Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir performed in June 1993 at the Senate Square. Markku “Mato” Valtonen now tells HS that the event would not be possible today.
30 years then, on June 12, 1993, an event was witnessed in Helsinki’s Senatintor, which today would be very unlikely to happen. At that time, the Red Army Choir performed with the rock band Leningrad Cowboys to a huge Finnish audience.
The then point guard of the Leningrad Cowboys Markku “Mato” Valtonen now tells how the band managed to get the Red Army Choir to perform with them at Senate Square.
For that, you have to go back to August 1992. Leningrad Cowboys were at a gig in Germany at that time. The band’s tour bus had a cassette with music from the Red Army Choir.
“We put the cassette in the player. The song sounded insane. The idea arose that it could be a big deal if we could perform with the choir,” Valtonen recalls.
The idea stuck, and at the end of 1992, the band began to investigate how to connect with the Red Army choir. Leningrad Cowboys decided to ask the director of the International Department of the Film Foundation for help Kirsi from Tykkyläinen. The group had gotten to know Tykkyläinen Aki Kaurismäki in connection with film projects. Tykkyläinen knew Russian.
Tykkyläinen found out the phone number of the Red Army choir and called the choir to inquire if the choir could perform with the Leningrad Cowboys.
“The answer from the choir was that everything can be discussed, but not on the phone,” says Valtonen.
So in December 1992, a group of Leningrad Cowboys traveled to Moscow to meet the Red Army Choir.
“The conversation lasted about 45 minutes. The representatives of the choir were at first embarrassed by the proposal, but then got excited.”
After the Red Army Choir had given the green light for the performance, the planning of the event began.
“Senate Square felt like the right and valuable place to perform. The then mayor of Helsinki Kari Rahkamo got excited about the idea and we got permission to perform in Senate square.”
The performance date was decided on June 12, i.e. Helsinki Day.
It was estimated that there were about 70,000 spectators at the Senate Square watching the Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir’s concert.
Valtonen remembers that the arrangements for the event progressed relatively painlessly. However, there was a small adjustment along the way.
“One person from the University of Helsinki did not want the Senatintori Performance Stage to be in front of the university’s main building. However, the location of the stage was on land owned by the city, and he could not prevent the stage from being placed in front of the main building.”
The same person was also not enthusiastic about the fact that the Red Army Choir would have used the lobby of the university’s main building as a back room for the performance stage. He does not want to reveal the name.
“This gentleman did not want to give the Red Army Choir space as a back room of the performance stage. He suspected that the choir members were messing up and destroying places. After this, we arranged a back room for the choir from Lepako in Ruoholahti.”
The start time of the concert also got a little twisted.
MTV3 televised the concert. The company would have liked the concert to start after the news broadcast at 10:20 p.m. At that time, the concert would have been seen in its entirety as a live broadcast from the channel.
However, the performers stuck to their original plan and the concert started at 10 p.m.
Markku “Mato” Valtonen at the Senate Square concert with the Red Army Choir.
Eventually everything was ready.
When the performance, named Total Balalaika Show, began on Saturday, June 12, 1993 at 10 p.m., Senate Square was crowded. It was estimated that there were 70,000 spectators. There would have been more people, but Senate Square could not accommodate more people.
“The gig went as planned. There wasn’t a point where the music stopped,” says Valtonen.
After the Senate Square concert, the Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir performed abroad. The gigs were mainly in Germany. The band and choir performed at the Danish Roskilde Festival in 1997.
The Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir also performed in the United States at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York in 1994.
“The activity gradually waned in the last years of the 1990s. The choir sometimes had to cancel their entry to gigs because of the Russian bureaucracy. The risk that the choir would not come began to grow. In addition, the level of the Red Army choir started to change at that time, when the best singers left the choir for other jobs,” says Valtonen.
When The Red Army Choir performed with the Leningrad Cowboys on Senate Square in 1993, Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) Russia turned its eyes to the West. Now Vladimir Putin led by Russia has invaded Ukraine, and Russia’s relations with the West are bad.
Could the Red Army Choir be performing with the Leningrad Cowboys now?
“Today, the concert would not be feasible. There would be too many contradictions in the event. During Boris Yeltsin’s time in 1993, different winds were blowing in Russia. Democracy was dreamed of there. If someone were to try to organize a concert now, I wouldn’t go along,” says Valtonen.
Mato Valtonen’s biography was published in 2021 Crazy multitasking life. The book states about the 1993 Senatintor concert that many people thought the collective fear of the Soviet Union was over after the concert.
What do you think about the conclusion now that Russia has invaded Ukraine?
“The conclusion could have been true if Boris Yeltsin had chosen someone other than Vladimir Putin as his successor. No one hoped for such a development as has now happened in Russia.”
Correction June 6 at 10:50 a.m.: Kirsi Tykkyläinen has not studied in Moscow as was originally reported in the story.
The concert of the Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir at Senate Square went as planned.
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