Reviews

The cream of the crop? Well, that’s subjective. But it is fair to say that Kasta are one of, if not the most, popular act in Russian hip-hop. And rap music, while not as popular in Russia as elsewhere in the world, is a fast-growing genre. Moreover, Kasta have to be given credit as pioneers. The trio from Rostov-na-Donu has been around since 1996 – a time when homegrown hip-hop was still very rare.

These days Kasta are a well-known band. Their numerous albums have achieved an impressive level of commercial success and their songs regularly feature on movie soundtracks and the like. The song ‘Goryachee Vremya’ (see the video below), which featured on the soundtrack for the 2002 action hit AntiKiller, was a particular boost to their fame.

"Nu Pogodi" ("Just Wait...") is a very popular cartoon produced in the 60s in Soviet Union. The plot is very simple: a bad wolf is running after an innocent rabbit. He never manages to catch him and at the end of each series the wolf says: "Nu zayats, pogodi!" ("So, rabbit, just wait..."). It's funny that even though the plot is quite similar to Tom & Jerry, the cartoon has a very distinct style... somehow the Soviet wolf seems much more malicious than his American counterpart.

A Hero of Our Time is an often overlooked classic of Russian literature regarded as the first Russian novel of Russian psychological realism. Centered around the adventures of a morally bankrupt army officer named Pechorin, the book takes place in the Caucasus in the early 19th Century. Seemingly bored with life, Pechorin draws pleasure from playing psychological games and attempting to dominate those around him. His tales of derring-do, manipulation and female seduction are enthralling in their unfolding and disturbing in their sheer pointlessness.

In the introduction Lermontov writes that the book was not just a portrait of one man but of all his generation’s vices. Many critics, however, have taken the character of Pechorin to be more of a self-portrait than Lermontov would admit...

A teenage star of the Russian music world, 19 year-old Lera Masskva is a young rocker with a bright future. With the rock chick attitude down pat, a hit album under her belt and a talented producer behind her, Masskva has managed to build a huge fan base in her short rise to fame. In what is a male-dominated genre in Russia, Masskva is conspicuous as much by her gender as by her age.

Lera explains that females are under-represented in Russian rock, “simply because pop music sells better. Girls who want to be singers, they just get acquainted with producers and the producers write songs for them that are designed to sell. It’s easier for them to start their careers as pop singers. The mentality of our country is such that pop music has a big audience.”

Somebody said that we live the stories that we are telling to ourselves. And Tatyana Tolstaya writes about the people who live through the kind of stories that make their existence unbearable. The protagonists of her books -- Soviet clerks, doctors, engineers, and housewives -- are all stuck in something. For some it is hopes and dreams for a better life, for the others it's unbearable circumstances they chose for their own existence. And the only way to escape the burden of this reality is to create your own world of enchanting dreams and imagination, full of lively characters, magic objects, and playful interactions...


(Photo by Sasha Reshetilov)

Tolstaya's stories do not only offer an interesting way of looking at our perception of everyday life, they also provide a new understanding of life in Russia and The Soviet Union during that time. The period when Russian people had to transform from dreaming romantics into ruthless survivors and when the longing for material well-being came in conflict with the desire for inner peace.