Meet The Soviet Union's Biggest Beatles Fan
Meet Kolya Vasin, Russia's 'Biggest Beatles Fan'
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I used to think I loved the Beatles, until I heard about Kolya Vasin. Only then did I see what loving the Beatles really means. For an essay competition a number of years ago, I wrote on how the Beatles’ influence had ripped a small hole in the Iron Curtain and allowed young Soviets to partake in the largest fanaticism ever surrounding a pop music act. I lost the competition, but in my research process I came across Kolya Vasin, Russia’s ‘No. 1 Beatles Fan’. Over two years ago now, in just the third video I made for this channel, I adapted part of it into a video about the Beatles influence in the USSR. But I was always struck by the strange story of this Soviet man who just loved the Beatles. Kolya campaigned for a series of off the wall Beatles tributes, such as petitioning the local government to rename his hometown of Leningrad to ‘Lennongrad’. When he died in 2018, he was working on perhaps his most ambitious project: the John Lennon Rock ‘n’ Roll Temple. Envisioning a 200-foot shrine on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, Kolya wanted messages of peace and love broadcast across the shoreline, and a full-sized yellow submarine floating on the edge of the Baltic. This was certainly his largest-scale and most ambitious individual project idea, but what is perhaps best known for is his collection of over 11,000 items of Beatles memorabilia. Today it is preserved in the Kolya Vasin Beatles Museum in Russia’s second city, St. Petersburg.
Music Theory, Albert Genower, Video Essay, Kolya Vasin, USSR, Soviet History, Russian History, The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney