The Russian Queen Speaks
A Cultural Icon Dares to Contradict Putin
Breaking the Silence
Can you imagine Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin and Cher being the same person? In Russia, such a person exists. She is a singer who, for the past fifty years, has been regarded as perhaps the most – if not the most popular, then at least the most influential pop star ever.
She is still alive, now 76 years. Her name is Alla Pugacheva. And… right now, these very days, everyone is talking about her – again. Because for the first time in many years, she has spoken out.
Alla Pugacheva had long refrained from giving any interviews, although it was known that she opposed Putin’s war in Ukraine and even left Russia in 2022. But last week, Alla Pugacheva broke her long-standing vow of silence and gave an almost four-hour interview that, in just the past few days, has been watched by 13 million Russians on YouTube. This was, without a doubt, the biggest news of the week, because Alla Pugacheva is still the undisputed queen of Russia. The most famous person across many generations, she was already a superstar when Putin was still a little boy. Back in the Soviet era, there was even a joke that in the future an encyclopedia entry on Leonid Brezhnev would say that he was a minor political figure of the Alla Pugacheva era.
Pugacheva during the interview
“There is such a thing as conscience, and it is more precious than fame, than luxury, more precious than anything in the world,” says Pugacheva in her new interview, adding that telling your Motherland that it is in the wrong — that is real patriotism.
“If this war’s goal was to defend my homeland, I would be the first to go — even on crutches. But if I don’t understand what is happening… And now I do understand what is happening — and that is terrible. When people are dying — our people, and those from the other country — it is unbearable,” Pugacheva said.
Who is Pugacheva
Pugacheva has always had a very complicated relationship with the authorities. In Soviet times, she was long banned from appearing on television, then not allowed to travel abroad. In the early 1980s, ABBA members Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson invited her to sing one of the leading roles in their musical Chess, but the authorities would not let her go to Sweden. In 1986, after the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the liquidators working in the radioactive zone, men essentially condemned to death demanded that Pugacheva come and perform for them — and she came, despite the colossal danger.
Pugacheva in 70s and 80s
After the collapse of the USSR, Pugacheva was never close to power. When she turned 70, in 2019, the Kremlin informed her that Putin was ready to present her with the Order of Merit for the Fatherland. She refused, asking instead that they release theater director Kirill Serebrennikov, who had been arrested on fabricated political charges.
In 2011, Pugacheva married Russia’s most popular stand-up comedian, Maxim Galkin. Ironically, for several years he often performed in a duo with fellow stand-up comedian Volodymyr Zelensky (today the president of Ukraine). After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Galkin immediately spoke out sharply against the war and voiced his support for Ukraine. In her current interview, Pugacheva recalls what happened next: she was summoned to the Kremlin, to Sergei Kiriyenko, a senior Kremlin official responsible for domestic politics. He struck her as understanding, assured her that everyone is free to express their opinion and her family won’t be attacked. She was so relieved that she even kissed him goodbye. But just a few days after this meeting at the Kremlin, her husband Galkin was declared a “foreign agent” — a stigmatizing legal label the Kremlin uses to silence dissent.
“When the children went to school after that, they began to be mocked: ‘You’re the children of spies, your father is a foreign agent, your parents are enemies…’ We packed our bags, told the father we were leaving, took with us the $30,000 we were allowed to carry, and we left for Israel,” Pugacheva recalled.
Alla Pugacheva, Maksim Galkin and their kids
At first, Pugacheva and Galkin lived in Israel, but after October 7, 2023, they moved to Cyprus. Still, they traditionally spend their summer vacation in Jurmala, a Latvian seaside resort popular among Russian artists since Soviet times.
“Everyone will be hanged! Any questions?“
The four-hour interview was released on the YouTube channel of journalist Katerina Gordeeva, one of the most popular in the Russian-speaking internet. This year, the Russian authorities began actively cracking down on YouTube and deliberately slowing it down so that fewer Russians would be able to watch content produced by independent media outlets based abroad. Now, in order to watch a YouTube video, most Russians have to use a VPN. There is no doubt that if this interview had come out a year earlier, it would have been watched in just a few days by two or even three times as many people.
