MOSCOW TO HOST SOVIET ROCK FESTIVAL

A rock festival featuring 25 amateur and professional Soviet groups will be held in Moscow in January, Tass news agency has reported.

It did not say which bands will take part.

The official attitude to rock, once regarded as decadent, has been slowly changing and a number of groups, such as the Leningrad-based band Aquarium, have emerged from underground to almost full acceptance.

Moscow’s central exhibition hall, which normally houses displays of Socialist Realist art, was the unlikely site for a rock and poetry festival earlier this month.

But relations between the establishment and the rock world are still not entirely smooth.

Arguments broke out at the exhibition center between young fans and the older organizers and at a recent concert in Leningrad, Aquarium refused to play because they said the number of police in the hall made it look “like a barracks.”