| Egor Letov | |
| Background: | solo_singer |
| Birth Name: | Igor Fedorovich Letov |
| Alias: | Egor Letov |
| Birth Date: | 10 September 1964 |
| Birth Place: | Omsk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Death Place: | Omsk, Russian Federation |
| Years Active: | 1982–2008 |
| Website: | http://www.gr-oborona.ru |
| Native Name: | Russian: Егор Летов |
Igor "Yegor" Fyodorovich Letov (ru|link=no|И́горь "Его́р" Фёдорович Ле́тов, pronounced as /ru/; (10 September 1964 – 19 February 2008)[1] was a Russian poet, musician, singer-songwriter, audio engineer and conceptual artist, best known as the founder and leader of the post-punk/psychedelic rock band Grazhdanskaya Oborona . He was also the founder of the conceptual art avant-garde project Kommunizm and psychedelic rock outfit Egor i Opizdenevshie. Letov collaborated with singer-songwriter Yanka Dyagileva and other Siberian underground artists as a record engineer and producer.
In 1985, the dissident philosophy expressed in Letov's lyrics, as well as his popularity throughout the USSR, resulted in a KGB-initiated internment for three months in a mental hospital, where Letov was forced to take anti-psychotic drugs. On his release, he defiantly wrote a song about Lenin "rotting in his mausoleum".[2]
Letov was one of the first members of the National Bolshevik Party.[3] He ceased contact with the party around 1999 and distanced himself from politics. In his 2007 interview with Rolling Stone Russia, Letov stated: "In fact, I have always been an anarchist—and I still am. But now I'm more into ecological aspects of contemporary anarchism, eco-anarchism, that's what I've been moving toward recently".[4]
Letov died of heart failure in his sleep on 19 February 2008 at his home in Omsk.[5] [6] He was 43 years old.
In an interview, Letov expressed that his favorite poets were Alexander Vvedensky (1904–1941), one of the OBERIU writers, and the Russian Futurist poets, such as Vladimir Mayakovsky and Aleksei Kruchenykh. At the beginning of his interest in poetry he was influenced by the Austrian poet Erich Fried. He also expressed his interest in Conceptualism, and spoke of his own work in punk music and in creating a public image as a work of conceptual performance art. Letov's favorite writers, who considerably affected his world view and writing style, were Andrei Platonov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry Miller, Bruno Schulz, Flann O'Brien, Leonid Andreev, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Kōbō Abe, and Kenzaburō Ōe.[7]
He has said that his music, in part, reflects everything he's heard before.[8]
Poet Elena Fanailova stated that Letov was "really fucked up and really free artist, whose main and only mission was to experience limits of his own freedom" and "certainly large, significant author, who created his own world – which, though, works only in the context of the post-Soviet civilization".[9]
See main article: Egor Letov discography.