Войны Для Воинов: The Far-reaching Poetics of 1980’s Soviet Punk Music and Political Dissent in the Lavrov Collection at Indiana University Cook Music Library

Abstract

Punk music came to fruition in Soviet-Russia roughly ten years later than Western parts of the world, but kept much of the same themes--short, fast-paced songs with hard-driving melodies and vocal declamation, minimal instrumentation, and often shouted political, anti-establishment lyrics. The genre embraced the do-it-yourself ethic that includes self-produced recordings, distributed through independent record labels. Fedor Lavrov and his home-studio of Begemotion Records in Leningrad created the few records still in existence from the early 1980s Soviet Union. As stated by Lavrov, “Abort [Lavrov’s first album, 1982] was recorded in two sessions… in the original location of Begemotion studio, my [Fedor Lavrov’s] bedroom in a Soviet family apartment in Leningrad, USSR.” Fedor Lavrov smuggled his work out of Russia and donated recordings and ephemera to the Indiana University Cook Music Library as his bands had been banned by the KGB, and he had personally been summoned by the KGB. Fedor’s music—its themes, influences, and styles—are still as relevant today as they were in the 1980s. This is even more true with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and he remastered some of his band’s music and rereleased it as a single, Военная Монархия (Military Monarchy) with music performed by his KGB-banned band Отдел Самоискоренения (Department of Self-eradication) produced through his new label FLOOR IS LAVA, in solidarity with the war in Ukraine. This paper outlines the provenance, arrangement, description of, and access to the collection. It also discusses the processing of the collection in a non-archival institution in collaboration with a living donor (currently in asylum) and the far-reaching and timely themes of the materials.