Looping Swans
When tanks rolled into Moscow on 19 August 1991 during a dramatic anti-Perestroika coup by Soviet hard-liners, the USSR\u2019s state-controlled airwaves offered a curious response - a continuous loop of Tchaikovsky\u2019s Swan Lake. We trace the strange and elaborate pas de deux between Tchaikovsky\u2019s ballet classic and the Russian psyche \u2013 revealing how a work, considered a flop upon its premiere, emerged as a powerful instrument of Soviet propaganda, and later \u2013 a soundtrack that failed to disguise impending political turmoil.