Post-Soviet punk: “It’s political when you openly speak out against the war”

You were born in 1974 in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic – what are your memories of the Soviet era?

I went to school from 1981 to 1990 in Aktyubinsk, which is now called Aktobe and was then an industrial city. Perestroika came to us somewhat late, only around 1990. We went through everything that the rest of the Soviet Union went through: the disintegration of manufacturing plants, the lack of the simplest goods, ration cards, long lines in which people stood in line for vodka.

Was Kazakh or Russian spoken in your family?

Both. During the Soviet era, about 65 percent of Aktyubinsk’s residents were primarily Russian-speaking and 35 percent Kazakh-speaking, but there was only a single Kazakh-speaking school. Today it is the other way around: Kazakh speakers make up the majority, but there are many Russian-language schools. I went to a Russian school, the Kazakh school was too far away.

Did you talk a lot about Soviet-era politics in your house?

My father was a member of the CPSU, but he left the party in 1982, long before perestroika began. He assessed the politics of the time as a deviation from the so-called Leninist norms. Although he was an engineer, he switched to production and worked as a metal caster. In the Soviet Union, after ten years of work in a “hot mine” you were entitled to early retirement. The repressions of the Stalin era were discussed openly in my family. My grandfather was the chairman of the rayon (District) and was denounced shortly before the war in 1941; a friend on the line was able to warn him in time. A little later he was awarded a medal for saving money from a cash register during a fire, but of course he knew that if the money was burned he would face further denunciations and be accused of embezzlement. Ultimately, he received the status of “pensioner of importance for the republic” for his services, which gave him some privileges. But he vividly remembered the fears at the time.

How did you find rock music?

When I was in eighth grade, I saw the cover of the album “Radio Africa” ​​by Boris Grebenshchikov’s band Aquarium in a kiosk. It immediately captivated me. I became interested in the Western music that influenced Russian rock. I soon found myself playing bass in our school’s music ensemble, as it was called back then. In 1991 I was already familiar with the music of The Clash, The Exploited, Sex Pistols, and punk had a big influence on me. There were musicians in Aktyubinsk back then who played to make money, in restaurants, at weddings or Komsomol events. I and my colleagues wanted nothing to do with them.

Their band Adaptatsiya was formed just a few weeks after the official dissolution of the Soviet Union, in already independent Kazakhstan.

Everything fell apart within the last two years of the Soviet Union. Only one industrial company continued to operate; the jobs there saved my family. I then studied Russian philology to become a teacher, mainly to avoid having to do military service.

Your band owed its first appearances to its contact with the “Konkovo ​​Circle”, the scene around Boris Usov and his band Solomennyje Jenoty (Raccoons Made of Straw). At that time, he gathered various bands and artists around him in his apartment in the Konkovo ​​district of Moscow. Usov, who died in 2019, had a reputation for being a very difficult, sociophobic and alcohol-dependent person to deal with.

At that time I experienced him differently than the extremely energetic, energetic head of the scene. I also played drums in his band for a while. But after five years of intensive collaboration, relations between us deteriorated. He constantly gave instructions about what our band should and shouldn’t do. Our collaboration ended in 2000.

The “Konkovo ​​Circle” was in the tradition of the Siberian punk school around Yegor Letow and his band Grazhdanskaya Oborona. In the 1990s, Siberians’ contacts with Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party (NBP) became increasingly close. The writer Limonov, who returned from exile in the US, attempted to synthesize Soviet and Nazi symbolism. Did the Russian underground anticipate Putin’s current ideology?

Back then it all happened on a level of small circles. No one thought that these ideas would ever end up in the hands and minds of people with access to nuclear weapons. Alexander Dugin (new right theorist and co-founder of the NBP – note d. Red.) gave lectures to maybe 30 people at the time, half of whom were fans of Letow’s punk music and half of whom were interested in this philosophy.

You lived in Saint Petersburg for a long time, did you often experience racism in Russia?

Not in the music scene. People have often been stopped by the police on the street because of their appearance. Towards the end of US President Obama’s term in office, however, the taboo against making racist statements was broken in the Russian media. One read and heard more and more corresponding comments.

You say that Russian and Kazakh politics didn’t really interest you for a long time.

Yes, it was clear to me that the primary driver there is corruption. I was more interested in the international anti-globalization movement.

Since the protests in January 2022, attention to Kazakhstan has increased. The new President Qasym-Zhomart Toqayev promised a series of reforms.

Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, was mired in corruption. Toqayev is perceived as an alternative who will rid the country of Nazarbayev’s legacy.

The January 2022 protests turned violent, with Toqayev eventually calling on the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) helpa Russia-led military alliance of former Soviet republics.

Interestingly, Toqayev did not call on Putin for help – the CSTO was currently chaired by Armenia; He turned to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. After the CSTO troops arrived, the units of the Kazakh army that had been waiting until then sided with Toqayev. The protesters were primarily directed against Nazarbayev, who as “Elbasy” – “Father of the Nation” – continued to exercise considerable power, including as chairman of the National Security Council for life. They countered this with: “We have an elected president, we don’t need a father of the nation.”

2016 Adaptatsiya played in Donbass, what Them some still accuse today.

We were often in Ukraine before the war began in 2014, and I knew Donetsk well. We wanted to get our own idea of ​​the situation. As a condition of our appearance, we demanded that no warring party flags be displayed in the hall, and this was adhered to. We played in February 2016; There was no large-scale shelling at the time, but projectiles did hit at certain points. There were visibly fewer people in the city, the Oktyabrsky district was virtually depopulated, only the old people remained. State power had made itself invisible for two or three months and gangs had taken over. The supporters of the “New Russia” project spoke openly about support from Russia. Two years later we found our names in the “Mirotvorets”(peacemaker)-Online database again in which supposed enemies of Ukraine are listed.

Did the war change much for you?

For me it is like this: If a person speaks out openly against the war today, then that is already a political position. Then we have a point of contact.