{"id":119976,"date":"2025-09-05T04:47:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T04:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/119976\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T04:47:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T04:47:03","slug":"intervision-song-contest-why-russia-is-reviving-its-cultural-counterweight-to-eurovision-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/119976\/","title":{"rendered":"Intervision Song Contest: why Russia is reviving its \u2018cultural counterweight\u2019 to Eurovision | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

When singer-songwriter B Howard takes to the stage in Moscow this month, he\u2019ll be making history. On 20 September the Los Angeles-born artist will be the first to represent the US at Russia\u2019s revived Intervision Song Contest, a cultural spectacle that manages to be both nostalgic throwback and very modern geopolitical manoeuvre. While Eurovision<\/a> has famously stretched its geographic boundaries to include Australia, Russia\u2019s alternative contest represents a rather different kind of international outreach.<\/p>\n

Russia dusting off the Intervision brand, largely dormant since 1980 apart from a brief reprise in 2008, follows the country\u2019s exclusion from Eurovision since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its expulsion cut off access to a platform that \u2013 while often mocked by British audiences \u2013 had served as a crucial tool of cultural diplomacy for decades.<\/p>\n

Emblazoned on Intervision\u2019s website is the claim that: \u201cThe world-famous music event returns to Russia\u201d \u2013 but the contest was, in fact, conceived in 1960s Czechoslovakia. What\u2019s more, that original contest served rather different purposes. \u201cThe idea of Intervision was certainly not what the Russians are presenting us these days,\u201d explains Dean Vuletic, a historian who has extensively researched the contest.<\/p>\n

Second iteration \u2026 1978\u2019s Intervision Song Contest in Sopot, Poland. Photograph: Stefan Kraszewski\/PAP<\/p>\n

Rather than being born of exclusion, Vuletic says the first series, running from 1965 to 1968, was explicitly designed to bring east and west together; Czechoslovak Television actually offered to collaborate with Eurovision organisers, though the proposal was rejected. When the contest finally launched, it featured western artists alongside eastern European performers, including Eurovision winners such as Puppet on a String singer Sandie Shaw and Austrian crooner Udo J\u00fcrgens appearing as interval acts.<\/p>\n

Poland took Intervision\u2019s international ethos even further during the contest\u2019s second iteration from 1977 to 1980, including artists from Japan, the US and Canada in a parallel competition for artists representing record companies. Both versions were fundamentally commercial enterprises, with Czech and Polish organisers using the platform to court western record labels and launch careers like that of Karel Gott, who became Czechoslovakia\u2019s biggest pop star after winning the inaugural Intervision. As Vuletic says: \u201cThey wanted to attract the interest of western commercial record companies. It\u2019s not like they were communists who wanted nothing to do with capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Soviets themselves, meanwhile, were not especially invested in these early contests. \u201cHaving been to the archives in Moscow, my conclusion is that the Russians themselves weren\u2019t that interested,\u201d notes Vuletic. With their vast domestic market, they simply didn\u2019t need Intervision to access broader audiences.<\/p>\n

To understand why Russian president Vladimir Putin is now so engaged with the concept that he brought the contest back to life via a presidential decree in February requires examining how Eurovision itself has changed since the cold war. The European Broadcasting Union\u2019s expansion eastward in the 1990s dramatically altered the contest\u2019s character, bringing in broadcasters from former Soviet republics and communist states who used the platform to assert their European identity.<\/p>\n

This shift coincided with Eurovision\u2019s growing association with LGBTQ+ causes, beginning with Iceland\u2019s P\u00e1ll \u00d3skar \u2013 the contest\u2019s first openly gay contestant \u2013 in 1997 and followed by Dana International\u2019s 1998 victory and Conchita Wurst\u2019s triumph in 2014. The bearded drag queen\u2019s win particularly rankled Moscow, coming just as Putin\u2019s government was promoting \u201ctraditional values\u201d and passing laws restricting LGBTQ+ content. For visual culture and identities scholar B\u00e1rbara Barreiro Le\u00f3n, Intervision serves as a \u201ccultural counterweight\u201d to Eurovision, and is born of \u201ca desire to challenge western cultural dominance, particularly as Eurovision has come to represent liberal, western values.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanitised approach \u2026 Intervision 2025 promotional material. Photograph: Youtube<\/p>\n

