The Real Russia. Today. The Leningrad Rock Club hits middle age

Monday, March 8, 2021 (Happy International Women’s Day!)

• Listen to the legendary Russian bands that got their start at the Soviet Union’s first legal rock venue
• Rapist who tortured and imprisoned two women returns home after 17 years in prison, amid rumors that he fetched cash prize for TV appearance
• Putin’s alleged ‘secret’ daughter played a DJ set at a Moscow night club over the weekend
• News briefs: digital sovereignty, feminist actions, attacks against women reporters, nyet to Nasiliu.net, and Lukashenko’s rejected son

Feature stories

👩‍🎤 The Leningrad Rock Club turns 40!

Founded on March 7, 1981, the Leningrad Rock Club was the first and largest venue in the Soviet Union where young people could legally perform rock music. Located on Rubinstein Street in what is now St. Petersburg, in the 1980s the Leningrad Rock Club counted more than 150 bands among its members, including groups like Aquarium, Kino, Alisa, Zoopark, and DDT that would go on to become Russian rock legends. While the rock club is also known for its connections to the KGB (indeed, it was officially overseen by the Soviet security agency) this shouldn’t overshadow the fact that real art was created within its walls; despite the censorship and constant pressure, the Leningrad Rock Club gave birth to new music, the best of which rivaled Western rock.

📺 ‘The Skopin maniac’

In 2000, Viktor Mokhov abducted two women, then 14 and 17 years old, and kept them in his basement where he raped and abused them. One of the two women gave birth to two children while living in the basement, with the other prisoner aiding the delivery. Mokhov abandoned these children in the entrances of residential buildings. After his arrest in 2004 and trial, Mokhov served his entire sentence of 16 years and 10 months. Now 70 years old, Mokhov has returned home, but rumors are circulating that a television network paid him for an exclusive talk-show appearance. The whole thing could, however, be a sick joke.

🎧 Fancy lifestyles and cocktails

This past weekend, the Moscow bar Rovesnik hosted its most recent “Zvonok Drugu” (“Phone a Friend”) party, where only non-professional DJs are invited to perform guest sets. Ahead of the event, the nightclub advertised that a “mystery girl from the northern capital” was coming to the party to DJ her first set. Reports quickly followed that the “mystery girl” was Luisa Rozova — the alleged illegitimate daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the party itself, journalists reported increased security and the presence of anti-extremism agents — but the bar’s owner later denied these claims. Here’s what happened at Rovesnik on Saturday night.

News briefs

• 🔒 State Duma lawmaker calls for new laws to ‘protect digital sovereignty’ after Facebook blocks articles from Russian news sites
• 👩‍🔧 Feminist activists in St. Petersburg hold protest to mark International Women’s Day
• 🚨 Justice For Journalists Foundation records 1,129 attacks against female media workers in post-Soviet countries in 2020
• 🚫 Russian advocacy group ’Nasiliu.net’ forced to vacate office space where they help victims of domestic violence
• 🏆 IOC refuses to recognize Lukashenko’s son as the head of Belarus’s Olympic Committee

👨‍🚀 Tomorrow in history: 87 years ago tomorrow, on March 9, 1934, Yuri Gagarin was born in the USSR’s Smolensk region. On April 12, 1961, Gagarin became the first human to journey into outer space. He died in March 1968 at the age of 34 in a plane crash.