5
Back to the Future: Imagining
a New Russia at the Eurovision
Song Contest
Yana Meerzon and Dmitri Priven
A Washington Post journalist once wrote: ‘Russia and the European
Union are neighbours geographically. But geopolitically they live in
different centuries ... Europe sees the answer to its problems ... in transcending
the nation-state and power. For Russians, the solution is in
restoring them’ (Kagan, 2008). In spite of the seeming incongruity
between the economic and cultural politics of the European Union
(EU) and those of Russia, it seems that for both geopolitical entities the
Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) has become a venue to test the changing
cultural, political, and economic values that both Europe and Russia
began to experience after the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989. Looking at
Russia’s eager participation in the ESC, this chapter examines the creative,
administrative, funding, and media systems behind Russia’s ESC
output. It views Russia’s growing interest in the ESC as an indicator of
the country’s negotiation of its position as a separate geopolitical entity
vis-à-vis the EU.
However, in considering the musical and performative output that
Russia has fielded at the ESC, we choose not to look at Russia’s recent
involvement in the contest in terms of its relation to the geopolitical,
cultural, or aesthetic sensibilities endemic to the expanding EU; we
argue instead that the ESC served Russia’s ruling regime in the 2000s
as an ideological tool and a nation-building device. Furthermore, this
study suggests that Russia’s participation in the ESC is indicative of
the country’s leading role within the emerging Euro-Asian economic
bloc and the related geopolitical discourse actively explored by Russia’s
government. This discourse around the ESC, abundant in the staterun
media, speaks to the governing regime’s desire to re-establish a
111
K. Fricker et al. (eds.), Performing the ‘New’ Europe
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2013
112 European Margins & Multiple Modernities
post-Soviet cultural space that would include not only its current political
and economic partners, such as Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan,
but also the Baltic states and Georgia, all of which have decidedly
European political, economic, and cultural leanings. In this respect,
this study proposes to deconstruct Russia’s vision of the ESC’s artistic,
musical, and performative norms and expectations in light of how the
country’s dominant ideologies position Russia vis-à-vis the post-1989 EU
and in the world. We suggest that by making a targeted effort to compete
in and win the ESC, including increasingly substantial monetary
and artistic investment, Russia’s authorities reify a particular national
mythology for both domestic and external consumption.
To this effect, this chapter analyses several Russian ESC entries of the
2000s, Dima Bilan’s 2008 victory in Belgrade, and Russia’s subsequent
hosting of the ESC in 2009. Using methodologies of critical discourse
analysis and performance theory, we argue that the ESC is one in a series
of events that the current political regime is using to demonstrate to
the West that the country can create musical and performative products
compatible with the standards of Western showbusiness. Russian political
and media authorities employ what one could call an ESC formula of
success, a combination of artistic and economic efforts, as a strategy not
only to win the contest but also to re-establish the pre-Perestroika image
of the country (both on the home front and abroad) as a competitive,
progressive, and wealthy Euro-Asian nation. Accordingly, this study recognizes
the 2009 ESC held in Moscow and its official media coverage as
a stepping stone for Russia’s subsequent successful bids for and implementation
of the University Games in 2013, the Winter Olympic Games
in 2014, and the FIFA World Cup in 2018.
Setting the context: On a politics of (re)mapping
a post-Soviet cultural space
The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union instigated post-communist
Russia’s search for the country’s new identity, and for marketing strategies
to promote this identity internally and internationally. The continuity
of the Soviet zeitgeist within the country had been disrupted
in the early 1990s, when ideologists of the new Russia were trying
to relinquish 70 years of Soviet history and create temporal and cultural
bridges (at least in the people’s collective consciousness) with
pre-Soviet Russia. The 1990s search for Russia’s new sociopolitical and
cultural image began – top down – with resurrecting and glorifying the
pre-Soviet ‘golden age’, especially the period between 1861 and 1917.
