Viktor Tsoy was the leader of Russian rock band “Kino”. Beside the music, he participated in cinematograph. He played the leading role in “Ygla”. It is a movie about the morphine addiction. Beside Tsoy another Russian rock star took part in this movie. It was Pyotr Mamonov. He played a negative role – a doctor who sold morphine to a girlfriend of the protagonist. Of cause you can hear a lot of songs by “Kino” in this film. According to the results of an annual polling by the magazine “Sovetskiy ekran” for the role in this film Viktor Tsoy was awarded the title “Best actor of 1989”. Viktor Tsoy died young. He was 28 years old. He died in a car crash. According to the forensic investigation he was sober, but he fell asleep while driving.
Viktor Tsoy became a legend of Russian rock. You may hear his songs even nowadays played by different people: modern rock stars, street musicians, companies that play guitar and sing (and sometime drink alcohol) on the bench in some park.
Viktor had many talents. He drew pictures, made small wooden sculptures, wrote song lyrics and sang them, created music and played guitar. Also he did a lot of physical trainings.
Tsoy was (and still is) very popular. In the USSR was a kind of slogan: “Lenin is alive”. After the death of Viktor, the other slogan appeared: “Tsoy is alive”. You may notice such inscriptions on buildings and fences in the streets of many cities and towns of Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia. There are even special walls, so called “Walls in memory of Viktor Tsoy”. You can find such walls in Moscow, Sevastopol, Dnepropetrovsk, Minsk and some other cities. You can find a street named after Tsoy in several Russian towns. There is a garden square named after Viktor Tsoy in St. Petersburg. Also there are several Viktor Tsoy monuments. Tsoy knew English language well (though he studied German at school), but he didn’t write songs in English. As usually I’d like to show you some samples of lyrics by this Russian rocker translated by me. “The roofs of the houses Trembles under the heaviness of the days Celestial shepherd chaps the skies The city shoots the night sky with its lights But the night is mighty, its power is great”.
“25 degrees are in streets It is summer There lots of people in suburban trains They go to river”
