Lennongrad, Back in What Used to Be the U.S.S.R.

One night three years ago, Kolya Vasin dreamed of a great temple. It might have come from playing the John Lennon classic “Imagine” one too many hundred times. Or from the revelry he and his Bohemian crowd here had arranged that evening to honor Lennon’s 50th birthday.

When Vasin awoke, he quickly painted a picture of the vision he had seen in his sleep. On the shores of the Gulf of Finland, a giant temple would rise, 70 yards high, its irregular stone crags broken only by two great spheres, a yellow one reading “All You Need Is Love” and a blue one reading “Give Peace a Chance.” A yellow submarine would float nearby.

It would be a shrine to rock ‘n’ roll--the John Lennon Rock ‘n’ Roll Temple.

“Russia and the whole world need such a temple,” Vasin said, sitting at a broad table graced by a ceramic model of the temple the size of a large turkey. “This temple will say to people: Stop, stop being ugly, stop being sad. Be happy, because life is short,” he said. “It will be a spiritual revolution on the cusp of the 20th Century.”

When the inspiring power of the Beatles mixes with the Russian predilection for mysticism, a potent combination results.

“ ‘Imagine’ is the proto-image for the temple,” said Vasin, a heavily bearded, comfy man with slightly off-center, merry eyes. “ ‘Imagine all the people living for today.’ Well, I did. I imagined. The result is the temple.”

Vasin, an artist known as one of Russia’s most ardent and knowledgeable Beatles fan--he prefers the term “Beatles-ologist”--now devotes his life to promoting the idea of the temple. He sends letters to rock stars, fan clubs and foundations. His friends have formed a committee to help. He has attracted a smattering of media attention.

He produces T-shirts and heart-shaped coffee cups bearing the temple’s logo, a peace symbol shaped like a heart, and reading, “All you need is love. John Lennon Rock ‘n’ Roll Temple” in Russian and English.

He figures he needs $10 million to build the structure. He may raise that sum. But the very quest to build the shrine serves as the natural culmination of a life devoted to and possessed by the Beatles.

In a testament to the power of Western pop culture and its ability to defeat totalitarian attempts at controlling it, Vasin, now 48, first heard rock music on what was called “Rock on Ribs.” These were underground LPs recorded on the plastic from X-ray plates, back when the puritanical Communist Party frowned on rock and jazz as corrupting influences.

Vasin hated the restrictions and falsity of Soviet life. St. Petersburg--then Leningrad--was long known as the Soviet city with the richest underground rock music scene. Vasin first heard the Beatles in 1964.

“I listened and listened to the Beatles and suddenly there was an epiphany--an ‘Oh, yeah!’ . . . I’d never experienced that before and it remains to this day,” he said.

It is a deeply Russian trait not to do things by halves. When Vasin fell, he fell. Now, he says, “John Lennon is Jesus Christ to me, only with a guitar.

“I was a stupid little boy, and the Beatles opened up the world to me,” he said. “I owe them my peace, my work. Everything good that I have done in my life I connect with them--and my mother, of course.

“John opened up this world for me and I worry about everything being good,” he said. “If I read about a killing or ugliness, I feel bad. In order not to feel bad, I have to build the temple to be nearer to eternity or God.”

Vasin wants to build the shrine in St. Petersburg, in Russia, for a very simple reason: “Because I live here--I love this country, I have a bunch of friends here.”

But the literature he has been sending adds another explanation: St. Petersburg has always been known as Russia’s Window on Europe, and now he wants to make it a Door to the World.

St. Petersburg would have been an even more appropriate setting, if Vasin had succeeded in convincing city officials to rename the city from Leningrad, its Soviet-era title, to Lennongrad. He also tried for a Lennon Street with no success.

The temple, as Vasin describes it, would be full of different kinds of music, from organ to blues to a cappella, bells and basic rock ‘n’ roll. Inside, he said, “would be a non-stop party for all humanity,” with nothing forbidden, everything dominated by good cosmic vibrations. Everyone welcome.

He has already printed a list of special temple holidays, which would include Rock Woman Day on Jan. 19 (Janis Joplin’s birthday); Black Glasses Day on April 23 (Roy Orbison’s birthday); Back in the U.S.S.R. Song Day on Oct. 21 (for the day the Beatles’ White Album came out); and the calendar’s centerpiece, John Lennon’s birthday on Oct. 9.

Though still ensconced in his first-floor office at 10 Pushkinskaya St., an abandoned building occupied by artists, Vasin is already inducting willing Lennon fans into the temple’s future congregation.

The ceremony goes something like this: “Assume the position of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Vasin barked to a recent inductee, indicating he should point his toes inward in a pigeon-toed, knock-kneed, Elvis-like stance. “Now make an idiotic face, and accept from me a dose of rock ‘n’ roll!” It was actually a tablespoon of herb-brewed vodka. “Because rock ‘n’ roll is bliss and bliss is the tributary of paradise!”

Vasin then rapped the unsuspecting inductee over the head with the vodka spoon, which hangs from the office ceiling. “Get into the groove!” After the inductee’s shock passed, Vasin intoned the final imprecation: “Remember John, love, and me, an old sinner.”