Poke This

Iconic rocker Boris Grebenshchikov likely knew what would happen when he recently posed with Mikheil Saakashvili in Odessa, Ukraine – a region the former Georgian president (and bête noire of the Kremlin) heads and is trying to cleanse of corruption.

Merely by standing alongside Saakashvili, who promptly posted the image on Facebook, the singer-songwriter, known to millions as simply “BG,” joined a growing class of political pariahs.

Russian officialdom now keeps a watchful eye on the country’s musical landscape, alert for any perceived “treachery.” Legendary guitarist Andrei Makarevich has already been shunned for his pro-Ukraine views, as has 90s phenomenon Zemfira Ramazanova, after she unfurled a Ukrainian flag at a concert.

BG has long preferred detached, highbrow poetry to confrontational protest, and despite a decades-long anti-Soviet pedigree, has never overtly joined the anti-Putin demonstrations.

One lawmaker, Alexei Zhuravlev, upon seeing the photo, proclaimed BG “redacted from history” for meeting with an “enemy of Russia.”

“Rock-n-roll is dead, and Borya is dead for our fans,” Zhuravlev said.

For his part, Borya likely cares little for state perks: after all, in his youth he was ousted from the Komsomol, and his group, Aquarium, was banned in 1980 after playing at a festival in, ironically, Tbilisi.

A year ago, after a state TV channel used one of his songs as the soundtrack for a bellicose video montage about Ukraine, BG released a new song, Love in Time of War, inspired equally by Dylan and Tolstoy, and which he said he wrote in advance of the events of 2013/2014. One particularly telling stanza goes:

И я не помню, кем был, и не знаю, кем стал,
Но кровь моя теперь сильнее, чем сталь,
Им крепко не повезет, когда я проснусь.

I don’t remember who I was, or who I’ve become
But my blood is now stronger than steel,
They’ll be damn unlucky when I wake up…