April 15, 2024
Alla Pugacheva was the main star of the Soviet stage. After the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, she left the Russian Federation, then returned, and then left again.
She spoke several times against Russia’s war in Ukraine. However, unlike her husband Maxim Galkin, her anti-war rhetoric is milder.
Alla Pugacheva is 75 today. We recall her creative path, her words about Ukraine, the attitude towards her in Russia and whether Pugacheva was out of politics.
Pugacheva and the war
In February 2022, when the Great War began, Pugacheva and her family left Russia, but then she did not call it emigration and assured that she would soon return.
She only occasionally made posts on Instagram, but her husband Maksym Galkin immediately declared that there can be no excuses for war, ridiculed the Russian authorities and transferred money from concerts to Ukrainian refugees.
Galkin recounted the stories of people from the bombed-out Mariupol, talked about a dead baby on the eve of Easter in Odesa, and asked the Russian authorities why they were sending rockets at people’s heads.
Alla Pugacheva mainly responded to her critics from Russia, who spoke extremely harshly about her. For example, she was criticized for leaving and for returning. In 2022 and 2023, Pugacheva visited Russia several times.
Once she posted a video from the old Soviet film “Slave of Love”, where the heroine says: “Gentlemen, you are beasts, you will be cursed by your country, soldiers.”
image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
She dedicated this passage to Russian pro-government director Nikita Mikhalkov, who had previously called her a rat, commenting on her return to Russia. In the post, Pugacheva asked where the beautiful person Nikita Mikhalkov, whom she used to know, had gone.
At the same time, the fact that Pugacheva did not make anti-war statements was also noted in the Kremlin in September 2022.
“I did not hear any anti-Russian statement from Pugacheva, and her husband Galkin made very bad statements, we are clearly not on the same path,” said the spokesman of the Russian president, Dmytro Peskov.
Alla Pugacheva made her first public statement about the war a little later.
When the Russian authorities recognized Galkin as a “foreign agent” in September 2022, Pugacheva broke her silence.
“I ask you to include me in the ranks of foreign agents of my beloved country, because I am in solidarity with my husband, an honest, decent and sincere person, a true and incorruptible patriot of Russia, who wishes the Motherland prosperity, a peaceful life, freedom of speech and an end to the death of our boys for illusory purposes, which make our country an outcast and burden the lives of our citizens,” she wrote on Instagram.
In response, deputies of the Russian State Duma, pro-government artists and public figures were outraged. One of the most famous singers received tons of criticism.
An obscene message addressed to Alla Pugacheva appeared on the building of the famous TV center “Ostankino” in Moscow.
There are criticisms of the singer even now a year and a half after her statement. In April 2024, Deputy of the Russian Parliament Serhii Solovyov called on Alla Pugacheva to publicly apologize “for her mistakes and anti-Russian position.”
“Pugacheva never had any civic position. Her civic position was expressed in the amount of money she was paid,” Russian concert director Sergey Lavrov said about her.
Russian politicians say that Pugacheva belongs in a museum, and some Russian pro-government figures say that she will return to Russia only to die.
Pugacheva reacts to all this in different ways. Mostly in silence, sometimes thanks supporters for their support, posts videos and photos with artist friends who criticize the war and also left.
Sometimes he dedicates posts to ill-wishers: “God, forgive these corrupt creatures, hypocrites and liars, because they do not know what they are doing.”
Or posts a video of dances to the Ukrainian folk song “Oi na gori two oak trees”. Under such posts, real battles of comments unfold – users from Russia curse her. Ukrainians thank you for your support.
Recently, the couple Pugacheva and Galkin supported a three-year-old girl from Ukraine, who sang the Ukrainian song “Million Red Roses” and thanked for Ukraine’s support.
“With all my heart and soul,” Pugacheva wrote to this.
Galkin reposted the video to his stories and wrote a comment in Ukrainian: “May God give you happiness, sunshine.”
In 2023, Pugacheva attended the Rendezvous festival organized by Laima Vaikule in support of Ukraine.
Pugacheva and the Soviet government
Photo by NIKOLAY MALYSHEV/TASS PHOTOCHRONICLE
The current harassment of Alla Pugacheva in Russia reminds the Russian music journalist Denis Boyarynov of what happened to Pugacheva in the late USSR.
In the 80s, the singer was also harshly criticized for her independence and “star disease”.
“She was always too free in expressing her personal, private opinion. She was never involved in ideology,” he says. there were songs that fit into the state ideological matrix. And Pugacheva always lived a private life, and her rebellion and protest consisted in the fact that she did not hide it, as everyone did in the Brezhnev era.”
Alla Pugacheva is called the first pop star of the Soviet Union at a time when pop music and the country’s cultural space were under strong ideological control.
Pugacheva became an artist who was able to turn the Soviet stage upside down, says Russian music journalist Anton Vagin.
“She was the first to move around the stage: then it was customary to stand and sing beautifully, but not to walk. She began to sing about herself, her personality was reflected in the songs, but then it was not accepted at all, the songs were impersonal,” says Vagin.
