‘Back in the USSR’: The Paul McCartney solo album released exclusively in Soviet Russia
During the 20th century, the Cold War impacted virtually every aspect of society, with even the most trivial of things reduced to a battle between East and West. Music, for instance, was not as important in the conflict as the race for space or the development of nuclear armaments, but its importance was noted on both sides of the conflict. In the USSR, the vast majority of western rock and pop music was banned for fear that it would discredit the communist way of life, but even Brezhnev could not halt the success of Paul McCartney and The Beatles.
Given that music and vinyl records were under strict scrutiny by the Soviet state, forbidding the state-owned record companies from publishing Western records, music fans across the USSR soon developed an extensive network of bootleggers. Before too long, people across the Eastern Bloc were able to listen to records by groups like The Beatles from lo-fi bootleg records and, often, reel-to-reel tape recordings. Eventually, state-owned label Melodiya had to admit defeat against the all-encompassing power of the ‘Mop Tops’.
During the peak of their global fame, Melodiya published various recordings by The Beatles, though their albums were often edited with certain songs omitted if they were deemed dangerous to Soviet society. Despite this, the landscape of Beatles bootlegs across the Soviet Union only seemed to increase year after year. For Paul McCartney, these bootleg albums held a special place in his heart.
Aside from any social or political connotations, Soviet bootlegs were often visually stunning. Usually accompanied by strange, homemade album artwork or artists’ names rendered in the Cyrillic alphabet. Recognising this, McCartney had the idea to use these Soviet bootlegs as artistic inspiration for the cover of his seventh studio solo album.
Originally, McCartney approached EMI and informed them of the plan: release the album outside of the usual channels, accompanied by Soviet-inspired artwork, and make the record look like it had been smuggled into the UK from Russia. Unsurprisingly, EMI wasn’t overly keen on McCartney’s pitch, preferring instead to release the album through the usual UK distribution channels.
Undeterred, McCartney’s manager pressed a limited run of records in the proposed Soviet-style sleeves as a Christmas gift to the former Beatle. As a result, the songwriter had the bright idea of releasing the album exclusively in the Soviet Union via Melodiya, partly as a gesture of peace between East and West and partly as a means of achieving the ultimate Soviet bootleg album.
In October 1988, Melodiya released an initial run of 40,000 copies of McCartney’s album, Сно́ва в СССР (‘Back in the USSR’), which immediately sold out. Subsequent pressings were just as successful, although copies quickly started popping up outside of the USSR for premium prices. Strangely, though, McCartney chose not to release the album in the West until 1991, although many of the songs featured on the release appeared as B-sides or bonus tracks on other McCartney solo releases during the intervening years.
McCartney’s Russian release coincided with a relaxing of Soviet laws against Western music. Around the same time, Bon Jovi became the first American act to have an official release via Melodiya with the album New Jersey. Both records represented the unifying power of pop music within the otherwise daunting landscape of Soviet totalitarianism and although the music itself wasn’t his best work, McCartney’s Сно́ва в СССР remains perhaps his most interesting solo album for that reason.