Yana Meerzon & Dmitri Priven 113
More specifically, 1996 saw Boris Yeltsin, in a quest to improve his
chances to win a second presidential term, announce the need for a
new Russian idea, one that would ideologically unite the post-Soviet
nation. Thinking of Russia’s future, his cabinet ‘implicitly acknowledged
that seeking “normality” patterned after the achievements of wealthy
Western nations had not sufficed as a guiding principle for authoritybuilding
in Russia’ (Smith, 2002: 159). Russia would choose its own
way. Accordingly, in 1996 the cabinet turned its gaze to the country’s
history to shape an image of its future. It was time once again to rethink
or, rather, retell Russia’s history, and for some pro-Western politicians
to ‘embrac[e] the idea of having a set of positive memories [and thus
to invoke them] as markers of a shared political identity’ (ibid.). After
Yeltsin’s success in the 1996 election, Rossiiskaia gazeta (a major state
newspaper) started a contest to articulate a new ‘all-national progressive
idea’ that would be capable of ‘binding together and energising [the]
society’ (ibid.: 162). Although the state apparatus did not openly outline
the search criteria, the suitable ‘national idea’ was in the end to be ‘civic,
not “political, ethnic, or confessional”. At the same time, however, [the
idea] needed to be national and patriotic – an idea not just for ethnic
Russians ... but for all citizens of the Russian Federation’ (ibid.: 163).
Specifically, the new ideological discourse was intended to fix ‘the time
that is out of joint’ – that is, to re-establish the lost continuity of the collective
zeitgeist of the Soviet era. Accordingly, in the 1990s, many artists,
singers, political activists, and media authorities turned their nostalgic
gaze to the pre-1917 Russian past and its unity of orthodoxy, autocracy,
and nationality.1
This discourse was meant to create an image of a
new Russia as an ideologically and culturally solid country able to position
itself independently but in dialogue with its Western neighbours,
the countries of the EU. At the same time, it foregrounded another
image of Russia – a strong state capable of supporting and controlling
(if necessary) its Eastern neighbours and former constituents. This dual
positioning of Russia as a Euro-Asian state was therefore intended to
reinforce its historical status as a buffer zone between West and East,
with a tinge of 19th-century nationalist romanticism.
The Putin–Medvedev rule of the 2000s started out much in the same
socio-political vein, with a view to regaining domestic economic stability
and to ensuring Russia’s return to the European and global stage as an
economically, militarily, and culturally competitive power. However, the
decade witnessed the ideologists of the post-communist state gradually
capitalizing on the population’s ‘hypochondria of the heart’ (see Boym,
2001) – that is, its nostalgia for Soviet myths of a guaranteed perfect
114 European Margins & Multiple Modernities
future, or at least of a stable present, underlaid by an ‘as-long-as-it-doesnot-get-any-worse’
mentality. The government’s internal politics then
aimed to address a ‘widespread sense of insecurity and loss’ (Remington,
2008: 249) using economic and cultural mechanisms. By 2012, the
year Putin returned as president, the country found itself in a cultural
zeitgeist that many speak of as similar to the 1970s, Brezhnev-era ‘stagnation’.
In the 2000s, ‘the worldwide increase in the price of oil [had]
strengthened Putin’s hand’ (Remington, 2008: 249), whereas employment
of mass communications, namely of TV, had helped his new
economic and cultural politics.
Russian TV, a progressive national idea, and the ESC
Once the new ‘progressive national idea’ had been rediscovered in
the ideological practices of the Soviet past, the government could not
overestimate the leading role of Russian TV in its reinforcement. The
authorities eagerly embraced the power of national TV, notably two of
its genres – episodic series and music shows (MacFayden, 2008). Governmental
use of popular music for ideological purposes has a long history
in Russia: leading Russian rock critic Artemy Troitsky (2010a) claims that
‘Russia’s state ideology in music has always been and remains ... music
for popular entertainment and for the peace of mind of the government’.
