Editor's info:

Over the years more and more Russians have settled in the Berlin district Prenzlauer Berg: painters, writers, musicians, dancers.

One day, I met a musician there called Yuriy Gurzhy. Yuriy had just arrived with his parents from sunny Charkow and, like me, was a passionate music collector. We put our collections together - it was quite impressing. "Let's throw a party and make our Russian music known here", Yuriy suggested. We didn't have to wait too long for the opportunity to come. I was organising a series of events in a Berlin bar "Kaffee Burger" called "The Russian Cell" in an attempt to do away with the cliché of the so called "Russian Soul". The sleazy "Russian Soul" - a typically German invention - had been getting to us for a while now and was making the life of my fellow countrymen miserable. It wasn't easy to live up to this cliché, you know. I had always wanted to do something against it and present people with an alternative Russian culture. So in the context of the events in "Kaffee Burger" three of us organised a Russian Disco ("Russendisko") - Yuriy acted as DJ, my wife Olga cashed up and I messed about here and there and was responsible for making the event known and reporting on it.

Our party wasn't only a great success with the Russian community but also and especially with the locals. Lots of people really enjoyed the weird, unpolished and sometimes awful sounding music but which, in the end, was really good to dance to. Whenever the Russian disco was on the programme, "Kaffee Burger" was bang full at nine p.m. already. From the reports we wrote on "Russendisko" and other stories I wrote, I managed to compile a book I also called "Russendisko". Some papers reported "The 'Russian soul' is finally back in Berlin again" - and from then on, in interviews, I was always had to live up to this cliché.
Wladimir Kaminer



St. Petersburg Times

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