RIP Muslim Magomayev, Soviet Superstar

This weekend, the liberal think tank INDEM issued a new warning that the country was headed towards a ‘developmental dictatorship’.

But Russia wasn't in the mood: it was mourning Muslim Magomayev.

Magomayev was the original Soviet mega-star. Throughout the 1970s, he routinely filled stadiums and garnered scores of hysterical groupies, not an easy feat in Brezhnev's USSR. He was a uniquely Soviet product: an Azerbaijani Muslim rising to fame in Christian Russia.

Understanding the huge outpouring of grief for Magomayev is key to understanding Russia's national psychology. What my parents’ generation is mourning provides vital clues to who they are and what they want – their values, and by extension, Russia's values.

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Magomayev was many things: a quintessential dandy who also happened to be a People's Artist of the USSR; a trained opera singer with a Sinatra's showman touch; a brilliant scion of an family of artists and musicians in an ardently ‘class-less’ society; a globe trotting cosmopolitan performing at La Scala and to sell out crowds at the Paris Olympia whilst remaining a steadfast Soviet patriot who always came back; a consumate gentleman and a sex symbol in the officially sex-less Soviet Union; a ‘national treasure’ moving in the poshest echelons of Moscow society, without giving up his deep ties to his native Baku.

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Lev Leschenko called Magomayev “the one and only, he gave people new hopes, and all of our country sang his songs — he was a great singer, a great artist”.

Magomayev was clearly a patriotic figure, but not the boring hamfisted sort of patriot so lionised by the puritanical and hypocritical Brezhnev times. He was mischievous, conscious of his own magnetism, impeccably dressed, and faintly resembled Mastroianni. He sang popular songs in Italian, French and English to an audience thirsty for a hint of glamour and a glimpse of the West – but without being a dissident.

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Far from the insular and suspicious inward-looking and anti-Western power it is portrayed as being, the USSR of the 1960s and 70s was a society that saw itself firmly as a cultural, intellectual and social part of continental Europe. Indeed, in many respects, the USSR was more integrated into the socio-cultural framework of Europe than was the US.  How many in  America have heard of the French singer Joe Dassin, yet he was a massive star in the Soviet Union. At the same time, despite all the official bluster, Soviet people were acutely aware of their relative backwardness vis a vis Western Europe in terms of fashion and popular culture, and most importantly, glamour; as well as their lack of access to this world.

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Magomayev's acclaim in France and Italy made the Soviet public very proud; it seemed to show not only that the USSR was a part of the European cultural universe, but also that it could hold its head high there.  They may not have been allowed to travel to Paris or Milan themselves but they could see Magomayev, dressed in a foreign made suit, singing Tu Mi Piace or “Les Parapluies de Cherbourg”. They were proud both that he had been begged to stay on by western venues and that chose not to sell out, and came home. After the collapse of the USSR, they were proud that unlike many of his contemporaries (most notably, Kobzon and even Leschenko), Magomayev refused to prostitute his talents, and gracefully faded into retirement.