Contents Intro.html - Under construction - the marketplace - shopping for CDs - Metro - Tarakanov - atmosphere - incidents-pickpockets - musical life - underground clubs - klub MXAT - Rock journalism Business - Inordinate arrangements - New Russians - Communications-technological shortcomings - They look to the West (but ignore some details) The Future - Changing Conditions - Archaic Laws and Systems - How will Russia get there from here? Where is here? - Where is There? Volgograd - Motherland - The difference in climate, attitudes - The Chechen War - Kvas Life(un)style - Home is where the heart is - Peasantry vs. Invisible and Visible high society Money - spravki - The DOLLAR exchange - People in Places-Togetherness, Intimacy - Understanding and Work Finland - Contrasts - Nature vs Society

Introduction My sojourn into Russia 1995 Introduction As a final research theme for this project, I traveled to Russia to learn how things had transpired since the 1991 "revolution". There was a window of time in the summer of 1995 to make a 5-week trip to Russia, to stay with Andrei Suchilin and see for myself how the music industry has been growing since Perestroika opened the doors to musicians' desire to be heard. In this time I visited underground clubs, played in a couple of them, and visited the musicians and producers, record distributers and journalists who make the Russian independent music industry what it is. Essentially, Russia's musicians, primarily in Moscow and St. Petersburg have developed a relationship with Western technology, and have made steps to independence. This independence is a term that must be defined. I see musical independence as the ability to write and perform music that is not determined solely by market forces and is financed mostly by the groups themselves, making money only by selling recordings. This independence can be manifest by greater or lesser degrees depending on the ties a groups has with distributers and radio stations, local press and other musicians. Money and finance clearly plays a large role in a musician's independence, thus market forces must play some role in the production of music in the present Russian economic sphere. If it is the goal of art, though, to be spontaneous and self actuating, the independent musician relies more on his intuition and ties with the producers of "independent" music than the sellers and probably many of the consumers of rock music. It can be argued that no musicians are truly independent, being totally dependent on the audience that is dependent on the musical institutions of record makers, producers, distributers, technological advances and sellers and resellers of the equipment and lastly, DJ's who allow their craft to exist. In terms of the dependence on Western technology, Russian rock music is making advances daily in acquiring the tools that Western groups and producers routinely use in their craft. In one studio I visited, located in the unlikely position of the 17th floor of a hotel, there was more equipment than I have seen in many professional studios in this country. What is most evident now is the practical inseperability of Western-made sound processing equipment and the music that is produced for the masses. gone are the days of substandard basement tapes being made by an illegal underground rock enterprise, the magnizdat . Instead, these tapes are used as demos that are used for the purpose of attracting the attention of the Moscow rock producers, and though these tapes are still seen in the countryside, most commercial rock is made into CD's that are distributed by a highly organized and highly visible music market. Many of these CD's are then

"bootlegged", illegally copied along with thousands of Western titles and sold despite copyright violations by the millions in kiosks and corner markets all over Russia. The magnizdat' is now a high dollar industry.

I arrived at Sheremetevo airport after a short flight from Helsinki, on July 15, 1995. The first thing I noticed was a huge amount of American tourists waiting in line at the customs with me. There seemed to be hundreds of us, all convinced that we were about to experience, for the first time, a free Russia. Well, it wasn't even close to being free in the financial sense. The taxi drivers wanted forty to fifty dollars in hard currency for a lift to the center of Moscow from the airport, and the bus, which I opted for, costed less, but still, in terms of numbers, was about 600 times more expensive numerically than it had been in 1990. the chausee into the city was lined with billboards advertising the new products and services that are apparently supposed to be available now. Instead of Lenin, there is Sony; instead of Marx there is Panasonic. I wasn't surprised, yet it was a strange sight, this motley assortment of Western ads and Russian traffic.

We arrived at the northernmost station in the city, and proceeded to go back to the flat where I had stayed with A. Suchilin five years before. The place had changed little since my visit before the 1991 coup, though Andrei had managed to acquire some of the consumer electronics that Westerners take for granted. He had also been recording and producing CD's as a career, whereas during the Soviet period of his life, there was never an official opportunity to do this. His official career had prevented the legal identity as a musician, and since the lid had blown off the Soviet system, Andrei took full advantage of the opportunity to work as a musical entity: guitarist and producer of Russian music.

Now we stay in touch through the internet, and this paper is partly an outgrowth, partly an attempt to establish the presence of this connection, and demonstrate how Russian and American people in various intellectual and special interest circles can stay connected through online communication.

In the pages that follow, there are the documents of a voyage from one locality, Santa Cruz, to another, Moscow. That voyage has happened many times before, and will happen many times in the future. That's why this paper is online-so that it may change and grow with the number of visits both real and virtual, that those interested in the Russia-US connection may make...