"Never mind that he looks like a hippie. Who cares that the show is going to be acoustic. Igor Letov is a badass motherfucker. Originally, he came from the group Grazhdanskaya Oborona and is probably Russia's most accomplished punk. His group of friends was so punk, that most of them have killed themselves long ago. For his acoustic concerts, he plays on a ratty guitar and even that is usually enough to incite riots. So expect a bit of burning and looting. His followers are also among the favorite targets of the authorities, who have singled out Letov as their most hated underground musician in Russia. Thus, every show comes complete with a battalion of riot cops at no extra charge. The pigs are always ready to give the punk fans a thrashing, and a minimum of fifty kids get tossed into a police van and beaten into jello. These days, all his anti-communist views of old have been replaced by radical left-wing politics. He used to be in with sometimes eXile columnist Limonov, until Letov decided that the National Bolsheviks were pussies. Now, he's a straight up Stalinist."
-http://www.exile.ru/
Grazhdanskaya Oborona ("Civil Defense") started releasing music in 1983 under the name Posev ("Sowing" - named after the N.T.S. publishing house, a rabid anti-Soviet party of post-revolutionary emigre.) Shortly after forming the band they came under the scrutiny of the KGB. Letov was forced into a state run institution after trying to commit suicide in jail after being interrogated by the KGB; his friends' were threatened by the authorities to stay away from him.
He then taught himself to play guitar and drums, having previously been a singer and bassist. As he started recording new material himself he changed the name to Grazhdanskaya Oborona or GrOb ("Grave") for short. During this initial period of activity his music was relatively straight forward, minimal and noisey punk rock with occasional forrays into reggae-tinged folk. The recordings were very raw as a result of the limited resources available to even most state sponsered rock bands, and Letov was recording in the kitchen's of friends flats as he lived underground travelling through a network of friends and musicians that he'd collaborate with.
As time wore on the music developed an anthemic quality that lent itself well to drunk sing-alongs, but it was counter-pointed by the darkly psychedelic effect of experimentation with lo-fi electronics and a move to a more poetic and existential lyrical style. While the socially indecent and deeply offensive nature of his earlier lyrics were still present they also became deeply symbolic.
Around 1987 Letov began working with the musician Yana Dyaglineva (Yanka) in the band Byelki Oktyabri ("Great October") and on a side-project: Kommunizm ("Communism") that was highly conceptual in nature combining the kitsch elements of official Soviet art and Stalinist poetry of the 30's with their own twisted folk-punk accompaniment.
At this time GrOb's albums were distributed through the underground "magnitizdat" network named after the illegal "samizdat" method of self-publishing and distribution that was used to spread the work of dissident writers. Cassette tapes were copied and given to friends, who then made copies themselves and passed the work on.
Despite the atmosphere of heavy censorship and political repression Letov and friends began performing live at small athletic and cultural clubs and eventually even managed to perform at several rock fesitivals, the first one in Novisibirsk in 1987 where they made quite an impression.
In 1990 GrOb recorded an album titled Instrukciya Po Vishivaniyu ("Instructions for Surivival") named so after the Tyumen band whose frontman Roman Nuemov had written the songs and given them to Letov as he didn't intend to record them. Around this time Letov also started another project called Igor i Opizdanevshie (which translates roughly into "Egor and the Fuckups" although I have been told that a precise translation of "Opizdanevshie" amounts to "those who are too ignorant to realize they don't give a fuck about anything") who recorded a few albums that further pushed the sound into the realm of psychedelia, this time with a sense of melody never previously explored. While the music was still confrontational and challenging there was an inviting quality in the squeeling organs, washes of lo-fi effects and tape manipulation. Letov's lyrics delved even deeper into the existential and poetic; a fact that has been attributed by some critics to schizophrenia and/or drug abuse. This project peaked with a masterpiece titled Sto Let Odinochestva ("One Hundred Years of Solitude.") Around this time Letov also began performing by himself live and releasing the recordings.
Letov was quite prolific, recording somewhere around thirty albums under the name GrOb alone. Often times songs appear in different versions on different albums. A sing along anthem like Fsyo Idyot Po Planu ("Everything Goes As Planned") gets a sludgy, noise-drenched industrial treatment on the album Voina ("War") another favorite Optimizm ("Optimism") appears on the album of the same name with nothing but an acoustic guitar, vocals and a recorder but is thrashingly performed on the random live recording.
Since the fall of communism in Russia Letov has become a confusing figure to many, especially outside of his home country. When asked in interview about getting his music to the west, he replied that it was not a concern of his as people outside of his country would not be able to properly understand the context of his work. Although once known for an intensely anti-totalitarian message that had him branded both anti-soviet and anti-communist Letov himself has stated that he considers himself a "true communist." In the face of a failing attempt at democracy that left his country in economic ruin and under the control of both the mafia and a government as questionable as the one that preceeded it Letov started appearing with nationalist figures like Alexander Prokhanov, the editor of the newspaper Zavtra ("Tommorow",) renamed Dyen ("Day") to get around a government ban, and writer Eduard Limonov. He began speaking of "ultracommunism," "Soviet nationalism" and "love of totalitarianism" in interviews and the music he was performing and recording at this time started to display a triumphant, almost patriotic feel. The early 90's also saw the suicides of friends and collaborators of Letov's like Yana Dyaglineva who reportedly told him she was going out to smoke a cigerette and was later found drown in a nearby river, and Dimitry Selivanova, the man behind Promyshlennaya Arkhitektura ("Industrial Architecture,") and live guitarist of GrOb, who hung himself.
During the summer of 1994 Letov helped form the National Boshevik Party with Eduard Limonov and organized a boycott against imported goods and produce, a campaign that the organizers stated was largely symbolic and aimed at drawing attention to their revolutionary cause. Letov was quoted in the papers saying "The boycott is the first step, our task is a lot bigger. We plan to create a revolution." He told reporters that he had the intention to follow through with this plan by taking up arms (firearms are illegal in Russia.) Limonov was later arrested and imprisoned after a cache of weapons was discovered that authorities said belonged to the party. The symbol for their party was a black hammer and sickle on a white circle in a red field, reminiscent of the Nazi flag. They were accused of being neo-fascists by many in the media, although many fans take the whole campaign as an elaborate provocation and refer to Letov's famous line "I will always be against."
In 2001 a tribute album was released in Russia featuring many popular Russian musicians performing Letov's songs. In Spring of 2005 Grazhdanskaya Oborona did a small tour of the United States, playing in New York and San Francisco, to what one would assume was very likely an audience of predominantly Russian immigrants. In 2005 they released an album full of new songs titled Reanimaciya ("Reanimation") that many fans have described as Letov's best work since the early 90's.
-deaf culture (issue 1)
Link to interview with Egor Letov from MRR 96 (1991)
(originally appeared in "Outlying Nervous System 2" from Barnaul)
