era to a celebrity of the underground revered by some for his musical accomplishments, despised by as many for his politics.

Which probably means it's time for a Yegor Letov tribute album.

Letov is the frontman for punk band Grazhdanskaya Oborona and, now, the subject of just such an album on the Misteria Zvuka record label. Due for a late November release and as yet unnamed, the album will include cover versions of Letov's songs by a dozen popular Russian musicians, including Vopli Vidoplyasova, Zapreshchyonniye Barabanshchiki and Leningrad.

Leningrad leader Sergei Shnurov, who uses four-letter words (like Letov) in his now poignant, now iconoclastic lyrics, recorded a cover version of Letov's "Krasny Smekh," or "Red Laughter," for the tribute album. He did so, he said, because he's always wanted to take part in a project associated with Letov.

"His political sympathies are his own business," Shnurov said. "I see him as an artist."

The political agenda Shnurov refers to is a complicated one. Letov, 37, is known for his extremist views that combine elements of both the left and right and have earned him comparisons to late Sex Pistols member Sid Vicious for the controversy they inspire.

Born in Omsk, Siberia, Letov began playing music in 1982 with Possev, a band named in honor of the once-prominent Russian-language dissident magazine published in the West. Like the magazine, which was prohibited in the Soviet Union, Letov's songs, full of political satire and four-letter words, were eventually banned by Soviet authorities.

Later, in the 1980s, Soviet authorities declared the music of Grazhdanskaya Oborona -- which criticized the government, as well as Stalinism and communism -- illegal, and the band was forced underground. In 1984, Letov was committed to a mental hospital, a maneuver sometimes used against particularly vocal dissidents.

"During the very end of Soviet rule, [our work was] an extreme provocation, full of the kind of anti-Soviet content even dissidents couldn't allow themselves," recalled Letov during an interview with The Moscow Times last year.

For MT

Grazhdanskaya Oborona's anti-Soviet lyrics led to the band being banned by Soviet authorities ...

A bespectacled, bearded man who often dresses in U.S. military fatigues, Letov more closely resembles a member of the Michigan militia than the musician he is. But Letov says he doesn't mind.

"I think that the most important thing I've created in my life is poetry," he said.

Letov's poetry and songs are full of absurd, explicit lyrics, as well as political meaning.

His most famous song "Vsyo Idyot Po Planu," or "Everything Is Going According to Plan," contains the lyrics "Everything will be fine under communism/Everything will be OK just have to wait/Everything will be free and nobody will have to die," and became an anthem of anti-Soviet resistance.

Despite the fact that Letov, whose jazz musician brother Sergei shares his political views, is today a political hard-liner associated with Eduard Limonov and the ultranationalist National Bolshevik Party, the song is still his favorite.

"That song wasn't written from my name," he said. "That song was written by a person who comes home from work, sits in front of the television set and drinks. He's alone. He's been abandoned by his wife. And, while drinking, he watches television and sees that everything is going according to plan."

Letov's aversion to the Soviet regime didn't stop him from moving from anti-communism to radical nationalism and communism in the early 1990s and later joining forces with extremist writer Limonov. But the transformation is a natural one for Letov, whom Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov has called one of his favorite musicians.

"No matter what the regime, I'll be an anarchist," Letov sings, and the lyrics have proven true: His are a politics of opposition to whatever the government. In 1993, just a few years after the communist government he'd opposed crumbled, he released an album of cover versions of Soviet songs dedicated to the members of the hard-line coup that tried to oust power from Boris Yeltsin that year.

"Everybody asks me 'Who am I? Am I a communist or not?'" Letov said. "And I tell them 'I'm a communist and I'm not a communist.' When the political situation changed, I had to find a new answer."

But while some dismiss Letov's politics as radical chic, his position kept some musicians from taking part in the tribute album.

"I've decided not to participate," said Alexander Ivanov, frontman for the punk band Naiv. "I admire his talent, but I can't agree with his views."

Another well-known Russian musician, Yury Shevchuk of DDT, did not take part, despite the fact that he is a friend of Letov's. His reasons, however, have nothing to do with Letov's politics.

"Yegor Letov is a very honest person in everything he does -- even in his delusions -- and I respect his talent a lot," Shevchuk said. "But I don't understand the meaning of the album. I don't understand the idea of a tribute album at all -- either posthumously or during the artist's lifetime."

Yana Ratnikova, press secretary for Misteria Zvuka, explains.

"The idea of the tribute is a fashionable one," she said, adding that the idea for the Letov tribute occurred to record label higher-ups after they witnessed the success of "Kinoproby," last year's double album dedicated to the late Viktor Tsoi, the leader of the Soviet-era rock band Kino who died in a car accident a decade ago.

"Kinoproby," which was released jointly by Nashe Radio and the Real Records label, was a collection of Kino songs performed by popular musicians, including pop star Zemfira and punk band Korol i Shut, and quickly became one of the year's most successful projects, spawning concerts in both Moscow and St. Petersburg.

But despite the fact that both Tsoi and Letov have large followings, Tsoi is a leading figure in the development of Russian rock -- an attribute many would refuse to bestow on Letov. In fact, some see this tribute to Letov, a relatively obscure, noncommercial artist, as a cynical attempt to mock the Tsoi tribute.

"I don't understand the idea to release a tribute to Letov on the same date as the Tsoi album was released a year ago," said Boris Barabanov, head of the Nashe Radio news department. "Tsoi isn't guilty of anything. ... But they were both prominent figures in their own way."

Look for the album on store shelves next week.