Igor Fyodorovich Letov

Who was Igor Fyodorovich Letov?

Igor Fyodorovich "Yegor" Letov was a Russian musician, poet, and conceptual art painter, best known as the founder and leader of the post-punk/psychedelic rock band Grazhdanskaya Oborona. He was also the founder of a conceptual art project called "Communism" that mocked the Soviet propaganda style and played with Siberian singer-songwriter Yanka Dyagileva.

A prolific musician, Letov was also a polarizing figure in the Soviet Union. He was controversial in the mid-to-late 1980s when he satirized the Soviet system and helped develop a gritty Siberian punk sound. After the fall of the Soviet Union, during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, he became disillusioned with Yeltsin's government and developed a fan base among nationalists and communists. Yegor Letov was one of founders and the first members of National Bolshevik Party. He later distanced himself from National Bolshevism and embraced Stalinism.

In an interview, Letov expressed that his favorite poets were Alexander Vvedensky, one of the OBERIU writers, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. He also expressed his interest in Conceptualism, and spoke of his own work in punk music and in creating a public image as a work of conceptual performance art. His favorite writers were Henry Miller, Andrei Platonov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Kōbō Abe and Kenzaburō Ōe. Letov also was highly influenced by Kurt Vonnegut and William S. Burroughs.