Rock music existed in the Soviet Union throughout the 1980s, almost entirely outside official channels. Bands recorded on cheap reel-to-reel and cassette equipment and passed copies hand to hand, a distribution network nicknamed magnitizdat, the musical cousin of samizdat’s underground literature. Performing publicly carried real risk; a band’s survival depended on staying just inside or just outside the state’s tolerance, depending on the city, the year, and who was watching.
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