"Autodafe is generally our sworn brother," Bogaev wrote in his memoir, adding: "Without doubt, the music of Autodafe was the closest to ours." Of all the Arkhangelsk bands this is the only one that deserves a story of its own on our site: there is simply too much in common.
One can begin with the covers. The songwriter and guitarist of Autodafe, Alexey Bulygin, was also an artist, and he drew the artwork for "OK II. Selkhozrok" (remember the ploughman with a wooden plough against a huge Saturn?), "Khudozhestvennaya samodeyatelnost", "Ublyuzhya Dolya" and "Stremya i Lyudi". This is how they worked: Bogaev described the forthcoming album over the phone and read out the lyrics, and Bulygin quickly painted the cover. "Ygyatta" (2011) he designed on a computer.
Then there are the musicians who played in both. The Autodafe vocalist Dmitry Leontyev sat behind the drums of Oblachny Kray in 1987 — at the Arkhangelsk festival, in Podolsk, at the MEI culture palace in Moscow — and from 1999 also played on "Lyubov k zhizni" and "Patriot". In chapter 10 of the memoir Bogaev recalls how the two of them drew up papers for sponsors: the administrator they picked was "the Autodafe drummer Dima Leontyev". In 1989 the drummer Yury Korablev joined Oblachny Kray after the bass player Andrey Lukin (who played in Autodafe at the 1987 festival) — he played on "Svobody zakhoteli?" and "Oblachny Kray-1991". And Autodafe's second guitar Andrey Korelsky later helped with the orchestrations for "Lyubov k zhizni" and "Patriot".
At the V rock festival on 28 February – 1 March 1987 Autodafe played as Bulygin (lead guitar), Leontyev (drums), Korelsky (second lead guitar) and Lukin (bass). Troitsky writes in "Rock in the USSR" that the band's bright heavy show was remembered by many (more about the festival). In 1985 Autodafe had played at the away "session" at Permilovo; according to the description of Nikolai Kharitonov's film, one can see "the young Autodafe" and Svyataya Luiza there, and Autodafe play, among other things, "Smoke on the Water" (the sound was later replaced with archive recordings). Clips of Autodafe, Oblachny Kray and Kamera were shown on the "Pomorye" channel in 1987 (about the TV).
In the autumn of 1987 Oblachny Kray and Autodafe went to Leningrad together: in reply to Alisa's invitation to Arkhangelsk, the Leningrad rock club and the club "Fonograf" asked the Arkhangelsk bands to play at the LDM in the same programme as Alisa. It did not go without adventures. At the police station, where some of the company had ended up by chance in Leningrad, Dima suddenly appeared — the Autodafe vocalist and the drummer of Oblachny Kray; his eyesight is weak, he flew in through the door looking around, and his friends shouted "Dima, run!". Dima's reaction, Bogaev writes, is lightning-fast — he turned "like an icebreaker" and vanished. Bogaev tells the story in his memoir (chapter 1, part 2), and the samizdat magazine "Zombi" mentioned it in the interview (here is that interview). In the winter of 1988–89 there was a return trip. And in January 1988 the whole of Autodafe came to Leontyev's flat, converted into a studio, when Oleg Rautkin returned from a long trip — and they drank coffee and vanilla liqueur poured into a three-litre jar (see chapter 8).
Then came the nineties. In 1998 Bulygin and Leontyev revived Autodafe and recorded the album "Na beregu reki Agdam" at Andrey Tropillo's studio in St Petersburg — Bogaev took part in the recording. Pravda Severa of 13 May 1999 called it "Reka Agdam" and reported that the CD release was delayed for technical reasons. The title hit of Autodafe also sounded on 23 June 2018 at the "Pod Tankom v 6" gathering: it was played by the "Combined Orchestra of Rear Tankmen" — Bulygin and Igor Koshkin on guitars, Sergey Kustikov on bass, Leontyev on vocals. And in 2026 Leontyev plays in "Otdelny Korpus", the cover project with Oblachny Kray songs.
More in the series: who was friends with whom, Autodafe, Svyataya Luiza, Scena, Blues Inspector on TV, Pod Tankom.
Used here: Bogaev's memoir (chapters 7, 5, 9, 10, 8, 1); Troitsky's "Rock in the USSR"; Pravda Severa, 13 May 1999; publications of "Podtankovskaya Gvardiya" (the description of the film "Concert at Permilovo 1985", the report on the 2018 gathering); the members' pages on this site.
