Yuriy Shevchuk

Yuri Shevchuk is a Russian rock star and non-conformist political figure in opposition to the regime of Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev. He was born Yuri Yulianovich Shevchuk on May 16, 1957, in Magadan province, Russia into a family of exiled school teachers. His Ukrainean father, Yulian Shevchuk, was a WWII veteran exiled to Siberia. His Tatar mother, Fania Akramovna Garieva, a daughter of Islamic mullah, is also a WWII veteran, now living in Saint Petersburg. Young Shevchuk was fond of art and music. He took music lessons and attended a drawing class. From 1975 to 1979 he studied at Bashkir State University in Ufa, Bashkortostan, graduating in 1979 as a teacher of arts. In 1980 Shevchuk founded the rock band DDT where he has been the singer-songwriter and the front-man. His songs, often critical of the Soviet reality, quickly became popular across the Soviet Union. Shevchuk was criticized by the official Soviet media. He was interrogated by the KGB in 1985. Many of his songs were censored. Many of his shows were banned. Underground recordings of his songs were widely disseminated in the USSR, gaining him tremendous popularity. He was restricted from appearing in Moscow, so he settled in Saint Petersburg, the second largest city of Russia and its cultural capital, then called Leningrad. In 1992, his first wife, Elmira Bikbova, died of cancer at the age of 24, and was laid to rest in Volkovo cemetery in Saint Petersburg. Shevchuk became a single father. He suffered from a nervous breakdown, and lived in hiatus for a year in a small village near St. Petersburg, trying to raise his son in the countryside. His son, Peter Shevchuk, later served as a navy cadet, like his father, and eventually became an aspiring artist. Coming out of his year-long hiatus, Shevchuk gathered his band, DDT, and appeared on stages as powerful as ever. On May 20, 1993, Shevchuk and DDT gave their biggest show ever to the audience of 120 thousand at the Palace Square in Saint Petersburg. That same year, he appeared at the Berlin international rock festival and received the prestigious "Ovation" prize as the best rock-singer of the year. Shevchuk toured in Japan, Australia, France, Canada, Israel, Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain, USA, Belarus, Georgia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. In 2004, Shevchuk performed in Kiev, Ukraine, in support of freedom and the "Orange revolution." His electrifying performances have been well received by the audiences across the world. Yuri Shevchuk made his film debut as the band leader of DDT in the 1986 movie 'Ya poluchil ety rol' by director Mikhail Melnichenko. He shot to fame with the popular documentary _Rok (1987)_ by director Aleksey Uchitel, appearing as himself singing his popular songs. Later, he played a few leading and supporting roles in Russian films, most notably in Whit Monday (1991) and Vovochka (2002). In Antonina obernulas (2008), Shevchuk plays a singer who is locked-up in a mental asylum for singing the truth about life in Russia, so all inmates are listening to his songs about freedom. The film, somewhat reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) is set in a prison-like mental asylum, alluding to Russia and the Russians whose freedom of expression is controlled by the government. While Shevchuk's film character does not resemble Jack Nicholson, the real life Yuri Shevchuk does. In 2008, he released a solo album titled "L'Echoppe" which included the controversial song "Kogda zakonchitsya neft" with the lyrics "When the oil runs out, dry, our president will die." A staunch supporter of democracy and freedom of expression, Shevchuk is vocal about violations of human rights in modern day Russia. He participates in many public events supporting the constitutional rights of people, such as the article 31 of the Russian constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and assembly for all people in Russia. In support of this constitutional right, Shevchuk has been promoting independent public gatherings on the 31st day of January, March, May, July, August, October and December in major Russian cities. However, the government has been obstructing such independent public gatherings by arresting many prominent political figures, trying to shut the opposition down. Most recently, Shevchuk confronted the Russian leader Putin in a heated exchange about the hard-line policies and corruption in the government. The official meeting of PM Putin with celebrities was held in Saint Petersburg Opera House, where only top stars of show business were invited to sit at the round table with the Prime Minister. There Shevchuk ignored the official instruction to "shut up and listen", he stood up in front of PM Putin and spoke his mind. After that the high-level discussion went out of control. Unlike other entertainers who were selfishly begging for money for their pet projects, Shevchuk handed Putin a pile of documents about corruption and raised his voice in support of a true democracy with real freedom and human rights. The Russian PM Putin did not like the heated subject and tried to shut Shevchuk down by interrogating the singer in a KGB style: "Who are you? What is your name?" But Shevchuk remained cool: he ignored Putin's anger and raised the glass for democracy and freedom in Russia which angry Putin had to join, but made another critical comment still trying to degrade Shevchuk's call for democracy. The confrontation between Shevchuk and Putin was shown on the Russian TV, and instantly caused an avalanche of comments and analysis. With massive public support behind him, the popular rock star Yuri Shevchuk remains a rising political figure in the Russian opposition. Yuri Shevchuk is living and working in Saint Petersburg, Russia.