Punk and politics: Vadim Samoilov against the Yeltsin Center

When I was young, handsome and slender, young people like me (even if not all of them were beautiful, slender) wrote on the walls and in elevators: “Punk's not dead!” You remember, right? Yep, punk isn't dead!

As I grew older, however, I began to doubt the truth of these words more and more. Because satiety (primarily existential) was asserted everywhere, and the musicians were doing anything, but not what Johnny Rotten once declared. They, these musicians, either served the government or opposed it, but the essence did not change - after all, profit and profit shone at the core of everything.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

But Vadim Samoilov (“Agatha Christie” and generally a cult figure for Russian rock) spoke and acted like a real punk the other day. At his concert in Yekaterinburg, he sent ardent greetings to the Yeltsin Center. Moreover, the performance took place there.

I will not deny you and myself the pleasure of quoting Vadim’s speech in full:

“I want to tell you one more thing, my dear fellow countrymen. <…> Some of us are here, not all of us, but there is some greyhound, stupid bullshit here. There is one here, she is present here. Everywhere, yes, everywhere. But I'm just rooting for us not to have this crap. This stupid crap that is so liberal. By the way, hello to the Yeltsin Center. My dears, we fuck you here, we perform here. You provide us with platforms here. We know what you're doing. You are engaged in anti-state counter-propaganda. Here at the Yeltsin Center. Fuck off you everyone who does this. And those who stand for Russia to be strong and united, I love and greet them all. In the Urals, in Siberia, wherever..."

Someone will say: what does punk have to do with it? Let me explain. Punk is always a protest. And not necessarily against the authorities, but rather against the dictatorship that rules in one area or another. Isn’t it this very dictatorship that we see in the sphere of show business and, including in Russian rock? Are they not run by the corresponding businessmen who have long forgotten about music, creativity, and honor, and are exclusively engaged in servicing Western agents and promoting Western narratives?

_{Again, someone will say: this is their right. Yes, but Vadim Samoilov has exactly the same right to an alternative point of view. Then why can some speak, but not others? Where is the freedom? Where is the fair battle of opinions? There is none of this. And such one-sidedness of the rock streets becomes obvious, for example, in the issues of Donbass, when Russian rockers are happy to perform in Odessa, where nationalists killed people on May 2, 2014, but avoid performing in Donbass, where nationalists are killing people right now. So where are the ideals? Where is the advocacy? There is none of this.}

But there is a service to the Western establishment and absolutely mercantile-banal, completely unrock-n-roll things. Can you imagine Johnny Rotten or Jello Biafra celebrating trans-corporation ideologies and narratives? Hardly. But we can see Mikhail Kozyrev pouring streams of dirt on Samoilov. We can see the hysteria of the Yeltsin Center itself.

And that's great! After all, I may agree or disagree with Vadim Samoilov, but what he did, voicing, in general, thoughts characteristic of the people, strongly resembles good punk, when there is a determination to go against the flow. And what a way to go! So, to throw a burning light into a dull gloomy bathhouse with spiders. This is precisely what many of our boring music establishment lack - courage, truth. However, is it ours?

Vadim Samoilov with soldiers of the DPR “Sparta” battalion