How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin

The improbable, irresistible story of how the music of the Beatles helped bring down the Soviet Union—plus eight never-before-seen photos of the Beatles from 1964.

Imagine a world where the music of the Beatles was against the law—a world of bootleg recordings scratched onto medical X-rays, merchant sailors smuggling contraband LPs, students kicked out of school for listening to the Fab Four, records seized by police, and illegal broadcasts secretly taped from western radio late in the night. This was no fantasy world populated by Blue Meanies but rather the U.S.S.R., where a vast nation of Beatles fans risked repression to hunt down the music that would change their lives.

The music of John, Paul, George, and Ringo played a vital part in transforming an entire generation of Soviet youth, seducing them to abandon seventy years of bland official culture and liberating them to challenge decades of rigid authoritarianism. Soviet leaders had suppressed most Western popular music since the Jazz Age, but the Beatles and the bands they inspired in the U.S.S.R.—where kids made guitars from kitchen tables—battered down the walls of state culture and prepared millions of fans for a new world.

Leslie Woodhead’s How The Beatles Rocked the Kremlin tells the unforgettable, wild, and unmistakably Russian story of Soviet kids who discovered that all you need is Beatles. By stealth, by way of whispers, through secret bootleg tapes or illicit late night broadcasts, the kids tuned in. “Bitles,” they whispered, “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.”

Leslie Woodhead is one of Britain’s most distinguished documentary filmmakers and made the first-ever film with the Beatles, in 1962. His films have won many international awards, including recognition by the Emmys and Peabodys in America and by BAFTA and the Royal Television Society in the U.K.. He is the author of two books, My Life as a Spy and A Box Full of Spirits. He lives in Cheshire, England.