Marc Almond: In Search Of Vadim Kozin

Marc Almond travels to Moscow in search of the marvelous Russian tenor Vadim Kozin, tango-singer and superstar. The darling of the Soviet Union, Kozin melted hearts by the tens of millions in the 1940s, playing to packed concert halls and rallying Red Army troops in World War 2. 

Kozin made dozens of hit records and lived the high-life of a celebrity in the most rarified circles around Stalin. But he vanished one day in 1944 when the secret police arrested him and sent him to the GULAG for homosexuality. * His records were pulled from the shops, his voice from the radio. The public thought him dead, but Kozin would spend the next 50 years in Siberia, still singing and performing in the strange looking-glass world of internal exile.

BBC World Service. 

The producer, Monica Whitlock, writes about Vadim here.

* Possibly not really for homosexuality. He was released in 1950.

TV Review: Rudolf Nureyev - Dance To Freedom

Я всегда полагал, что Радолф Нереиев будет предателем его советской родины, но я наслаждался этой программой очень.
It - о том, как в 1961, он перешел на сторону Запада.
, Но эта телевизионная игра показывает, что доброжелательные российские власти позволяют ему идти!
Nureyev сыгран знаменитой балериной Артем Овчаренко - он красив, волшебными глазами.
Это было большой и неотразимой драмой, хотя в конец каждый заключает, что Nureyev был эгоистичным влагалищем!

Наблюдают это на BBC iPlayer.

PS Here's a Guardian article about Nureyev's 'defection' and the programme.

Guy Burgess: The Spy Who Was Slut-Shamed

Guy Burgess (all three pictures) became an agent for the Soviet Union after leaving Cambridge University in 1935. It was well known that he exploited the blackout in wartime London to pounce on and pick up young servicemen for his own pleasure and locked in the drawer of his desk was evidence of his twin vices: a bottle of gin and a book on flagellation. The dangerous flaws in his character were obvious to all, yet his job in the news department, briefing the Press, meant he was privy to almost all material produced by the Foreign Office, including top secret telegraphic communications, along with the keys for decrypting them. 

Daily Mail.

See, you just can't trust these buggers.

PS 'The most promiscuous man who ever lived' bit is an actual scientific fact!

Cosmonauts: The First Gay Man In Space

Cosmonauts: Birth Of The Space Age, The Science Museum, London, from September 18th.

The cosmonauts who wanted to paint the stars red, The Times.

David Cameron: Tinker Tailor Soviets Twink

KGB agents tried to recruit a 19-year-old David Cameron as a Cold War spy during his gap year travels in the Soviet Union.

Or so the story goes when told by the Prime Minister.

But the Kremlin has dismissed the much-told tale, telling Mr Cameron that the 'agents' were in fact dodgy salesmen.

Moscow's secret services delivered a further blow to the Old Etonian by claiming that he had simply been the target of a gay pick-up.

Mr Cameron first told the story in 2006 on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs.

At the time he said: "I travelled on the Trans-Siberian railway... and then met a great friend in Moscow. We went down to the Black Sea and were on the beach in Yalta.

"These two Russians who spoke perfect English sort of turned up on the beach, which was mainly reserved for foreign tourists, and took us out to dinner, and interrogated us in a very friendly way about life in England and politics."

Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda yesterday scotched the idea.

The newspaper quoted Gennady Sokolov, a Russian author and intelligence historian, who said secret service sources had told him that there had been no bid to recruit Mr Cameron.

He said: "If the KGB had a task to work with a 19-year-old unknown young man Cameron, there would have remained certain paperwork on this matter.

"We have cautiously asked well-informed people if there is a file on Cameron in KGB archives. We got a definite reply that there is no such file in the archives, and there was no such file earlier. The KGB was not working on Cameron."

He even claimed to have tracked down the two men and they were in fact black market salesmen attempting to buy banned Western goods from tourists.

He said: "The pair planned to buy some foreign stuff like jeans to resell them later and, after all, to make friends with two nice looking British guys - there was also a gay motive."

The Telegraph.

Mr Cameron may be somewhat naive, but others have already presumed the Russian gentlemen may have had other motives.

