Russia to reboot Soviet-era song contest as ‘perversion-free’ alternative to Eurovision

The Intervision song contest, a Soviet-era version of the Eurovision song contest that ended in 1980 and is being revived this year on Vladimir Putin’s orders, will be free of “perversion”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.

The contest, Lavrov said, would be “an opportunity for all countries to showcase their best musical traditions without censorship”, adding that over 20 countries had already accepted the invitation to take part.

Lavrov also “guaranteed” that there would be no “perversions or affronts to human nature” at Intervision, implying that this would set it apart from Eurovision, whose degeneracy was described by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova as having “surpassed any orgy, coven, or ritual sacrilege”.

Putin issued a presidential decree on Monday re-establishing the contest in 2025 and stipulating that it would be held in Moscow and the surrounding Moscow region. According to the decree, the objective of the contest is to “improve international cultural and humanitarian cooperation”.

With Russia banned from the Eurovision song contest again this year, the Kremlin is likely counting on its fellow BRICS members — Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE — to be among those taking part.

The call to revive Intervision, a Brezhnev-era alternative to Eurovision, came from Russian Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova in 2023, a year after Russia was first disqualified from Eurovision following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The original Intervision contest, which was launched in 1965, was held sporadically in Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia throughout the 1970s, with the last Soviet-era contest held in 1980 in the Polish city of Sopot. The contest was revived for one year only in 2008, with contestants from 11 former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, competing in the Russian resort city of Sochi.