TSOI WALL FOR FANS OF SOVIET ROCK STAR

Tribute to Soviet rock musician

The Tsoi Wall in Moscow (Stena Tsoya, Стена Цоя) is an old wall at 37, Arbat Street (Ulitsa Arbat, улица Арбат) which pays tribute to Soviet rock musician Viktor Tsoi. It a special site for millions of Russian rock music fans, and to be more precise – fans of rock band Kino that ceased to exist when its frontman Viktor Tsoi died way too young in a car crash in 1990. Korean-Russian rock star Viktor Tsoi was a legend in his lifetime, a rebel always wearing black outfit and moving with cat-like grace.

This graffiti-covered “Tsoi Wall” is unique as it emerged as a piece of art spontaneously. It has no architectural value, but is mentioned in many tourist guidebooks as one of Moscow’s landmarks.

The wall, part of an old building, is covered with hundreds of phrases, pictures and symbols, mostly devoted to Viktor Tsoi, who wrote and composed almost all songs for his highly popular in the 1980s band Kino. Many inscriptions are already unreadable due to exposure to weather and old age. Some are hardly readable under fresh spray-painted graffiti. However, this chaotic writing looks stylish and attractive, so many passersby pose for a picture in front of it.

In the 1990s and later ‘armies’ of fans used to get together at the wall, bringing flowers, singing songs or simply talking to each other. Nowadays, 27 years after his death, Tsoi’s name is not as popular as it was back then when he was an idol with his a bit existential lyrics of an outsider. But the wall lives in spite of repeated appeals of the local authorities to rub it down or even demolish.

The first inscription appeared the day after Viktor’s death – on August 15, 1990. It read “Viktor Tsoi died today,” and a couple of days later another fan wrote “Tsoi lives” – the phrase that became a motto for Kino fans.

And then, all of a sudden, crowds of fans flocked to the wall to pay tribute to the rock legend. Some were just bringing flowers, lighting candles, others left inscriptions. There was also a group of staunch fans, who remained on duty on Arbat Street from mid-August till the end of September, which marked 40 days after his death (the 40th Day concludes the 40-day memorial period and has a major significance in Eastern Orthodox traditions).

At the times when mobile phones were unheard of, the Tsoi Wall was used as a site to appoint dates, to leave notes for those who failed to come at the appointed time. Down at the wall there is a kind of an ash-plate, not for smokers but for a rite of leaving half-broken cigarettes in memory of the singer.

In 2006 the wall was vandalized. Some unidentified persons painted the wall over, destroying all inscriptions under the guise of night. But Tsoi fans did a painstaking job to restore the wall bit by bit, using numerous photos. As a result, sometime later the wall looked exactly the way it had used to look.