Kirill Razumov has posted two videos on YouTube that describe his work on Bob Dylan in the USSR: People, Places, Events (he also presented his work at the 2025 World of Bob Dylan Conference in Tulsa):
Part 1 https://youtu.be/NlAFS9PHhQE
Part 2 https://youtu.be/5DxF47RmDsE
Razumov also noted in his email to the Bob Dylan Book Club: “There are 2 persons who are called "Russian Dylan”, they represent 2 generations of Russians —-Vladimir Vysotsky and Boris Grebenshikov. There was an annual seminar on Vysotsky and Dylan held some years ago in USA, check this https://themacweekly.com/2023/03/macalester-hosts-summit-on-bob-dylan-and-vladimir-vysotsky/
Here are two concert videos that were part of the celebration of Vysotsk and Dylan: Concert 1 and Concert 2.
Razumov writes: “Boris Grebenshikov (BG) was and still is a superstar for my generation. I have wrote a separate chapter in my book explaining that through BG Dylan strongly influenced the Russian youth of 1970-80s. But you can read about it also here, I have cited this work a lot - https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/978a1091-3afd-4633-946a-9daf5f742895/content”
Razumov continues: “Vysotsky was never compared to Dylan at his time ( 1970s). Here we are speaking not about Dylan’s influence on him but about the same role in the society. He was the singer songwriter, writing very serious and important texts, and was incredibly popular in the country. He was in contradiction with authorities, that’s why had few recordings on official TV and just one or two LP . Most of his songs were distributed on tapes, which people were coping from each other. Almost every Soviet family, which had reel or cassette tape recorder, had few tapes of Vysotsky. Here is the example of his singing https://youtu.be/fA_ijj1JfYU?is=ZfpnOg1LgpyHZOhK. Vysotsky died in 1980.
As for BG, who is still very active, touring the world and living in the UK after 2022, he was under big influence of Bob Dylan songs. His style and his poetry can be compared to Dylan. You can find a lot of his music in YouTube by searching for Boris Grebenshikov or for BG or for Aquarium band, that his group. He had an English language LP Radio Silence, which was not so successful, as his Russian language songs.”
For an interesting interview with Grebenshikov for Peace Day in 2025 click HERE.
And for another fascinating story: Kirill Razumov wrote about a Russian TV show’s reference to Tarantula click HERE.
In Chronicles Volume One, page 38: Bob Dylan writes: “There was a book by Count Leo Tolstoy, whose estate I’d visit more than twenty years later—his family estate, which he would used to educate peasants. It was located outside of Moscow, and this is where he went later in life to reject all his writings and renounce all forms of war. One day when he was eighty-two years old he left a note for his family to leave him alone. He walked off into the snowy woods and a few days later they found him dead of pneumonia. A tour guide let me ride his bicycle.”
In Chronicles, Dylan also writes of his family history, that his father’s father was from Odessa in what his now Ukraine, emigrating to the US in 1905, and that his mother’s family was Lithuania, emigrating in 1902. He also writes that his paternal grandmother was from Turkey.
Dylan also makes reference to the Russian authors Fyodor Dostoevsky and Anton Chekhov in Chronicles.
—Peter White, April 2026
Department of Miscellaneous but fascinating links:
The Come Writers and Critics website reports that books on Bob Dylan have appeared in 38 languages. 6 books have appeared in Russian of which 4 are translations of English language books (Dylan Disc by Disc, Dylan Goes Electric, Tarantula, ahd Chronicles Volume One) and 2 are books first published in Russian: a book on the history of punk rock by Mikhail Kuzischchev and Kirill Razumov’s Bob Dylan in the USSR: People, Places, Events (2025).
Razumov has published an article in the Isis Magazine (Issue 234, p. 76-90) on two Nobel winners, Bob Dylan and Joseph Brodsky.
Bob Dylan has visited Russia twice: the two week trip in1985 that is the focus of Kirill Razumov’s book and his performance in St. Petersburg as part of his European tourn in 2008.
For a picture and an article (in Russian) about Bob Dylan in Moscow in 1985, click HERE (use Google Translate!).
For a short overview of his visit, click HERE.
Robert Shelton (see this interesting interview of Shelton from 1986), the author of the break-out review of Bob Dylan published in the New York Times in 1961. Shelton wrote in 1963 that Bob Dylan was the “American Yevtushenko”. Yevtushkeno was a Russian poet who was also praised for his poetic, politically charged poems. Dylan and Yevtushenko were each called the “voice of his generation”. In later life, the poet life spent half the year teaching in Russia and the other half teaching at the University of Tulsa. He died in Tulsa in 2017 and is buried outside Moscow. Bob Dylan Book Club member Roberta Rakove noted that Yevtushenko’s archives are in Tulsa—and also that, at a 1972 dinner honoring Yevtushenko at the New School in New York, both Bob Dylan and Hannah Arendt were present.
Kirill Razumov writes: “I am the author & world’s rock music historian. For over 4 years I am doing a research, devoted to the Bob Dylan's visit to USSR in mid -1980s and his later connections with Russia.
I do think I am the first researcher in the world who has studied this issue in details (tens of interviews in Moscow, St. Petersburg (Russia), Tbilisi (Georgia), USA, studies in Moscow and St. Petersburg archives)), and now I have wrote a book, bringing to the audience many previously unknown, really interesting and sometimes sensational facts of Bob Dylan's biography.
The book’s name is “Bob Dylan in the USSR: People, Places, Events” / Боб Дилан в СССР: Люди, Места, События” and it was published in the May 2025 by the AST Publishing House.
My study & the book covers not only previously unknown facts, but also presents the broad picture of the late-USSR realities and describes the political and cultural characters, who were next to Bob Dylan in Moscow in Tbilisi in 1985. The description of the USSR life includes my own memories too; in 1985 I was 21 years old.
Apart of the Dylan’s project I am running my "THE SEA OF MUSIC" blog, which is the series of interviews with prominent yachtsmen and musicians about Music and the Sea in their lives and their influence on each other.
For this project in 2019-2023 I have done interviews with Carl Magnus Palm, official ABBA's biographer & writer; Peter Hince, QUEEN's band head of roadie team for 12 years, assistant of Freddie Mercury and author of "Queen Unseen" book; Ken Hensley, founder of the legendary URIAH HEEP rock band; Laura Dekker, world's most famous female sailor, Merrell Fanckhauser, legend of American surf rock music and others, the last interview was done on March 2023 with world famous rock singer and guitar player Suzi Quatro. Most of those interviews were put together in a book, which was published in 2024 by the Planeta Musiki (Planet of Music) publishing house under the name of “Sea, Yeacts, Rock’n’Roll: Interviews with Stars” / Море, Яхты, Рок’н’ролл: Интервью со звездами”.
Currently I am writing a new book about Western rock and pop music stars touring the USSR before Perestroika, in 1970-1980s.
The book will consist of a series of chapters, each dedicated to the Soviet tours of a particular artist—Cliff Richard, Roy Clark, Living Sound, Elton John, Billy Joel, Suzi Quatro, Bob Dylan, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Space—as well as visits to the country as tourists by Joan Baez, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop. It will also cover the first rock festivals of the late‑1980s era of change, featuring Ozzy Osbourne, Carlos Santana, Cinderella, Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, the Doobie Brothers, AC/DC, Pantera, and others.”