Russian Rock Takes Two Steps Forward, One Back : Signs of Counterrevolution Back in the U.S.S.R.

Soviet rock music, on a roll for a year or more in this Gorbachev era of glasnost , has become a politically divisive issue.

In ever stronger counterpoint, conservative critics, using language that strangely echoes the hysterical anti-rock sentiments heard in the West, have charged that the popularity of rock is a threat to the nation’s moral fiber and possibly even a plot by anti-Communist strategists in the West.

Rock musicians scoff at the allegations. They contend that their supporters are energetic advocates of change, in tune with the party line enunciated by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who is pushing for glasnost , or openness, throughout society.

Alexander (Sasha) Lipnitzky, bass guitarist and manager of the band Zvuky Mu, said in a recent interview that rock groups deliver a social message in their lyrics but also exemplify a new era.

“Rock is the most progressive part of Soviet life,” Lipnitzky said. “It’s the first public movement for freedom. It’s a peaceful movement.”

His view was challenged recently by a half-page article in Pravda, the authoritative party newspaper, which described rock music as being as addictive as narcotics. It said rock drives young people slightly crazy.

The author of the article recommended, as an antidote, more traditional Russian folk music.

On an even more apocalyptic note, Mikhail Dunayev wrote in an ultraconservative journal that rock was the devil’s work, morally corrupting, anti-national and ideologically subversive.

Western strategists, according to Dunayev, want to sap the Soviet Union of its moral strength and culture by promoting music developed from ancient African rituals for its spellbinding effect.

Another writer for Rabochaya Gazeta attacked heavy-metal music with these phrases: “imported obscurantism,” “anti-humanity incarnate,” “lack of culture and dissipation.”

But a Soviet “metalist” replied by letter: “Thousands of heavy-metal fans have made their choice and will be true to the end.”

So the debate rages, with Old Guard conservatives entrenched in the Ministry of Culture trying to block the rock upsurge while younger, more sympathetic counterparts in state radio and television speed its advance.

The cross fire started after rock was rescued from ideological oblivion and some of its underground stars received a nod of approval from the Kremlin.

Rock was never really obliterated in the Soviet Union, but a renaissance began two years ago, getting its real push forward coincident with Gorbachev’s coming to power.

In the past, a few rockers had come in from the cold of unofficial status to perform at state-sponsored concerts. They included such groups as a band led by Stas Namin, a grandson of the late Soviet leader Anastas A. Mikoyan, Time Machine, and Avtograf, which is currently on tour in the U.S. and performs at the Roxy tonight (see accompanying story).

Last year, however, rock hero Boris Grebenschikov of Leningrad, leader of the widely popular band Aquarium, agreed to do an album for the state-run record company, Melodyia.

Two hundred thousand copies of Aquarium’s first official disc sold out within hours, without a single advertisement. In the preceding decade, Grebenschikov’s band had released 10 albums on tape cassettes, which were copied and recopied until they made their way across all 11 time zones in the Soviet Union.

Once the band got the stamp of approval from the Ministry of Culture, it played six sold-out concerts in Leningrad’s 6,000-seat Jubilee Hall last autumn.

Aquarium, which once had to skulk around Moscow’s smaller clubs disguised as a group called Radio Africa, suddenly found itself in the embrace of the state. For some of its fans, it was too much.

“If you make an official record, some people think it can’t be any good,” said Grebenschikov, 33, a blue-eyed man wearing his long, brown hair in a ponytail.

Despite the state’s blessing, however, Aquarium was barred from playing at the first Soviet-American rock concert last July 4. There was no public explanation; another rock band, widely regarded as inferior, was substituted at the last moment.

Yet, in another remarkable sign of official favor, Grebenschikov was allowed in December to visit the United States, where he communed with rockers in New York, Washington and Los Angeles and discussed making a record for an American firm.

Furthermore, the official news agency Tass announced last month that Soviet and American rock musicians would record an album in Russian and English to mark the 30th anniversary of cultural exchanges between their countries.

Grebenschikov said that Western performers such as Michael Jackson, Dave Stewart and Iggy Pop agreed to cooperate on the project when he talked with them during his visit to America. He added that Aquarium is preparing for a concert tour of the United States later this year.

For years, Grebenschikov added, Soviet rock was influenced by Western, particularly British, music but “now it has grown into something original.”

