Andrey Makarevich

Origins and early life

Andrey Makarevich was born on 11 December 1953 in Moscow.

Work and career

His mother, Nina Markovna Makarevich, née Shmuylovich, was a Jewish microbiologist; his father, Vadim Makarevich, an architect of Belarusian origin — he figures in this directory by his documented Jewish mother. In 1969, still a schoolboy in love with the Beatles, he founded Mashina Vremeni, Time Machine — the band that, through the closed decades of the Soviet Union, became the founding act of Russian rock, its songs of longing and quiet dissent passed from hand to hand on tape before the state allowed them a stage; by the 1980s it filled stadiums, and its songs are part of the memory of several generations.

Painter, writer and television host as well as musician, Makarevich was honored by the Russian state — People's Artist of Russia — and then, from 2014, chose the harder road: he publicly opposed the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine, played for civilians in the Donbas, was denounced on state television, and after the invasion of 2022 left Russia, which declared him a 'foreign agent'. He lives and performs abroad, among the most prominent voices of Russian culture in exile.