1982 "Time Machine" bullying

35 years ago, on April 11, 1982, an article by Nikolai Krivomazov "Blue Bird Stew" was published in Komsomolskaya Pravda. It contained a letter signed by several figures of Soviet culture (including the writer Viktor Astafiev) and directed against the musical group Time Machine. A persecution campaign began against the musicians. They were accused of the fact that in their work there are "echoes, and even direct borrowings from the practice of dead foreign rock bands."

However, a sharply negative reaction from readers to the article brought the campaign to a halt. Group leader Andrey Makarevich recalled: "I saw bags of letters in the editorial office under the general motto" Hands off "Machine". From time to time the bags were burned, but new ones came. Written by students and soldiers, schoolchildren and collective farmers, workers and individual intellectuals. Collective letters were supplemented with rolls of signatures. I did not expect such a rebuff. In the paper, too, I think. Therefore, they immediately smiled and reduced everything to such a general toothless controversy: the case, they say, is young, and opinions here can be, in general, different ... "