Conceived in 1960s Czechoslovakia, Vladimir Putin ordered the competition’s return and the US has now confirmed its participation – is this domestic theatre or international outreach?
W
hen singer-songwriter B Howard takes to the stage in Moscow this month, he’ll be making history. On 20 September the Los Angeles-born artist will be the first to represent the US at Russia’s revived Intervision Song Contest, a cultural spectacle that manages to be both nostalgic throwback and very modern geopolitical manoeuvre. While Eurovision has famously stretched its geographic boundaries to include Australia, Russia’s alternative contest represents a rather different kind of international outreach.
Russia dusting off the Intervision brand, largely dormant since 1980 apart from a brief reprise in 2008, follows the country’s exclusion from Eurovision since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its expulsion cut off access to a platform that – while often mocked by British audiences – had served as a crucial tool of cultural diplomacy for decades.
Emblazoned on Intervision’s website is the claim that: “The world-famous music event returns to Russia” – but the contest was, in fact, conceived in 1960s Czechoslovakia. What’s more, that original contest served rather different purposes. “The idea of Intervision was certainly not what the Russians are presenting us these days,” explains Dean Vuletic, a historian who has extensively researched the contest.
