April 16, 2014
A lawmaker from
Russia's ruling political party has lashed out at legendary Soviet rock
musician Viktor Tsoi, accusing him of having been a CIA agent who worked to
destroy the U.S.S.R. with a song that demanded social and political
"change."
The iconic song titled
"We Want Change!" — released amid the easing of Soviet restrictions
on the freedom of expression in the late 1980s — was supposedly
"given" to Tsoi by CIA spymasters, Deputy Yevgeny Fyodorov from the
United Russia party said in a video published early April on his website.
While Fyodorov conceded
that Tsoi was a "brilliant singer, truly super-popular in the Soviet Union,"
he added that "at some point he started singing different kinds of songs,
not like the ones he sang before."
Unidentified sources
had "investigated" and "discovered that all the later songs were
brought to [Tsoi] from America," Fyodorov said.
"There were
specially appointed people in the CIA behind Tsoi, who worked with him, gave
him grants, gave him those songs and so one."
Fyodorov is no stranger
to conspiracy theories, having earlier alleged the most of the Kremlin
administration and the government were controlled by agents run by the U.S.
State Department, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was a lone freedom
fighter standing up against Western "occupants."
More recently, Fyodorov
co-signed a request to the Prosecutor General's Office to open an investigation
against former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev for his role in the 1991
Soviet collapse.
Tsoi, who died in a car
crash at the age of 28, had a tremendous cult following in the Soviet Union. In
an obituary following his 1990 death, then-Communist youth daily Komsomolskaya
Pravda said the artist "means more to the young people of our nation than
many political leaders, healers or writers because he never lied and never
dissimulated."
The iconic status of
Tsoi's music has also endured beyond Russia. During the recent Ukrainian
protests that have toppled the country's Moscow-backed administration, scores
of videos posted by YouTube users were accompanied by the sound of the artist's
raspy voice, urging: "'Change!' Our hearts demand."
