Volodymyr Ivasiuk became a Soviet pop idol and a Ukrainian hero at the age of 19, when his “Chervona Ruta” was performed on a televised song fest in Moscow by the group Smerivhka and became USSR Song of the Year in 1971. Soviet rock legends Sofia Rotaru and Vasyl Zinkevych performed that song and other tunes for the soundtrack for the film Chervona Ruta, featuring the young composer’s music. It has been covered by numerous singers ever since, including Ukrainian pop heroine Ruslana.

Ivasiuk did not have much time to enjoy his celebrity. The authorities looked at him with increasing skepticism as they realized “Chervona Ruta,” or “Red Flower” in English, about a mythical flower which brings love to a young girl, appealed to Ukrainian nationalists as a coded  message proclaiming cultural distinctiveness. By the 21st century, the song had become incorporated into the canon of Ukrainian folk music.

Ivasiuk was raised in Chernivtsi before heading off to Lviv to study medicine and musical composition. He managed to balance the two careers throughout his 20s. His “I Am Your Wing,” “Ballad about Mallow,” and “Ballad about Two Violins” became underground sensations among young Ukrainian nationalists, despite his denial of any political intent. In April 1979, at the age of 30, he received a mysterious phone call. Three days later he was found hanging from a tree in a nearby forest. Police investigators declared his death a suicide. Few believed the official story, though, and an official forensic examination in 2019 concluded that he could not have hanged himself. More than 10,000 people attended his funeral and his legend has grown over subsequent decades.

Ivasiuk’s rise was part of an effort by Soviet authorities to counter the tidal wave of music rolling in from the West. Moscow officials instructed local party committees to sponsor new bands which exuded approved Soviet values and comportment. Dozens of bands emerged, singing innocent songs which drew on local folk traditions (such as Carpathian folk rhythms) and African American funk music to produce a sound that encouraged young people to dance without passing along shady values. The result was a Soviet pop sound that made the American band The Monkees sound profound.

A few performers such as Ivasiuk created more meaningful music, connecting with as yet subterranean nationalist sentiments, though scores of Soviet youths abandoned the sound as soon as the country opened up to Western bands in the late 1980s. No one seemed to look back as the Soviet Union disintegrated and its components entered a global music culture. But the tale does not end here, as Shukai Record’s Dmytro Prutkin recently explained to Malcolm Jack, pop and rock music editor for Britian’s weekly The Big Issue: “When western music came to market, all this Soviet music, it was like, ‘it’s not interesting. Let’s forget about it. It doesn’t sound like Pink Floyd. It doesn’t sound like Prince. It sounds very common, simple, primitive.’”

A younger generation started searching out records and cassettes at flea markets and found something fresh and intriguing in this sound. The wave of interest grew, prompting filmmakers Vitali Bartdetskyi and Oleksandr Kovsh to pull together a documentary about the sound, Mustache Funk, named for the facial hair sported by many of the bands’ members. Released in 2021, the film struck a chord with Ukrainian audiences.

Seattle’s Light in the Attic Records began working on a compilation of Soviet-era pop music from around the USSR. The Russian full-scale invasion changed these plans, however, leading to the recent issuing of a new collection of Ukrainian language songs dating from 1971 to 1996 that were found in various archives: Even the Forest Hums. 

This renewed interest in Soviet Ukrainian pop represents more than nostalgia for an aging generation of baby boomers. As listeners—evidently including the KGB—understood when listening to Ivasiuk and others, this music spoke to the desire for an independent Ukraine. Trying to redefine Ukrainian art, music, and literature considered an existential threat by the full-scale Russian invasion connects a Soviet-era culture to those fighting for Ukraine’s future today.

The opinions expressed in this article are those solely of the author and do not reflect the views of the Kennan Institute.