Putin welcomes ex-Beatle to Kremlin
Paul McCartney’s dream to perform on Red Square is coming true tonight when the former Beatle makes his first ever appearance in Russia.
Putin welcomed McCartney to the Kremlin ahead of tonight’s concert in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral.
The performance is McCartney’s first in Russia, a country he is also visiting for the first time.
McCartney asked Putin if the Beatles’ music had been banned in the Soviet Union.
Putin told him: “It was not exactly banned. But the fact you weren’t allowed to play in Red Square in the 1980s says a lot.”
Putin, an ex-KGB agent, said the Beatles were considered ”propaganda of an alien ideology”.
“It did not seem to some people that art was beyond ideology,” he said.
Putin told McCartney that the Beatles were widely listened to in the Soviet Union despite the official disapproval of their music.
“It was very popular, more than popular. It was like a breath of fresh air, like a window on to the outside world,” Putin said.
McCartney told Putin about his visit yesterday to St. Petersburg, Putin’s hometown, where he was named an honorary professor at St Petersburg Conservatory, Russia’s oldest musical institution.
McCartney also raised his campaign with his wife, Heather Mills, for a ban on land mines. “I think it is a very good cause,” Putin replied. “I think everything aimed at saving human lives deserves our utmost support.”
Russia has not signed the 1997 Ottawa Convention banning the use and production of land mines, which more than 130 countries have signed.
After their meeting in an opulent hall, Putin gave McCartney a tour of the Kremlin – surprising student onlookers who despite their youth recognised the ex-Beatle, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Asked while touring the area about the meaning of the Beatles’ 1968 song Back in the USSR, McCartney said the Soviet Union had been “a mystical land then”.
“It’s nice to see the reality,” he said. “I always suspected that people had big hearts. Now I know that’s true.”
