The Man Who Brought Liverpool to Leningrad

January 16th is World Day The BeatlesThe date was established by UNESCO back in 2001. It was on this day in 1957 that Liverpool The Cavern club opened, where they began their journey to fame John Lennon, Gender McCartney, George Harrison and joined a couple of years later Ringo Starr.

In 1966, Lennon declared that his Liverpool four were even more popular than Jesus. And despite the fact that The Beatles stopped working together in 1970, they remain legends to this day. 

Rolling Stone magazine ranked the band first on its list of the greatest artists of all time. Billboard ranked them the most popular artist of 1958-2018. Sales also confirm this: The Beatles are considered the best-selling band in history.

The worldwide Beatlemania became an unprecedented phenomenon of mass psychosis. Fans' obsession knew no bounds: from collective fainting spells and "hunts" for the musicians' cigarette butts to the emergence of the first-ever gigantic merchandising market and a transformation of global men's fashion standards. This frenzy reached its peak in 1964, when the band's performance on American television was watched by a record 73 million people.

Beatlemania didn't bypass the USSR either. On World Beatles Day, we tell the story of the USSR's foremost Beatlemaniac, Kolya Vasin—a man who turned his apartment into the headquarters of an entire subculture, dedicated 60 years of his life to the Liverpool Four, and failed to build the "John Lennon Temple of Love, Peace, and Music" as a symbol of eternal light.