Viktor Robertovich Tsoi (, ; 21 June 1962 – 15 August 1990) was a Soviet singer-songwriter, artist and actor who co-founded Kino, one of the most popular and influential bands in the history of Russian music.
Born and raised in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) to a Russian mother and Koryo-saram father, Tsoi started writing songs as a teenager. Throughout his career, Tsoi contributed a plethora of musical and artistic works, including ten albums. After Kino appeared and performed in the 1987 Soviet film Assa, the band's popularity surged, triggering a period referred to as "Kinomania", and leading to Tsoi's leading role in the 1988 Kazakh new wave art film The Needle. In 1990, after a high-profile concert at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, Tsoi briefly relocated to Latvia with bandmate Yuri Kasparyan to work on the band's next album. Two months after the concert, Tsoi died in a traffic collision.
Tsoi was one of the most important pioneers of rock music in Russia and is credited with popularizing the genre throughout the Soviet Union. Becoming popular by combining his music and lyrics with philosophy, he retains a devoted following throughout the former Soviet Union, where he is known as one of the most influential and popular people in the history of Russian music.
Life and career Early years Viktor Robertovich Tsoi was born on 21 June 1962, in a maternity hospital on Kuznetsovskaya Street in Leningrad. He was the only child of Valentina Vasilyevna Tsoi (), a Russian schoolteacher, and Robert Maximovich Tsoi, a Soviet Korean engineer from Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan, where his Korean parents had been exiled after Stalin's 1937 deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union. The family's Korean ancestry can be traced back to Kimchaek (Songjin) in the present-day North Korea, where Viktor's great-grandfather Choi Yong-nam was born in 1893.Zhitinsky, p. 41
Tsoi's Korean clan was the Wonju Choe clan, sometimes spelled as Choi. Koryo-saram, ethnic Koreans living in the former USSR, preferred the surname Tsoi as a romanization of the cyrillic Цой. Translated from Korean, the surname Choi means "height" or "top".Kalgin, 2015, p. 8-9.
Tsoi grew up in the vicinity of the Moskovsky Victory Park. The family lived in the notable "general's house" at the corner of Moskovsky Avenue and Basseynaya Street. For some time, Tsoi studied at a nearby school on Frunze Street, where his mother worked.
From 1974 until 1977, Tsoi attended a secondary art school, where he was a member of the band Palata No. 6 (, English: "Ward No. 6").Zhitinsky, p. 50 The only surviving recording of the group is an album titled "Slonolunie" (a portmanteau of slon, “elephant”, and polnolunie, “full moon”).Kalgin, 2015, p. 25. Around the same time, he wrote his first two songs – "Vasya Loves Disco" and "Idiot", though neither were ever performed.Kalgin, 2015, p. 22.
From 1977, he attended the Serov Art School, until he was expelled in 1979 for poor academic performance. Afterwards, he attended SGPTU-61, a secondary city vocational school, where he studied to become a woodcarver.Zhitinsky, p. 64 In his youth, he was a fan of Mikhail Boyarsky and Vladimir Vysotsky, and later Bruce Lee, after whom he started modelling his image.Петербургский курьер (1999). Он не был ангелом, как не был и демоном He was fond of martial arts and often sparred "in Chinese" with bandmate Yuri Kasparyan.
First steps in music Tsoi began writing songs at the age of 17. In the 1970s and the 1980s, rock music was an underground movement limited mostly to Leningrad. Moscow pop stars, endorsed by the Soviet state, ruled the charts and received the most exposure from the media. Rock music was not popular with the government, and rock bands received little to no funding and were given little exposure by the media. The Leningrad Rock Club was one of the few public places where rock bands were allowed to perform.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Tsoi was a close friend of Alexei Rybin. Rybin, a member of the hard rock band Piligrimy (), and Tsoi, who played bass guitar in the group Palata # 6 (), met at the house of Andrei "Svin" Panov, in whose apartment people and musicians often gathered, and also where his own punk band Avtomaticheskie udovletvoriteli rehearsed. By this time, Tsoi began to perform the songs he wrote at parties.
Tsoi and Rybin, as members of Автоматические удовлетворители (Avtomaticheskie udovletvoriteli), went to Moscow and performed punk-rock metal at Artemy Troitsky's underground concerts. During a similar performance in Leningrad on the occasion of Andrei Tropillo's anniversary, Tsoi and Rybin first met Boris Grebenshchikov. Later, after a solo concert by Grebenshchikov, they met up and Tsoi played two of his songs to him.Viktor Tsoi's biography at the website lichnosti.net Grebenshchikov, who had already been a relatively established musician in the Leningrad underground scene, was very impressed by Tsoi's talent and helped him start up his own band.
Beginnings of Kino At the Leningrad Rock Club, Tsoi played as a solo artist supported by members of the band Aquarium. Tsoi's lyrics and music impressed the crowd. In the summer of 1981, Tsoi, Rybin, and Oleg Valinsky formed the band Garin i giperboloydy (). The name was an homage to the classic Russian novel The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin by Aleksey Tolstoy. In autumn 1981, the band was admitted to membership of the Leningrad Rock Club. Not long after, Valinsky was conscripted into the army, leaving only Tsoi and Rybin, who renamed the band to Kino. Kino began recording its debut album in the spring of 1982.
