Outside the Bounds of Dimension: Why Yegor Letov Is Not What He Seems
Wednesday 7. May at 19:00 - 22:00
Doors open at 18:30
Laska Bar, Riga
To many, Grazhdanskaya Oborona is just dirty punk for drunk kids in Soviet stairwells. Its founder, Yegor Letov, is remembered as a man of bleak convictions— a preacher of hate and suicide — whose songs were little more than three chords and a barrage of obscenities. A man, too, of alarming inconsistency: first denouncing the Soviet Union, then aligning himself with nationalists and calling for the overthrow of democratic institutions.
Even now, more than a decade and a half after Letov’s death, this version of him still dominates the conversation.
But each of these stereotypes begins to fall apart under scrutiny — from the idea that Letov was a punk at all, to the notion that his ideological shifts lacked coherence. There was a logic to his transformation, and a structure beneath the chaos.
In his upcoming lecture, journalist and critic Alexander Gorbachev offers a radically different portrait of the Grazhdanskaya Oborona frontman: as a prankster and fantasist, whose strategies and ideas remain strikingly relevant in 2025 to anyone thinking in Russian. Letov, Gorbachev suggests, was not just an iconoclast but a cultivated intellectual — an heir to the Russian avant-garde who managed to bring its aesthetics and provocations to the broadest of audiences. After this, even Everything Is Going According to Plan, Letov’s most famous song, might sound entirely new.
Alexander Gorbachev is a journalist, music critic, editor, screenwriter, and publisher. He is the author of the podcast He Saw the Sun about Yegor Letov and of a forthcoming book of the same name, scheduled for release in the summer of 2025. Formerly the editor-in-chief of Afisha magazine, he has also worked as an editor at Meduza and Holod.
Gorbachev is the co-author of several books, including Songs into the Void, about the lost generation of 1990s Russian rock; No Need to Be Shy, a history of post-Soviet pop music; and One for All, chronicling the story of Moscow’s Spartak football club in the 1990s. He also created and co-wrote the documentary series The Spartak Era.
He is currently the editor-in-chief of the StraightForward Foundation, a project that supports the creation and publication of uncensored nonfiction about Russia.
🗓 May 7, 19:00
📍 Laska Bar
Vagonu Street 21
The lecture will be held in Russian.
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Laska Bar • Vagonu iela 21, LV-1009 Riga, Riga, Latvia
