Rock star Yuri Shevchuk imagines an anti-nationalist Russian democracy
The performances of his band, DDT, are like teach-ins.
With American democracy quaking under what feels like new assaults daily, it may be a strange time to ask this question: What will it take to build democracy in Russia? Both our own democracy and our attempts to export it have had mixed results. Yet now, as we confront some of the most profound and difficult questions in our society, might be a moment to learn from the trials and errors of others.
I have found myself turning to an icon of Russian rock for inspiration. His name is Yuri Shevchuk, and he is Russia’s equivalent of Bono, without Bono’s corporate sheen. Since the early 1980s, Shevchuk has been probing the possibility of Russian democracy.
In Eastern Europe, rock music has a history as a provocateur of democracy. Because during Soviet times rock was considered a “noxious form of capitalistic decadence,” in Ian Buruma’s words, it was frequently banned—and the music went underground. There it formed itself into a voice of defiance, a cry for help, and what music critic Jon Pareles calls a “token of freedom.”