In the 1960s, the communist regime appropriated Western
mainstream popular music styles to create the so-called VIA (‘vocalinstrumental
ensembles’) – expanded and sterilized versions of rock
groups. In the late 1990s, in order to re-emphasize the discourse of continuity
in post-communist Russia, Channel 1 Russia aired a three-part
project entitled Starye pesni o glavnom (‘Old songs about what’s important’)
on New Year’s night, which presented a corpus of recognizable
Soviet pop songs about love, sung and restaged by pop stars of the
mid-1990s. Today, David-Emil Wickström and Yngvar Steinholt see this
appropriation of pop music’s appeal (including the ESC) for ideological
purposes as a manifestation of what Svetlana Boym (2001) terms
‘restorative nostalgia’, which ‘attempts a transhistorical construction of
the lost home’ (2009: 325).2
The outcome of such politics is a newly
established, state-approved, multigenerational group of TV personalities
(including popular singers, composers, and TV hosts) who repeatedly
appear in Channel 1 Russia’s programming. Just as in the 1970s, in
today’s Russia this common core of state-approved popular TV stars
functions as a symbol of economic stability, and underscores the idea
that new Russia has left the unpredictability of the 1990s free market of
Yana Meerzon & Dmitri Priven 115
pop music behind. Hosting the 2009 ESC was very much in line with
Channel 1 Russia’s longstanding mandate to build the country’s ‘democratic’
identity by capitalizing on old sentiments. It is not surprising in
this context that t.A.T.u, who competed for Russia in the 2003 ESC, performed
their hit ‘Not Gonna Get Us’ (note the title’s symbolism) in the
opening act of the 2009 semifinal along with the Alexandrov Red Army
Choir and Dance Ensemble, with a Russian fighter jet in the background.
Russia’s participation in the ESC
Starting from its first ESC appearance in 1994, Russia has continuously
worked on its winning strategies – on a product in line with
what is expected at the contest. Although never articulated as a
fully fledged recipe, Russia’s ESC formula of success revolves around
four performative and musical axes. The song’s musicality (i) means
that a new song must be ‘danceable, catchy, so that the audience
would be able to sing along’ (Eurovision Song Contest, 2009). The
contestant’s performative presence and complexity (ii) refers to the
singer’s performative choices, acting technique, musical ability, and
delivery. The contestant’s ‘youth, naiveté, energy and truthfulness’
(iii) (Breitburg, 2010) alludes to his/her appearance, sex appeal, and
age (the younger the better), and to flashy and revealing costumes and
makeup. Lastly, there is the song’s language and lyrics (iv): with no language
restrictions after 1999, the so-called Populenglish, the Esperanto
of world popular music, has become a staple of ESC performative aesthetics.
We suggest that these four tenets reflect the transnational nature
of the contest’s expectations and output, something that ‘conceives the
poetic imagination as ... a nation-crossing force that exceeds the limits
of the territorial and juridical norm’ (Ramazani, 2009: 2). Over the past
15 years, Russia has attempted to conform to the aesthetic and musical
norms of the ESC, while exhibiting uniquely Russian sensibilities – the
duality of Russian cultural politics that, as we have been arguing, reflects
Russia’s self-positioning as a new Euro-Asian entity, a strategy that paid
off in 2008 with Bilan’s victory.
Russia first appeared at the ESC in 1994 with the song ‘Vyechniy strannik’
[‘Eternal wonderer’] , performed by aspiring singer Youddiph, and
took ninth place. The choice of singer was as emblematic as it was
misguided: Youddiph’s quirky, jazz-tinged song was intended to show
off the new Russia’s musical sensibilities but failed to impress voters.
Russia then fielded the heavy artillery of the king and queen of the
Russian pop stage, Philip Kirkorov and Alla Pugacheva, in 1995 and
116 European Margins & Multiple Modernities
1997, respectively, but to little avail. Success finally arrived in 2000,
when Russia was represented by 16-year old Alsou (daughter of Lukoil
top executive Ralif Safin and widely known as ‘the Oil Princess’), singing
‘Solo’ by Andrew Lane and Brandon Barnes – a catchy number with
English lyrics. The performer was young, attractive, and naïve enough
to believe that ‘what helped was that it was the first contest in [her] life,
and [she] wasn’t quite aware of the responsibility so [she] didn’t have
much stage fright’ (qtd. in Mikheev et al., 2000). The mise-en-scène of
her act was in line with the European audience’s expectations; her pink,
sexy outfit was designed by the London couturier Maria Grachvogel,
then the Spice Girls’ regular designer and stylist. Arguably, Alsou took
second place that year because her producers had for the first time succeeded
in offering a Russian version of the ESC formula of success: the
four performative qualities of a ESC act, along with heavy media coverage
and strong financial support. Her success marked the beginning of
Russia’s more focused and concerted pursuit of Eurovision gold, which
involved, in the words of the director of the 2009 Moscow ESC, getting
advice from ‘everybody who was or is somebody’ in Eurovision and
European TV (qtd. in Eurovision Song Contest, 2009), and consciously
modelling their singers and musical material on Europop.