Journalist Katerina Gordeeva, who conducted the interview, lives in Latvia and has herself been officially designated as a “foreign agent.”
Gordeeva, Pugacheva and her daughter during the interview
It must be said that Pugacheva is, on the one hand, very careful in this interview: she does not allow herself overly sharp statements and does not call Putin a dictator or a murderer, as opposition activists and anti-war journalists often do. But at the same time, she addresses him directly and says, “Vladimir Vladimirovich, stop all this.” And she repeatedly says that it is long past time for Putin to leave his post, even citing her own example: that she, as the queen of the Russian stage, nevertheless stepped down in due time and stopped performing. The same, she says, should be done by aging leaders, because people who stay in their positions for too long only harm their country.
The significance of Pugacheva’s speaking out cannot be overstated. In Putin’s Russia, representatives of the entertainment industry have until now been reluctant to openly oppose the war. It was clear to everyone that the most famous pop stars or actors would be punished the harshest. It was they, above all, whom the Kremlin began to target starting in February 2022. And it was their loyalty that the authorities most sought to secure.
“They call me traitor… And what exactly did I betray? I have said that I could leave my homeland, which I love very much, only in one case — if my homeland betrayed me. And it has betrayed me,” Pugacheva concluded.
former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and Alla Pugacheva
Throughout the entire interview, Pugacheva speaks directly to her millions of fans. “I love them, I suffer for them. I worry about them — how can they live like this? They’re told: this is good, and they take pride in it. They don’t know history, but they’re proud of history. They don’t know what our healthcare is really like, but they’re proud of healthcare. This façade, all of it — it’s a tragedy, of course,” she says, and immediately turns to irony, recalling a Soviet-era joke: “There was a joke in Soviet times, not today’s. It was announced across the country that everyone must come to Red Square at ten in the morning. What for? Everyone will be hanged! Any questions? Yes. What’s the question? Should we bring our own ropes, or will they be handed out? There. Such a patient people. Ready for anything.”
Alla Pugacheva and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin
Another telling moment comes during the interview, when Pugacheva and Gordeeva are walking along the beach. Passersby keep recognizing the singer and thanking her. One woman says to her in Ukrainian: “Thank you for supporting Ukraine.” And Pugacheva replies in Ukrainian as well: “Thank you.”
Prophecy
The Russian authorities’ reaction to Pugacheva’s interview was predictable. “This is what I call a ‘bazaar of hypocrisy’,” declared Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. And parliamentarian Vitaly Milonov said: “I believe that in her interview Pugacheva said enough not only to warrant the status of ‘foreign agent,’ but also to fall under several criminal articles, including the justification of terrorism.”
What matters in Pugacheva’s interview is that she has never been a political activist. On the contrary, her extreme love of freedom was always combined with caution, and she generally avoided openly criticizing the authorities. Millions of Russians always considered Pugacheva “one of their own” — because through her songs she expressed the pain and suffering of ordinary Russian women (and men too). The fact that she stopped keeping silent and spoke out openly against the war is a very important signal that will, of course, be heard by many in Russia. She has always been the voice of millions of mute, wordless, unhappy Russians. Now they will think the way she put it — that’s how her interview is being described on social media.
Alla Pugacheva in 2022 at Gorbachev’s funeral
In today’s situation — when Putin has just paid a visit to Alaska in a symbolic propaganda stunt and increasingly looks like a man winning the war, when Russia appears less and less isolated, and when around the world the idea is spreading that his decision to start the war was a forced one, supposedly provoked by the West — Pugacheva’s statement is a move against the current. “Conscience is more precious than fame, more precious than luxury,” she reminds millions of Russians, and above all the country’s political and business elite who know her best. After all, Pugacheva is one of the few who were not afraid, for the sake of principle, to give up everything she had in Russia — and it is to them, her influential, high-ranking, successful and intellectual admirers, that she demonstrates she has no regrets.
Pugacheva and Putin
Curiously, the singer ended her interview with a prophecy: “I have intuition. I’ve lived a long time, and when it comes, I can feel it. I won’t explain how. … I don’t have the right to say. I know [what will happen next]. Let’s live until 2027. Remember: the year 2027,” Pugacheva said.