First albums In the spring of 1982, Kino began recording its debut album 45 at Andrei Tropillo's studio. Members of Aquarium took part in the recording, with Boris Grebenshchikov directing the album. By the summer, the album was completely finished. Its duration was 45 minutes, after which the album was named 45. The album got some distribution and Kino performed in many apartment concerts in Moscow and Leningrad.
On 19 February 1983, a joint concert with Kino and Aquarium took place. After the concert, Yuri Kasparyan was invited to join the band as a guitarist. In the spring, Rybin left Kino due to disagreements with Tsoi. Tsoi and Kasparyan spent the summer on joint rehearsals. As a result, Kino recorded the album 46, which was initially thought of as a demo for Nachalnik Kamchatki (). 46 was widely distributed and was considered to be a full-fledged album. In the fall of 1983, Tsoi went to a psychiatric hospital in Pryazhka, where he spent a month and a half. As a result, Tsoi was not conscripted into the army. After being discharged from the psychiatric hospital, he wrote the song "Trankvilizator" ().
"Peremen!" ("Changes"), first performed by Tsoi in the summer of 1986, became heavily associated with the social shifts of the Perestroika era and later saw use in various post-Soviet political movements, such as the 2020–2021 Belarusian protests.
Despite the song later becoming a staple of political demonstrations, its politicization took place against the wishes of Viktor Tsoi, who insisted that the track was not a protest song.
Rise to fame 1987 marked a major turning point for Kino with the release of their 6th album Gruppa krovi (), which sparked widespread public devotion known as "Kinomania." Benefiting from the cultural shifts of Glasnost, the album allowed the band to record with a polished, spacious production style and sophisticated sound that set a new standard for Soviet rock.
The album's atmospheric soundscapes and distinct lyrical themes resonated deeply with youth across the Soviet Union, propelling Kino to mainstream prominence. Songs from the record were widely shared, and fans across the diverse Soviet republics translated the originally Russian lyrics into their native languages as the band's cultural reach expanded nationwide.
Over the next few years, Tsoi appeared in several successful movies and also travelled to the United States to promote his films at film festivals. Several more albums were released, continuing to resonate deeply with listeners and further fueling the band's massive popularity. Even though Tsoi was a huge star, he still lived a relatively ordinary life. He kept his old job in the boiler room of an apartment building, called Kamchatka, which is currently a museum/club dedicated to the singer.
The fact that he worked at a boiler plant surprised many people. Tsoi said that he enjoyed the work and he also needed the money to support the band, as they still received no government support and their albums were copied and passed around the nation via Magnitizdat free of charge. This made Tsoi even more popular among the people because it showed that he was down to earth and they could relate to him. He also went on tour in 1988–1989 to Italy, France, and Denmark. Kino's finest hour came in 1990 with a concert at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium; 62,000 fans filled the stands to celebrate the triumph of the USSR's most successful rock group. It also was one of the four times the Luzhniki Olympic Fire was ever lit. Film appearances In 1987, the band Kino, along with other Russian rock bands, appeared as themselves in Assa (Russian: Асса), a film by Sergei Solovyov. The film features underground rock music prominently, with Kino making a notable concluding performance appearance.
In 1988, Viktor Tsoi starred as the protagonist in The Needle (), directed by Rashid Nugmanov and written by Aleksandr Baranov and Bakhyt Kilibayev. The plot is centered around the character Moro, who returns to Almaty, Kazakhstan, to collect money owed to him. While waiting out an unexpected delay, he visits his former girlfriend Dina and discovers she has become a morphine addict. He decides to help her quit and fight the local drug mafia responsible for her condition. But Moro finds a deadly opponent in "the doctor," the mafia kingpin who is exploiting Dina.Written by Forrest Ciesol for IMDB Tsoi was nominated for an award for his role in the film.
The film's soundtrack, including original music by Tsoi's band Kino, contributes to the overall feeling of the movie, in addition to the film's use of post-modern twists and surreal scenes.
The film premiered in the Soviet Union in March 1988.
Art Tsoi was from the age 12 to 14 enrolled in the oldest art school in Russia, nowadays named N. K. Roerich St. Petersburg Art School. Tsoi would make netsuke figurines along with drawings. Despite him being accepted into an art college he chose to study cabinetmaking. However Tsoi was still creating art in different forms and continued to do so up until his death. His choice of mediums and tools would be by today considered a little childish due to him often using water based felt tip pens or cardboard as canvases, but he also made works with oil, acrylics and watercolor. Keith Harring was one of his inspirations which can be seen in his pieces. Other reoccurring themes in his pieces are daily life activities and violence.
Death
On 15 August 1990, in Latvia, Tsoi was driving on the Sloka – Talsi highway, near Tukums and Engure. At 12:28 p.m., Tsoi died in a car collision. The investigation concluded that Tsoi had fallen asleep while driving, possibly due to fatigue.Схема аварии на сайте РИА Новости. RIA Novosti. 15 August 2007: "В 12 час. 28 мин на 35 км трассы из-за поворота со скоростью 60–70 километров в час выехал автобус Икарус, который Цой не заметил." He had not consumed alcohol for at least 48 hours before his death.Soldatenkov, N. КИНО без Цоя? . kinoman.net