After Alsou’s 2000 performance, Russia’s ascent to the ESC summit
continued with t.A.T.u’s third place with ‘Ne ver’, ne boisya, ne prosi’
in 2003; Bilan’s second place with ‘Never Let You Go’ in 2006; and
Serebro’s third place with ‘Song no. 1’ in 2007. Bilan’s 2008 number,
‘Believe’, composed by Jim Beanz (James Washington) and Bilan,
received 272 votes with the maximum 12 points from many former
Soviet states, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, and
Armenia (along with Israel), and it brought Russia the long-awaited
Eurovision gold. The song’s lyrics, such as ‘I believe: I can do it all/Open
every door/Turn unthinkable to reality/You’ll see – I can do it all and
more’ (The Eurovision Song Contest Final, 2008), brought Bilan personal
recognition and congratulations from both President Medvedev and
Prime Minister Putin. Bilan’s post-contest comments aligned his success
with official state endeavours: ‘We continued the string of beautiful
victories taking place one after another ... In sports, this is basketball,
soccer, hockey and the chance to host the 2014 Olympics in Sochi’ (qtd.
in Kishkovsky, 2008).
Dressed in a white shirt and matching trousers, the colour of youth
and innocence (and the colour of Eurovision victory) Bilan started his
song alone, sitting at the tip of a thrust stage surrounded by the audience,
cultivating a sense of intimacy with his listeners. He sang in ‘nearly
Yana Meerzon & Dmitri Priven 117
Figure 5.1 2008 ESC winner Dima Bilan (centre) performing ‘Believe’ with Edvin
Marton (left) and Yevgeni Plushchenko
Source: Indrek Galetin.
flawless English’, ‘frequently flashed his bare chest’ (Kishkovsky, 2008)
and alternated sitting, lying, and kneeling, all of which added to the
sex appeal of his number. With the second part of the act and the lyrics
‘Nothing else can stop me if I just believe/And I believe in me’, Bilan
stood up and moved centre stage, where Olympic champion ice skater
Yevgeni Plushchenko, dressed in a white shirt and black trousers, twirled
around Bilan, while the Ukrainian/Hungarian virtuoso violinist Edvin
Marton,3
also dressed in white, supported the singer’s determination to
believe in his own powers with a musical intervention on his magical
Stradivarius. The act reached a crescendo with the lines ‘nothing else
can stop me if I just believe’, as the trio lined up on their knees across
the platform gesturing towards the audience, and triumphantly finished
with Bilan singing: ‘and we believe in you’ (Figure 5.1). The gesture and
the song suggested the self-assurance of the singer and the country that
he represented, as well as their openness to the new audiences and the
new markets of the West.
By combining the talents of Bilan (a classically trained singer capable
of performing 18th-century opera), Plushchenko, and Marton, the
Russian ESC producers offered not only a strong artistic bid but also
an ideological statement targeted at domestic and international audiences.
