How the Beatles rocked the Eastern Bloc
While the Beatles were at the height of their success in the West, back in the USSR they were a forbidden influence. But that did not stop them from being heard.
Presiding over his"John Lennon Temple of Peace and Love" in St Petersburg, Kolya Vasin is Russia's ultimate Beatles fan.
An affable bear of a man with a wild beard, Mr Vasin sits amid his fantastic collection of Beatles memorabilia - ceramic statues of the"Fab Four", an All You Need is Love teapot, an Abbey Road street sign - and says:"I fell in love with the Beatles 40 years ago. They became my friends, my spiritual brothers."
Generations of Soviet children have shared his passion for the Beatles.
As Russian cultural commentator Artemy Troitsky says:"The Beatles turned tens of millions of Soviet youngsters to another religion."
Mr Troitsky also insists the Fab Four and their music had a more profound impact.
"They alienated a whole generation from their Communist motherland," he says.
Bigger than Gorbachev?
From Russia to Ukraine and Belarus the Beatles played an important part in the lives of millions behind the Iron Curtain.
Although the band were never permitted to play in the Soviet Union, where they were officially denounced as" capitalist pollution", the"four lads who shook the world" unwittingly helped shake the Soviet system to its knees, according to many of those who spent their 1960s east of the Iron Curtain.
"They destroyed Communism - more than Gorbachev," says Vova Katzman, in Kiev.
A music producer in St Petersburg says The Beatles"produced a cultural revolution, the cultural revolution destroyed the Soviet Union".
To Yuri Pelyushonok, a doctor in Minsk, they"made a quiet revolution in our brains. We had it in our hearts."
In Moscow, leading journalist Vladimir Pozner is emphatic about the significance of the Fab Four.
"The Beatles did more to undermine the system than the most anti-Soviet literature for which people went to jail," he says...
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Presiding over his"John Lennon Temple of Peace and Love" in St Petersburg, Kolya Vasin is Russia's ultimate Beatles fan.
An affable bear of a man with a wild beard, Mr Vasin sits amid his fantastic collection of Beatles memorabilia - ceramic statues of the"Fab Four", an All You Need is Love teapot, an Abbey Road street sign - and says:"I fell in love with the Beatles 40 years ago. They became my friends, my spiritual brothers."
Generations of Soviet children have shared his passion for the Beatles.
As Russian cultural commentator Artemy Troitsky says:"The Beatles turned tens of millions of Soviet youngsters to another religion."
Mr Troitsky also insists the Fab Four and their music had a more profound impact.
"They alienated a whole generation from their Communist motherland," he says.
Bigger than Gorbachev?
From Russia to Ukraine and Belarus the Beatles played an important part in the lives of millions behind the Iron Curtain.
Although the band were never permitted to play in the Soviet Union, where they were officially denounced as" capitalist pollution", the"four lads who shook the world" unwittingly helped shake the Soviet system to its knees, according to many of those who spent their 1960s east of the Iron Curtain.
"They destroyed Communism - more than Gorbachev," says Vova Katzman, in Kiev.
A music producer in St Petersburg says The Beatles"produced a cultural revolution, the cultural revolution destroyed the Soviet Union".
To Yuri Pelyushonok, a doctor in Minsk, they"made a quiet revolution in our brains. We had it in our hearts."
In Moscow, leading journalist Vladimir Pozner is emphatic about the significance of the Fab Four.
"The Beatles did more to undermine the system than the most anti-Soviet literature for which people went to jail," he says...