Pussy Riot’s Musical Precursors? The National Bolshevik Party Bands, 1994–2007

Abstract

The current article opens a contentious issue for investigation: to what degree—if any—Pussy Riot have been influenced by the provocative, subversive, ironic, and self-contradictory aesthetics of the musical bands associated with the notorious oppositional National Bolshevik Party of Russia (NBP), now known as the Other Russia. This party, formed in 1993 by the countercultural author Eduard Limonov and the self-taught philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, tried to unite left- and right-wing extremists on the same platform, and attracted a significant number of artists and intellectuals to its cause. Music was an important part of the NBP’s appeal and self-expression. For the first time ever in any language, the article examines the musical style and lyrics of selected key performances by such NBP bands as Krasnye zvezdy (Minsk, Belarus), Volshebnaia gora (Briansk), Banda chetyrekh (Moscow), Korroziia metalla (Moscow), Den’ donora (Moscow), Zapreshchennye barabanshchiki (Rostov-on-Don), Viselitsa (Daugavpils, Latvia), Gosplan (Haifa, Israel), and Pop-mekhanika (St Petersburg). With the bands’ musical style almost as varied as their geography, the article questions whether NBP music can be considered a popular musical style or a genre of its own. While the employment of punk aesthetics and the purpose of provocation differ between NBP bands and Pussy Riot, an overlap between their respective messages and artistic practices is identified and discussed. Finally, the article considers the potential consequences of bringing NBP music into the context of Pussy Riot’s project. The immediate conclusion is that the dominant focus in Western research to date—on feminism, human rights issues, and freedom of speech—is potentially reductionist, since it overlooks local forms and traditions of paradoxical humor and provocation, with all their implications.