The Bilan–Plushchenko–Marton combo signified the newly rising
power of the post-communist Russia. It generously contributed to the
longstanding image of ‘Russianness’ that the country has been selling
to the West during the communist period by re-enforcing the masculine
authority and power that was associated with the militarist and somewhat
aggressive Soviet Russia. At the same time, it capitalized on another
stereotype of Russia’s cultural superiority dating back to Soviet times: the
118 European Margins & Multiple Modernities
talented singer was backed up by the Olympic champion figure skater
and the virtuoso violinist, all products of Russia’s excellent training system
in arts and sports. More specifically for the contest itself, the victory
demonstrated, as 2009 ESC producer Konstantin Ernst suggests, that by
that point the Russian TV authorities had not only learned lessons about
ESC aesthetics (by creating an act that did not necessarily promote the
country’s musical distinctness) but also proved themselves able to create
a performative product that could win the ESC battle of national prides
and sensibilities (qtd. in Eurovision Song Contest, 2009), because for
Russia, ‘Eurovision [is] not just a song contest. It is an opportunity to
show off, and ... to defend the face of the homeland’ (qtd. in Eurovision
Song Contest, 2012).
The subsequent, triumphant staging of the ESC in Moscow reflected
the then-current tenets of Medvedev–Putin’s domestic politics: taming
Russian private business; merging the structures of power with those
of financial, industrial, and media oligarchies; making oil industries
and profits serve the building of a national idea; and manipulating
the population’s votes. As with many other projects aired on Channel
1 Russia, the 2009 ESC served the Medvedev–Putin government
as a tool to market a post-Soviet, open, tolerant, and democratic new
Russia to both domestic and foreign audiences. In Ernst’s view, it was
mainly the ‘external political effect’ that the organizers were after (qtd.
in The Economist, 2009). The 2009 ESC, like any other international
event hosted by Russia, including the 1980 Olympic Games, was perceived
by the Russian authorities as an opportunity for self-affirmation
through massive spending: hosting the ESC cost £26 million, at that
point the largest ESC budget in the contest’s history. Writing about the
finances involved, as well as Putin’s personal engagement in monitoring
preparations for the contest, the witty Economist suggests: ‘In the past
Kremlinologists monitored Soviet leaders by their line-up above Lenin’s
mausoleum. Now it is by their appearance at Eurovision’ (ibid.).
The 2009 Russian ESC performative endeavour
According to Vladimir Aksyuta, artistic director of the 2009 ESC, the
Russian organizers raised the technology bar so high that any subsequent
host nation had a hard act to follow (Eurovision Song Contest,
2009). They made a serious point of hiring world-class lighting, sound,
and stage designers, and brought in 30 per cent of all the LED screens
available in Europe. The 2009 ESC had the largest audience and the
widest media coverage of any contest to date; Moscow’s Olympiysky
Arena became, for the duration of the contest week, Europe’s biggest
Yana Meerzon & Dmitri Priven 119
concert venue. Hence, the general perception in the media was as if this
had been not only a musical but also a logistics competition.
The opening ceremony took place in the Manege, adjacent to the
Kremlin and Red Square. It began with a dance act performed by a
military dance troupe, followed by a potpourri of ESC-winning songs
from the past performed by the children’s ensemble Neposedy, and
a variety of ESC songs mixed with Russian folk music performed by
famed Russian balalaika player Aleksey Arkhipovsky. The ceremony also
featured several past Eurovision performers, the choice of whom exemplified
Russia’s tendency to create a transgenerational and transgeographical
continuity of memory from the Soviet period to the present,
from Western Europe to Russia. Notably, Moscow welcomed the first
ESC winner, Lys Assia, who performed her 1956 winning song, ‘Refrain’.
The German act Tschenghis Khan (ESC winners in 1979) and the Dutch
group Teach-In (the 1975 contest winners), who enjoyed immense popularity
in the Soviet Union during the disco era, also appeared among
the invited artists. Hence, the opening show and the Moscow ESC in
general were intended to evoke the imaginary temporal space, along the
lines of restorative nostalgia, that Russian state TV creates for its citizens
and, now, for international audiences.
Emblematically, it was the firebird from Russian folktales – the bird
that brings good fortune – that reigned over the 2009 contest. The first
semifinal opened with a fairy tale about two little girls (played by Masha
and Nastya Tolmachev, the winners of the 2006 Junior ESC), who sought
advice about how to fly from plants and magic horses. The fairy tale
continued accompanied by projections of creatures from other Russian
fairy tales, including the firebird itself, which eventually materialized
and flew 30 metres above the audience. The bird brought the two girls
onto the stage to discover a magic tree capable of granting the girls’ –
and thus the Eurovision contestants’ – wishes, because it is only the song
that ‘can give people wings’ (Eurovision Song Contest, 2009). The choice
of this symbol and the fairy-tale narrative exemplified the tendencies of
Russian culture and music to cater to European tastes and standards,
while enriching the country’s creative output with its folk traditions.
