The song «I Want Changes!» (also known as «Changes!») by the Soviet rock band Kino became one of the most recognizable musical symbols of the late-Soviet era and the political upheavals that followed across the post-Soviet space.
The story of its creation
The song was written by Viktor Tsoi, presumably in spring 1986, during the band's trip to Ukraine to film the short film "The End of Vacation." That trip coincided with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the band spent nearly a month in Kyiv under a state of emergency. The song was first performed in May-June 1986 at the 4th Leningrad Rock Club Festival at the Nevsky Palace of Culture.
Curiously, the band members themselves didn't take the song seriously — according to music critic Artemy Troitsky, they nicknamed it "The Dumpling." "Changes" wasn't a hit right out of the gate, unlike other "perestroika anthems" of the time.
A cinematic breakthrough
The song found wide fame thanks to Sergei Solovyov's film «Assa» (1987). An early version of the composition played in the film's final scene, marking a turning point in how it was received. Solovyov even made an agreement with Tsoi that the song wouldn't be performed publicly before the film's release.
The director later admitted that the film was, in a sense, a premonition of the great changes to come for the country — though the artists were dreaming of very different changes from the ones that ultimately took place.
The song's true meaning
Viktor Tsoi himself repeatedly stressed that the song had no political subtext and wasn't tied to perestroika. In his words, the composition came to be perceived "like a newspaper article about perestroika," even though the author was thinking about neither reforms nor "sensational exposes."
«The people who sing this song at rallies get laughed at by musicians. 'Changes' wasn't written for the crowd. Not for the herd. The pronoun 'ours,' used in the lyrics, refers to a very narrow circle of people.»
The band members insisted the song was about profound internal changes within a person, not political transformation. Tsoi was apolitical and interested only in music, art, and film.
Context in 1993
By 1993, when the novel's events take place, the song had already faded somewhat from memory. But for Chichi — who'd ended up in prison in the late 1980s amid the first wave of racketeering arrests — the song was still relevant.