Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

The Politics of Eurovision's Bad Pop

The diplomatic spat between Russia and Azerbaijan over the Eurovision song contest illustrates a strange truth: In the lands of the former Soviet Union, bad pop is big politics.

May 22, 2013 at 7:51 PM UTC

By Leonid Bershidsky

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

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The diplomatic spat between Russia and Azerbaijan over the Eurovision song contest illustrates a strange truth: In the lands of the former Soviet Union, bad pop is big politics.

To an uninitiated viewer, the Eurovision contest is a silly display of overblown musical schlock that bears little relation to actual pop charts. Other than Swedish band ABBA and Swiss siren Celine Dion, few winners in its 57-year history have gone on to distinguished careers.