Aquarium’s popularity is so great that some young fans copy the band members’ haircuts, clothes, even the way they walk. This annoys some other young people, who regard rock as a suspect foreign product. Pravda reported recently that a gang of boys in Voronezh, a provincial city in the Russian federation, had beaten Aquarium fans on the city’s main street.

The incident recalled a story in the magazine Ogonyok early in 1987 about a gang roaming the streets of Moscow beating up punks, hippies, heavy metalists and others who displayed nonconformity.

In addition to the hostility of such street warriors, rock musicians and their fans still face strong opposition in the Ministry of Culture, which prefers to support classical ballet or folk dance groups, as it have been doing for decades.

“Rock music has great enemies in the chief directorate of culture,” Sasha Lipnitzky of Zvuky Mu said. “Its leaders are very conservative people who hate our music.”

Despite the resistance, rock music appears to be flourishing on official, unofficial and semi-official levels. Kino, a hard-rock quartet from Leningrad that had not been allowed to appear in state-run concert halls, was featured recently in a movie produced by Moscow Film Studios.

It is no coincidence that the cinematographers’ union recently elected more progressive leadership, and also no coincidence that the completed film ran into unexpected trouble at its scheduled Moscow premiere.

Although the film’s debut was ostensibly postponed only because of possible violations of fire laws at the theater, its admirers said it was bureaucratic sabotage by those who simply did not like the prominence of rock musicians in the cast.

In short, the classic Russian and Soviet encounter between advocates of the status quo and proponents of change has emerged on the rock scene too.

Joanna Stingray, a Los Angeles singer and songwriter who married Kino member Yuri Kasparyan in November and now lives part-time in Moscow and helped put on a show of underground Soviet art in Los Angeles last month, said she was ambivalent about the increasing official acceptance of rock music here.

“If you make it all official, won’t it all become boring?” she said in a recent interview. “Rock ‘n’ roll is part of youth, of being on the edge. It’s loud and has a lot of energy.”

Stingray has been an avid booster of underground Soviet rock since she began surreptitiously transporting tapes of bands to the United States in 1984, which led to the 1986 release of the album “Red Wave,” a collection of music by four of those bands. She suspects that Soviet bureaucrats want to encourage rock artists to work for the state in order to help them satisfy their five-year and one-year financial plans.

“Rock is an easy way to make money in a hurry,” she said. “The officials see how they can fill concert halls six nights a week with very little effort.”

But despite their lofty status, rock musicians are paid very little. Boris Grebenschikov received only 300 rubles (about $510 at the official exchange rate) for the tape of an album that probably will sell at least 1 million copies.

For a concert, he receives 16 rubles (about $27) and band members get 10 rubles (about $17). Grebenschikov, who lives in a cramped communal apartment with his wife and infant son, sees other compensations, though.

“If we are able to speak out, it will mean Russia is changing for the better,” he said in an interview. “The pay is not too much, but somehow we survive. I have enough to eat and drink, so I am not complaining.”

What he and other Soviet musicians do complain about is obsolete and inadequate sound equipment.

“It’s so bad I think America had it in the 1940s,” Lipnitzky of Zvuky Mu said. “But in musical ideas, we are only a little behind.”

Stingray, who sympathized with the musicians lacking such essentials as synthesizers, arranged with the Yamaha Corp. to make a gift of $20,000 worth of musical equipment to a Leningrad rock club last year.

“They were like kids at Christmas when we opened the stuff at customs,” she recalled. “But it took more than six months of negotiating and paperwork with Soviet officials to give away that equipment.”

Although she is impressed with their musical dedication, Stingray said only two or three Soviet rock groups could make it in the West. In addition to Aquarium, she mentioned Kino, Zvuky Mu and another Leningrad group called Strange Games.

“If Americans could see them, they’d be blown away,” Stingray said. “Very theatrical.”

The new era in Soviet rock began late in 1986, when the British group UB40 was allowed to tour and turned Soviet crowds on. State radio began playing tapes of unofficial bands and there was a general relaxation of restrictions on rock music.

In another breakthrough, a 23-year-old Beatles album was sold in stores for the first time, although it had been sold on the black market here for decades.

Perhaps because of its underground past, rock has become a symbol of unorthodox thought and the release of repression for ideas as well as music.

Andrei Voznesensky, one of the angry young poets of the 1950s and still a champion of artistic freedom, said recently:

“The spread of rock music among our young people is the birth of a new folklore. This is the cultural outlet for the energy of the young.”