The firebird allowed the 2009 ESC producers to exploit a ‘folk’ vision of
Russianness familiar to the Western gaze: the symbol spoke equally well
to both domestic and foreign audiences.
At the same time, the design choices and the many international performers
in the opening gala symbolized the Russian hosts’ European
tastes and high level of cultural awareness. The contest stage was
designed by New York-based scenographer John Casey, who had worked
on the 1997 ESC in Dublin. Creating his stage fantasy in Moscow, he
120 European Margins & Multiple Modernities
pursued a longstanding interest in Russian constructivism and avantgarde
theatre design: he managed to introduce ‘Russian avant-garde
art into a contemporary setting, almost entirely made up of different
types of LED screens’ (Sandberg, 2009). This design involved a
particular positioning of screens and mirrors over the performance
area, allowing for unusual colour and image combinations that were
evocative of El Lissitsky’s and Kandinsky’s paintings, and Rodchenko’s
photographs. This combination of historical imagery with advanced
technological performance added a special visual flavour to the Moscow
contest (see Figure 3.1). It both spoke to the nation-building desires
of the Russian authorities and catered to Europeans’ expectations of
Russianness. Invited to participate in the opening of the final, Cirque
de Soleil served this purpose too. It performed Enfant Prodigue/Prodigal
Son, which featured, among other images, flying matryoshka dolls, and
midgets descending from the sky in hot air balloons. Both of these
images were curiously reminiscent of the flying bear from the 1980
Olympic Games. The number ended with Bilan being flown in to reprise
the previous year’s winning song.
The 2009 ESC also spoke to the official ideology positioning Russia
as a buffer state between Europe and Asia, via, for example, the
song it chose for the competition.4
Russia fielded the Ukranian singer
Anastasia Prikhodko with the much-publicized song ‘Mamo’ (Mother).
Beyond the iconicity of choosing not to sing in English at home,
the fact that the song was performed in Russian and Ukrainian was
in line with political tendencies towards rapprochement between the
two countries after a decade and a half of political and economic
animosity.5
As Ernst explains, the choice of Prikhodko to represent
Russia ‘personifies our [Russia’s] pan-European approach to ESC, because
Anastasia’s father is Russian, her mother Ukrainian, she gained fame
in Russia, the music was written by an ethnic Georgian, and the original
lyrics are by an Estonian. All this fits well with our international
vision of this contest’ (qtd. in Eurovision Song Contest, 2009). Interesting
to note here is Ernst’s interpretation of the phrase ‘pan-European’.
All of the geographical references in relation to Prikhodko and her
song happen to be as post-Soviet as they are European, again in
line with Russia’s desire to build a new post-Soviet space that is
pan-Slavic and pan-Asian; or, in other words, to restore the culturaleconomic
and ideological hegemony of Russia within the territory of
the former Soviet Union – an interesting statement on the country’s
vision of Europeanness coming from a person in charge of televized state
ideology.
Yana Meerzon & Dmitri Priven 121
However, after the 2009 ESC, the interests of the Russian government
and, therefore, the executive management of Channel 1 Russia shifted
towards different nation-building projects. The 2010 Russian ESC contestant,
Petr Nalich, was selected and supported by Rossiya 1, a smaller
state-controlled TV channel. Asked whether he was ready to fight a
Russian victory at the 2010 ESC after the country’s unfortunate performance
at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Nalich said: ‘I don’t
think we should treat a song contest as the Olympic Games, because
music is not sport. If you treat music as a competitive sport and demand
that a singer win at all cost, the music only gets worse’ (2010).6
Conclusion: The Buranovo Grannies, ESC 2012
Many Russian show-business personalities consider Russia’s 15-yearlong
effort to win the ESC as evidence of several inferiority complexes.
