The song reads like a Soviet-era Plato’s Cave — a nocturnal landscape filled with people intent on sleeping, and a chosen few who insist on leaving this world of shadows behind.

This may be Tsoi’s most direct, most concise philosophical statement, and its very title announces the sense of paradox that lies at its center. Certainly, the song does have words, but perhaps those words are incapable of adequately expressing the essence of life’s mysteries.

Here’s the title track from a KINO album released in 1989. It is very typical of Viktor Tsoi’s songs in its ironic depiction of a “hero” who seems lonely, alienated, and plagued by a sense of purposelessness.

As is quite typical with Tsoi, what one might read as a political critique of the Soviet regime in particular is likely better understood as a general philosophical or ethical statement, as a depiction of of universal human experience and history, most notably here of human vanity.

Today, another well-known song from Tsoi about the uncertainty of life, just perfectly suited to the era of COVID (with “epidemic” as one of the many “black holes of the universe” we live in).

Today's song is yet another extremely well-known song by Viktor Tsoi — a rather humorous depiction of adolescent love between an "eighth-grade girl" and a boy who is, ahem, a bit older! I’ll leave it for readers to speculate as to the dynamics of this relationship.

The first verse of this song is very simple, but the second is much more difficult to translate, because it involves twists on three Russian sayings. I’ll do my best to explain; interpreting the meaning is up to you!

Today’s song is the first track from KINO’s final album, released following the tragic death of Viktor Tsoi, who, fortunately, had already recorded the vocal tracks at the time of his accident. This classic album was entitled The Black Album (Чёрный альбом) in honor of Tsoi.

This is the wall of Viktor Tsoi in central Moscow, on Arbat Street (Old Arbat), where fans are always leaving new graffiti inscriptions in his honor — many of them taken from his lyrics. At the very bottom, in blue, you can see a paraphrase from today’s song: “Я не останусь в этой траве” (I won’t remain in this grass).