Intervision song contest Why Russia has revived cold war-era competition

Why Russia has revived cold war-era competition

- Elise Morton

When the singer-songwriter B Howard takes to the stage in Moscow later this month he will 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 a nostalgic throwback and a modern geopolitical manoeuvre.

While the Eurovision song contest has stretched its geographic boundaries to include Australia, Russia's alternative represents a rather different kind of international outreach.

Russia dusting off the Intervision brand, dormant since 1980 apart from a brief reprise in 2008, follows the country's exclusion from Eurovision after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Its expulsion cut off access to a platform that had served as a tool of cultural diplomacy for decades.

Intervision's website states: "The world-famous music event returns to Russia." However, the contest was in fact conceived in 1960s Czechoslovakia.