Besides the most obvious complex related to the country’s loss of superpower
status, there is also an inferiority complex in the area of pop
music. The popular sentiment – if Russia wins Eurovision, it will prove
that it has become a world leader in pop music – should be taken with a
grain of salt, according to Troitsky (2005). The closest Russian pop music
has ever come to European, let alone world, pop music standards and
markets was with t.A.T.u. Russian popular singers’ target audiences have
been, and remain, in Russia proper, the Russian-speaking population of
the former member states of the Soviet Union, and the Russian-speaking
diasporas of Europe, Israel, North America, and Australia (Breitburg,
2010).7
As a result, Russia’s participation in the ESC can serve as a
performative mirror on the country’s economic and geopolitical processes
over the past two decades. Back in 2000, Alsou’s second-place
finish reflected important political and economic changes happening in
Russia at the beginning of Putin’s presidency, specifically in terms of the
state reclaiming control of the energy sector. It was not a coincidence
that Ralif Safin, a top executive at Lukoil at the time, decided to sponsor
his daughter, Alsou, to perform in the ESC. It seems no less a coincidence
that it was with Alsou that Russia’s serious financial and artistic
investment in Eurovision began. Accordingly, to speak of the Russian
government’s ideological influence over the country’s ESC choices, and
the strategy that finally brought the competition to Moscow in 2009, is
also to speak of the continuous merger of money (i.e. significant private
businesses, such as Lukoil) with state power. The lavish 2009 contest
budget exemplifies the outcomes of the process. In this context, one can
state that Bilan’s 2008 performance was a currency much more stable
and attractive than the ruble.
122 European Margins & Multiple Modernities
Geopolitically speaking, Russia’s participation in the ESC reflects a certain
stand that the state-run media (and through it the ruling United
Russia party of Putin–Medvedev) have taken in terms of how they position
Russia in the post-Soviet space. The unique geopolitical position
that Russia sees itself occupying in today’s balance of world power – a
uniquely Euro-Asian position that serves as a sociocultural bridge and
economic buffer zone between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region –
is also reflected in the choice of performers and acts representing
Russia over the past decade, and in the performative choices in contest
programming during the 2009 ESC in Moscow.
Ultimately, this chapter argues that for Russia its involvement in
the ESC has become increasingly more important as a national reaffirmation
device, both in economic and cultural terms, and for both
internal and external use (Figure 5.2). It was not surprising in this
context to see the folk band Buranovskiye Babushki (the Buranovo
Grannies) as the country’s 2012 official ESC entry. The group lives
in the village of Buranovo in the Malopurginsky district of Udmurtia
(an autonomous republic in the Volga region) and sings Udmurt folk
songs in its native language. The fact that it was selected to represent
Russia at the ESC 2012 is indicative of the country’s attempts
to build the image of a strong state that is sensitive to its ethnic
Figure 5.2 2012 Russian ESC entry, the Buranovskiye Babushki
Source: Thomas Hanses.
Yana Meerzon & Dmitri Priven 123
minorities. It is also in line, although paradoxically, with the Russian
ESC formula of success. ‘Party for Everybody’, the group’s ESC number
was a new song composed by Viktor Drobysh and Timofey Leont’ev,
with lyrics by Ol’ga Tukhtareva (one of the group’s vocalists) and the
American poet Mary Susan Applegate, who has also worked with Kylie
Minogue and the German synthpop duo Modern Talking. The new song
is danceable and catchy, and it is sung in two languages – Udmurt
and English. An invitation to sing and dance, the song presents the
grannies happily setting tables while waiting for guests to arrive and
sing together ‘really loud’, so ‘the boredom will go away’ (Radio Golos
Rossii, 2012).
Dressed in somewhat stylized Udmurt national costumes, the
Buranovo Grannies impress their audiences with their performative
appeal, energy, simplicity, and openness. Although some music critics
saw the duo of former winner Bilan and Julia Volkova, with their megahit
‘Back to Her Future’, as a more mainstream option for Russia in
ESC 2012, the final round of the national competition brought them
only 29.25 votes, whereas the Buranovo Grannies received 38.51 votes
(Gasparyan, 2012). What contributed to their national victory was, it
seems, the third factor of the ESC formula of success: the contestant’s
‘naiveté, energy and truthfulness’, their charm and ability to act ‘not
quite mainstream’, to be ‘original and very sincere’ (Breitburg, 2010).
