Russian chanson
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| National anthem | Anthem of Russia |
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Russian chanson (Russian: Русский шансон, tr. Russkiy shanson) (from French "chanson") is a neologism for a musical genre covering a range of Russian songs, including city romance songs, author song performed by singer-songwriters, and Blatnaya Pesnya or "criminals' songs" that are based on the themes of the urban underclass and the criminal underworld.
The Russian chanson originated in the Russian Empire. The songs sung by serfs and political prisoners of the Tsar are very similar in content to the songs sung in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation today. However, during the Soviet Union, the style changed, and the songs became part of the culture of samizdat and dissent.
During the Khrushchev thaw, the Soviet Union released millions of prisoners from the gulag. When the former prisoners returned from the gulags back to their homes in the 1950s, the songs that they had sung in the camps became popular with Soviet students and nonconformist intelligentsia. Then, in the second half of the 1960s, the more conservative Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksey Kosygin made a slight reversal to this process, albeit never reaching the tight, stringent controls experienced during the Stalin era. This, combined with the influx of cheap and portable magnetic tape recorders led to an increase in the popularity and consumption of the criminal songs. These songs were performed by Soviet bards; folk singers who sung with simple guitar accompaniment. Since Soviet culture officials did not approve of the songs, many of the bards initially became popular playing at small, private student parties. The attendees at these gatherings would record the concert with a tape recorder. The songs of the bards spread through the sharing and recopying of these tapes.
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