Beyond the contest\u2019s penchant for camp, perhaps even more galling for the Kremlin was Eurovision\u2019s role as a platform for countries once under Soviet rule to showcase their independence and distinct cultures. Ukraine\u2019s multiple victories \u2013 including Jamala\u2019s 2016 song about Stalin\u2019s deportation of Crimean Tatars \u2013 directly challenged Putin\u2019s narrative that Ukraine lacks legitimate independent culture and history. As expert in post-cold war history Catherine Baker notes, Ukraine\u2019s creativity in Eurovision has made the contest \u201ca platform where hundreds of millions of viewers can see that Putin\u2019s falsehoods about Ukraine aren\u2019t true.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Russian officials promise to promote \u201ctraditional values\u201d and reject what they term the \u201cperversions\u201d of Eurovision, this sanitised approach may prove counterproductive. \u201cPeople like to watch Eurovision because of all of that diversity, because of the provocations, because of the politics,\u201d says Stephen Hutchings, who has studied Russian media for several decades.<\/p>\n

So, who has signed up for Putin\u2019s alternative vision? Participating countries appear to be primarily those neutral or supportive of Russia\u2019s position on Ukraine, though the exact roster remains fluid. Initial reports suggested 20-21 countries, and the official website at the time of writing lists 17 \u2013 still considerably fewer than the 37 who competed in the ESC in Basel this year. These include Belarus, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, Cuba, and Qatar, alongside Serbia, notionally an EU candidate country. The US\u2019s participation, sending an artist perhaps best known as the subject of speculation about being Michael Jackson\u2019s son, is perhaps the most bizarre. Suffice to say, Ukraine will not be taking part. The country\u2019s foreign ministry has condemned the event \u201cas an instrument of hostile propaganda and a means of whitewashing the aggressive policy of the Russian Federation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making history \u2026 B Howard will perform in Moscow for the US. Photograph: Imaginechina Limited\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Beyond politics, Intervision faces practical hurdles. Unlike Eurovision, where participants largely share similar time zones (with the notable exception of Australia), Intervision spans multiple continents, making engagement with the live broadcast and voting procedures more challenging. 8pm in Moscow is 1pm in Cuba and Venezuela \u2013 not exactly primetime viewing. Many performances will need to be recorded and shown the following day, undermining the communal viewing experience that makes Eurovision compelling. Unlike Eurovision, which developed alongside European integration and shared cultural experiences, Intervision lacks the underlying political and geographic foundation that could spark and sustain long-term viewer engagement.<\/p>\n

The eclectic mix of far-flung participating countries, according to Hutchings, reflects Russia\u2019s broader strategic pivot away from the west toward the global south and Brics nations. Like the reorientation of Russian state TV news network RT after western bans, the contest represents an attempt to build alternative cultural infrastructure outside western-dominated spaces. Yet for all the geopolitical posturing, the initiative may function more as domestic theatre than international outreach: Putin\u2019s broader strategy of constructing a patriotic Russian culture, while demonstrating that the country can thrive independently of European institutions.<\/p>\n

Signed up \u2026 Nastya Kravchenko will sing for Belarus. Photograph: intervision<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s the goal, early indicators suggest the audience isn\u2019t exactly enthralled. As Barreiro Le\u00f3n points out, the contest\u2019s social media presence remains underwhelming \u2013 little over 4,000 Instagram followers at the time of writing (though Instagram is blocked in Russia, forcing users to access it via VPN), about 14,000 on Russian social media site VKontakte, and approximately 45,000 on a Telegram channel. Eurovision, for comparison, boasts 2.2 million Instagram followers. Even Russian audiences may prove skeptical, Vuletic believes, with educated young Russians seeking cutting-edge music unlikely to embrace a contest explicitly promoting conservative values.<\/p>\n

Whether this latest attempt to resurrect Intervision will prove more successful than previous efforts remains to be seen. Moscow may frame this as cultural competition, but practical realities suggest the contest faces an uphill battle. Of course, most European audiences won\u2019t be able to judge for themselves \u2013 unlike Eurovision\u2019s widespread broadcast across the continent, Intervision won\u2019t be gracing screens in the EU or the UK. As for whether Russia\u2019s alternative will strike the right note with global audiences \u2013 the jury\u2019s out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When singer-songwriter B Howard takes to the stage in Moscow this month, he\u2019ll be making history. On 20…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-119976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}