Moreover, for many people who voted for the Grannies, the group’s
seeming disengagement with current Russian politics, and the (also
seeming) absence of strong producers who can dictate their own politics
in the world of pop music, played a particular role.
The Buranovo Grannies came second in ESC 2012. Their stay, while
in Baku, was at the villa of Emin Agalarov, the son-in-law of Azerbaijan’s
president Ilham Aliyev – himself a businessman and a pop singer.
Although this may have started some rumours of nepotism, the sincerity
and wholesomeness of the group were seen by the contest’s
winner, Loreen, as a major contributing factor towards their success
(Vovk, 2012). While they were dancing and singing in Baku, their importance
to their local community was affirmed: they were awarded the
title of People’s Artists of Udmurtia; and Aleksandr Volkov, President
of Udmurtia, promised to allocate 1 million rubles (around £20,000) to
restore the Church of St. Trinity in the village of Buranovo, which had
been destroyed in the 1930s (Vovk, 2012). Ultimately, the participation
of the Buranovo Grannies in ESC 2012 may once again be indicative of
a desire of Russia’s leadership to position the country in a certain light
both domestically and internationally, this time as a strong but tolerant
and friendly state.
124 European Margins & Multiple Modernities
Notes
1. This unity was the cornerstone of a nationalist manifesto written in 1832 by
Sergey Uvarov, minister of education for Tsar Nicholas I, and is still flaunted by
several cultural icons in today’s Russia (notably filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov).
2. A disconnect evident in the 1970s and 1980s, between state-sanctioned pop
music and the semi-underground rock music scene, has now been completely
glossed over by aged representatives from both camps being invited to perform
in Channel 1 programmes; everyone is now equally part of the country’s
cultural legacy, with nostalgia being the great cultural and social equalizer.
3. Marton was born in an area of Ukraine largely populated by ethnic
Hungarians. He trained at the Tchaikovsky Central Music School in Moscow.
4. Today’s dominant political discourse in Russia, marked by calls to recognize
the uniqueness of Russia’s geopolitical position (see Kratochvíl, 2008; White
et al., 2010), re-enforces the government’s preoccupation with a neo-EuroAsian
idea. Putin has frequently voiced the country’s desire to be perceived
as a Euro-Asian rather than a European nation (see Laruelle, 2008: 7–8). This
position, according to Marlène Laruelle (2008) and Mark Mazawer (2011), is
conditioned by Russia’s tendency to seek the support of, and influence on, its
former Soviet co-constituents in order to create an alliance that might serve
as an economic link between the economies of the EU and the Asia-Pacific
region. Moreover, today the government’s policy ‘is far from seeking to isolate
Russia from the international capitalist economy, as the Soviet regime
did. Nor is it intending to compete with the US as a global power. However,
it does seek to become ... a “regional superpower” ’ (Remington, 2008: 249).
Thus, the government would recognize ‘a united Eurasia in opposition to
the transatlantic West’ as the mechanism to assure ‘protection from external
threats and increasing global competition’, something made possible by the
Commonwealth of Independent States’ ‘common intellectual potential and
united efforts’ (Putin ctd. in Torbakov, 2004).
5. A pan-Slavic discourse has recently reappeared in Russian TV shows, with
1960s–1980s Soviet TV personalities reminiscing about the good old days
when Ukraine was still part of the USSR (read Russia); we can read Prihodko’s
presence as Russia’s representative at the 2009 ESC as part of this wave of
nostalgia.
6. Despite his less-than-ambitious take on the contest, Nalich was placed a
respectable 11th in the 2010 ESC.
7. As an example, 2009 ESC winner Alexander Rybak, who was born in Belarus
and is now a Norwegian national, was embraced by Russian-speaking audiences
in Russia and in the diaspora.