The DJ Who 'Brought Down' the USSR: The Life and Legacy of Seva Novgorodtsev by Michelle S. Daniel (review)
2023; Maney Publishing; Volume: 101; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/see.2023.a912476
ISSN2222-4327
Tópico(s)Soviet and Russian History
ResumoReviewed by: The DJ Who 'Brought Down' the USSR: The Life and Legacy of Seva Novgorodtsev by Michelle S. Daniel Andrei Rogatchevski Daniel, Michelle S. The DJ Who 'Brought Down' the USSR: The Life and Legacy of Seva Novgorodtsev. Modern Biographies. Academic Studies Press, Boston, MA, 2023. 292 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $149.00; $25.00. Seva Novgorodtsev (real name Vsevolod Borisovich Levenshtein, b. 1940 in Leningrad) is a retired radio presenter who worked at the BBC Russian Service between 1977 and 2015 and was awarded an MBE (2005) for his services. Trained in the USSR as a naval officer and English interpreter, in the mid 1960s Seva (as he is commonly known) became a professional jazz musician, playing [End Page 556] saxophone in Iosif Vainshtein's orchestra and then briefly managing the Dobry molodtsy band, before emigrating to the West in 1975 and eventually settling in London. At the BBC Russian Service, Seva anchored a regular shortwave programme about popular Anglophone rock music, airing a selection of soundtracks after listening to ten to fifteen albums per week. Owing to the dearth of information about such music in the USSR and despite the intermittent radio signal jamming, he gained a cult status among his audiences behind the Iron Curtain (present writer included). Daniel justifiably calls Seva 'a rock priest' (p. 224) and 'a fully embraced icon' (p. 239). Moreover, even though Seva's 'primary intention was to inform and entertain' (p. 141), his microphone apparently transformed rock tunes into a 'precursor to change in a totalitarian regime' (p. 77) at a time when music and politics were inseparable and an annotated hit parade could feel as significant as a current affairs programme. Daniel's monograph is the first book-length attempt in English to chart and explain Seva's remarkable impact in the context of the Cold War, involving the comparable experience and input of his colleagues and competitors on both sides of the Iron Curtain, including Willis Conover (a jazz presenter at the Voice of America radio station), Semen Yossman (aka Sam Jones, also of the BBC Russian Service) and Artemii Troitskii (who started his music journalist career in the Soviet youth journal, Rovesnik). Daniel concentrates on the relationship between these journalists, who aimed to counter 'communist ideology with Western [and Westernized] music and culture' (p. x), on the one hand, and their listeners — mostly youngsters — on the other. Her sources comprise visuals, sound recordings, press cuttings and fan mail from various archives (some of them private), as well as secondary literature on the use of radio for propaganda purposes, at home and abroad, by both Communist and anti-Communist regimes ('soft power combatting soft power', as Daniel puts it; p. 105). Quotes from Seva's autobiography, Saksofon pokhozh na integral (Saxophones Resemble the Integral Sign, St Petersburg, 2011), taking his life journey up to the point of emigration, and the programme series, Rok-posevy (Planting Rocks, first published in two volumes in Russia in the 1990s), about such bands as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, provide the reader with samples of Seva's disarmingly informal storytelling style. Seva accounted for his success as a radio DJ thus: 'I had been touring Russia with a band for twelve years before the emigration, so I understood the audience. […] I saw enough of the hardships of young people in faraway towns, who felt absolutely miserable. […] I tried to entertain them, […] to show them that there is some other way of life… In general, I treated them like friends, and it was important for me that the programme was captivating and funny' (p. 95). As a [End Page 557] result, for his estimated audience of twenty-five million, predominantly male, Seva became not only a go-to data supplier but a 'paternal role model' (p. 3), 'friend and mentor' (p. 10). One Soviet fan called him 'a longtime ray of light in the darkness of totalitarianism' (p. 195). Another went as far as to claim: 'My life has been consumed by love for Seva. He […] shaped my language, my speech, my taste. I owe him a lot. […] He is to me the Man from the Stars, although...
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