ONE year it was the thinly veiled taunts of a doughy Ukrainian drag queen in silver-sequined accoutrements that chafed Russian sensibilities.
This year has brought a Georgian disco troupe with a song poking fun at the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, along with a Swedish techno group that recently set off a minor diplomatic dispute with a show featuring Russian soldiers, go-go dance
rs and a man in a bear suit dancing to the Soviet anthem.
It's all part of an international melodrama, playing out to the pounding ditties of the Eurovision Song Contest, the half-century-old European pop music carnival as famous for its glitter and fluorescent spandex as its annoyingly catchy melodies. And more often than not, in recent years, Russia has found itself the butt of the jokes, satires and downright nasty remarks, as artists wrangle over the unresolved complexes and insecurities born of the Soviet collapse and the pains of European integration.
This year, though, the commentary promises to carry a special bite, because Moscow will host the competition in just under a month.
Political dramas have emerged elsewhere, of course. This year's entry from Israel, featuring an Israeli Arab singer and a Jewish pop star, has stirred political passions there.
But the competition in Moscow this year takes place against a backdrop of growing Russian assertiveness – in political and military affairs, as well as in athletic and music competitions.
Russia has reportedly pumped huge resources into its quest to produce another Eurovision champion on May 16. Last year's winning act featured Dima Bilan, a Russian pop singer with a mullet hairdo gyrating on stage, as Yevgeny Plyushchenko, the Olympic champion figure skater, pirouetted on a patch of artificial ice. The American rap artist Timbaland helped write the winning song, 'Believe'.
That victory in Belgrade, Serbia, which gave Russia the right to host this year's event, prompted an outpouring of patriotic fervour. Putin called the win "yet another triumph for all of Russia" and personally ordered one of his top deputies to organise the 2009 event.
"For whatever reason, in Russia this contest is taken very seriously," said Artemy Troitsky, a Russian music critic. Government-run television channels, he said, "make people feel that the Eurovision Song Contest is like an annual Stalingrad battle".
While Eurovision has given early exposure to pop culture giants like Abba and Celine Dion over the years, many Western European countries seem to approach the contest with a bit more mirth and far less seriousness. (A puppet turkey represented Ireland last year, for instance.) In the spirit of democracy, past winners have been chosen in direct elections that counted telephone calls or text messages. Voters could select any contestant except for the one from their own country.
But Russia's Eurovision victory last year, and Serbia's the year before that, prompted Eurovision organisers to change the voting rules for 2009 to include a panel of professional judges after complaints about what many in Western Europe derisively referred to as "bloc voting" from Eastern European countries.
"At the very beginning of the year, I said Russia would win this for political reasons, and they did," Sir Terry Wogan, Britain's Eurovision host, said last year shortly before announcing that he would end his 35-year run because of bloc voting. "The USSR has begun to be a bit bearish again, and I think, in general, the former countries of the USSR are feeling a little nervous."
There are also fears that a clash of values could erupt between the competition's conservative Russian hosts and the more liberal-minded guests expected to pour into the capital. Calls for a gay pride march in Moscow to coincide with the competition met with a stern rebuke from Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, who has called public gay rights events "gay propaganda" and "satanic acts".
At a news conference in December, when the mayor of Belgrade handed over the symbolic Eurovision key to Luzhkov, the Moscow mayor promised that foreign gays and lesbians would be allowed to freely enter Russia like anyone else.
"Come and relax," Luzhkov said. "There is no problem with that. But not on the streets and the squares."
Comments like this have subjected Russia to attacks – some playful and some not – from other countries in the competition, most often from Ukrainians and Georgians, who ousted Russian-backed governments through so-called coloured revolutions.
Verka Serdyuchka, a middle-aged Ukrainian drag queen, incensed Russians at Eurovision 2007 with her song 'Dancing Lasha Tumbai', a made-up phrase that many took to mean "Russia, Goodbye". This year, Eurovision officials requested that Georgia change the politically tinged lyrics of its tune, 'We Don't Wanna Put In'. After the obvious reference to Putin in the song's chorus, they sing about how "the negative mood is killing the groove".
Still angry after Georgia's defeat in a short war with Russia last August, Georgian organisers decided instead to pull out last month, claiming that Eurovision officials buckled under pressure from Moscow, though Russian officials deny any involvement.
"In our case this year, it has been proven that this is an absolutely political competition," said Kakha Tsiskaridze, one of the producers of Stephane and 3G, the group behind "We Don't Wanna Put In."
But internal controversies could be Russia's undoing this year. Anastasia Prikhodko, the singer selected to represent Russia at the contest, has caused an uproar because of her ethnic Ukrainian roots. It has not helped that she is performing a song written by a Georgian, with a chorus sung in Ukrainian.