It was not customary to write one’s own songs, as Pugacheva began to do, as well as to produce one’s own performances. Pugacheva was criticized for her unique way of singing: the professionals of those years thought that she sang “wrongly”.
All these innovations seemed wrong to Soviet officials, but they made a completely different impression on the general public. After the 1975 performance at the international competition “Golden Orpheus” in Bulgaria, Pugacheva quickly became the number one singer in the USSR.
In one of the interviews with the Western press in the early 1990s, Pugacheva said: “I myself have always been perestroika and glasnost.” She, along with some other musicians, was called a harbinger of perestroika.
“Pugacheva’s spirit did not quite correspond to Brezhnev’s stagnation,” says journalist Vagin.
At the same time, the singer never engaged in anti-Soviet activities.
“It cannot be said that Pugacheva was a dissident. She did represent the USSR at international competitions. She did not sing songs about the party, yes. […] But if she was tough in the opposition, she would never have this status,” says Anton Vagin.
Alla Pugacheva was shown a lot on television, her records were published in large quantities. Her music was much more accessible to a wide audience than the same underground rock.
Pugacheva and Putin
Photo by kremlin.ru
In the early 2000s, Pugacheva supported Vladimir Putin when he first came to power in Russia.
A video of the election campaign for the State Duma in 2007 has been preserved on the Internet, where she calls to vote for “United Russia”. And before that, in 1996, she called to vote for Boris Yeltsin, like many liberal public figures at that time.
“As for Putin, I think it’s just a common vibe that many people had: here, a young leader came, and before that he was not young and disappointed everyone,” suggests Anton Vagin. “In contrast, then many believed in Putin. She later quite was quickly rechristened.”
In 2011, Pugacheva supported oligarch Mykhailo Prokhorov, who took third place in the presidential election. After that, Pugacheva did not support politicians.
But she received the order “For Merit to the Motherland” from the hands of Putin.
After 2014, Alla Pugacheva did not go to the annexed Crimea, at least she was not officially seen there.
The artist also spoke out against the harassment of Andrii Makarevych, who since 2014 publicly supported Ukraine and criticized the war unleashed by Russia in the east of the country and the annexation of Crimea.
Propaganda against Pugacheva
Unlike Maxim Galkin’s numerous statements, Pugacheva’s Instagram post in September 2022 in his defense became one of her rare statements about the war. In the comments, Ukrainians thank her, but also reproach her with silence about the victims and the situation in Ukraine.
In Russia, after decades of respect and love, many are trying to show it as an enemy of the people, journalist Denys Boyarinov believes.
The fact that a propaganda machine was launched against Pugacheva indicates that her words are important, the journalist thinks.
“Few people even said something explicit on this topic, and mostly they were young people. And among people of Pugacheva’s age, none of such public figures expressed themselves. Therefore, even such a phrase and such an act – leaving Russia – is already a big event.” , – believes Boyarinov.
The journalist is sure that Pugacheva remains an authority for many people in Russia. In particular, for colleagues in the shop who stayed and are silent about the war.
“I think the fact that she didn’t betray herself, didn’t start to keep silent and avoid a difficult question made an impression on everyone. And we will see the consequences of this act and choice,” he says.
Pugacheva is now called not the most popular artist in Russia, however, she still remains one of the most influential figures in public life, say music critics.
Condemnation of the war by Russian artists does not particularly change the situation in the war, says Taras Topolya, Ukrainian musician, leader of the band “Antitila”.
In his opinion, Pugacheva could have expressed her position more radically
“If we talk about Alla Pugacheva, she has a character. She expressed her position more than once. At some critical moments, when children and women were destroyed here, when crimes were committed in Buch, Borodyanka, perhaps it would be possible to express herself a little more radically. But I did not in their life circumstances, not in their clothes, so that’s okay,” said Taras Topolya.
Alla Pugacheva recently supported the Ukrainian singer Natalya Mogilevska, who was hiding from rockets in Kryvyi Rih.
She calls the Russians who participate in her and her husband’s hate like this: “They were serfs – they became slaves.”
In March, Russian singer Stas Mikhailov criticized Pugacheva and other musicians who went. “They will still crawl on their knees and stand next to Russia and kiss their feet.”
In response, Pugacheva posted a video on her Instagram where she jokingly says in a hoarse “old man” voice: “Stasika, this is me, a voiceless singer, old Alla Pugacheva. What are you scared of? Normal people are not going to go back there, so hustle, earn while you can”. At the end of the clip, she called Mikhailov an asshole.
Maxim Galkin, who publicly condemns the war in Ukraine, was prosecuted in Russia for spreading so-called fakes about the Russian army. He was recognized as a “foreign agent” in the Russian Federation.
Recently, the Russian authorities announced that the procedure for recognizing Alla Pugacheva as a foreign agent had begun.
On April 15, in honor of her birthday, the artist released a new song “Life is too good” for the first time in a long time.