Thanks to comrade Darren x.

Victory Day: Thank You Russia!

For the final defeat of fascism in Europe, and the sacrifice of 25 million Russian lives in the Great Patriotic War.

We will never forget.
x

Update: We should never forget - the Soviets won Would War II in Europe. Independent On Sunday.

May Day: Solidarity!

Art: Red Army Men

Red Army Men (1930). Photomontage by Varvara Stepanova.

From Primrose: Early Colour Photography in Russia, Photographers' Gallery London til October 19th.

World War II Day By Day: June 6th 1944

Between June 1941 and June 1944, the Soviet Red Army had fought the German army almost alone.

In Europe, only homegrown partisans and resistance movements also fought back.

It was German losses and the mass deployment of their troops on the Eastern Front enabled the Normandy landings on June 6th to be successful.

On this day Russia was continuing preparations for the delayed Operation Bagration, the largest Allied military operation of World War II.

Bagration opened up the Eastern Front; liberating western Russia and eastern Poland.

It was the German army's greatest defeat, and a key turning point in World War II, leading directly to Hitler's defeat.

June 24th 1944, the first day of this Soviet offensive, is known as 'the Red Army's D-Day'.

Doubtless the other former Allied Powers will be marking the 40th anniversary of this momentous, world-changing, epoch-making event accordingly.

Fagburn: Musclebound

Another pretty unremarkable day in the papers.
The fitting end to a rather dull week at Fagburn Mansions - sorry.
So me and the girls are off to the gym!
But if you fancy a quiet Sunday afternoon snooze, why not try to read about how formerarchbishopofcanterbury Rowan Williams is still really sorry about the whole gay marriage thing.

Small print: This photo is actually 'Soviet Gym Teachers 1956' via the classic @Classic_Pics

Russia: Crude Propaganda

The best thing about the West is you get told what you're allowed to get angry about.

Thanks to fellow comrade Huw Lemmey. x

"It's not really a seering political critique if you find an image that looks a bit Russki then put a rainbow flag on it."

No, wait, how about the age old evil Russian bear cliché?

30 Years On: Cause American big business really cares about your rights.

The Daily Telegraph: Nutcracker

"Throughout western Europe, despite much official counter-effort, there is a strong and persistent association of ballet with homosexuality. Like many such notions, this one is unexamined and misleading: my proposition is that, although the audience of connoisseurs may contain a high proportion of gay men, the roll-call of male dancers presents another story. Insiders explain it to me like this.
"Being in constant intimate contact with beautifully honed and tensile bodies, stimulated by music and choreography of sensual intensity, and excited by the adrenalin rush of performance, ballet dancers are not surprisingly creatures who spend much of their professional lives on high sexual heat. However great the artistic spirituality involved, what we are talking about here is an animal process of courtship and arousal.
"The result is obvious: to put it bluntly, dancers, male and female, are in such a state of readiness that they will grab at anything in a skirt or trousers, leotard or legwarmers, to relieve their itch. Labelling the male-on-male contacts as homosexual or bisexual is missing the point.
"This has not penetrated the consciousness of the man on the Clapham omnibus, where the popular prejudice in relation to male ballet dancers remains a staple of stand-up comedy and schoolboy sniggers.
"Not so in Russia, where ballet is considered a noble profession and the male dancer is honoured and respected...
"Under the communist regime, homosexuality carried the risk of prison or the gulags and was, therefore, simply not discussed, publicly or privately. Strict censorship also meant that any vulgar jokes about bulging pink tights and mincing gaits never had channels through which to circulate..."

Rupert Christiansen, Why Nobody Is Sniggering At Russia's Men In Tights, The Daily Telegraph.
This is a textbook example of how journalist's so often get away with writing absolute nonsense.
Every single sentence can be followed by the comment; "Bollocks!"
Mr Christensen seems to be suggesting that ballet dancers are practically rutting onstage.
While this may be true - and I'll have to take his word for it - it doesn't explain why so many male dancers from Nijinsky to Nureyev are gay offstage, when they're not "on high sexual heat."
And the assertion that there were no anti-gay jokes under the Soviet regime is, well, laughable.