David MacFadyen delves into influential and widely disseminated songs that had a profound social significance in the Soviet Union. He discusses each singer's life, showing what it was that made them famous while placing the differences in their careers and fame in the context of Soviet culture as a whole.

MacFadyen's multi-layered study considers national identity, gender, and the development of individual celebrity in a socialist state. He also looks at whether it is possible for artists to achieve genuine self-expression in a public arena under continuous political scrutiny. Both bold and penetrating, MacFadyen reveals a part of the Soviet Union that, while touching millions of people, has remained almost completely unexamined.

David MacFadyen is a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at UCLA. He has written extensively on Soviet popular culture and is the author of The Sad Comedy of Èl'dar Riazanov and several books on Joseph Brodsky.

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"An original, well-informed, and beautifully written overview of post-Stalinist culture. MacFadyen draws together a wealth of material and presents it in a meaningful, lucid way. His command over the vast body of information on which he draws is impressive and enables the reader to connect in a significant way with what might otherwise have been an embarrassment of riches." Olga Hasty, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University