This is 99% invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

Let's go back to the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

There was a terrible hunger for anything that came from West,

anything at all, doesn't matter what.

This is Alexander Genes, Russian writer and broadcaster.

For example, Lighter.

Can you imagine how important was lighter.

American Lighter was like treasure. But a lighter is lighter is just a lighter. During the Cold War what many Russians really

craved were expressions of creativity and art, much of which came from the West. They wanted West Coast. of course American Western music.

They wanted Western music.

There was of course American Western music.

Western music was incredible, important.

They were crazy about jazz and rock and roll.

Of course, Elvis Presley.

And it was extremely hard to smuggle in vinyl records that were made in the West.

And if a prized album did make it in,

ordinary Russians couldn't make copies to sell or trade to their fellow comrades because vinyl the material itself was impossibly expensive and scarce.

So we didn't have any records. It was, I didn't even see records I think in my life Western record because it was dangerous.

Soviet censorship was endless but so was Russian ingenuity.

That's Davia Nelson. She and Nicki Silva are the Kitchen Sisters, and they produce the Radiotopia

podcast Fugitive Waves.

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