In 1973, she was forced to move to Germany, at the same time leading Soviet newspapers wrote that she allegedly "asks to return to the USSR", but, having been refused by the Soviet embassy, commits suicide. There was nothing of the sort, of course. "Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak, as you know, was published with the money of the CIA and was part of the propaganda war, and the award to the author of the Nobel Prize and the subsequent rejection of it led Pasternak to persecution and persecution by the Soviet government. There is also a high-profile story that the CIA financed and strongly supported the artists of American abstract expressionism as opposed to Soviet socialist realism. There are many examples of such support in Frances Stonor Saunders' book Who Pays for the Music: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War.
In 2013, the most famous Hungarian spy, Istvan Belovai, who is known as "the man who prevented the third world war", died. Shortly before his death, Istvan Belovai admitted that during his work in the KGB, some Hungarian pop artists actively collaborated with both the CIA and the KGB. Cultural figures often faced a difficult choice - with whom to cooperate, because. the choice had a direct impact on their future safety.
The key question of the exhibition is which of the presented authors collaborated and with which special service?

Vladimir Potapov's exhibition "A Grasshopper Sitting in the Grass" is represented by 10 paintings. As a basis, the author takes such a visual code as the design of Hungarian stage vinyl records, which is why the size of all works is the same as the size of a vinyl record 31x31 cm. The method of creating paintings, which organically correlates with the chosen topic, is also important. Potapov's paintings are scratched layers of paint through which the historical images of the Hungarian stage show through. Vladimir Potapov says: "It's like traveling in time, when you scratch the paint, it leads to the actualization of the deep layers of the paint, these layers are integrated into the main surface. For me, it is a process of immersion in our shared memory." This method of creating an image in Russia has already been called "anti-painting" because the paint is not superimposed on the surface as in traditional painting, but rather peeled off. Recognizable images of once iconic Hungarian singers and bands emerge like a palimpsest through a layered structure.
Culture, as an area of political manipulation during the Cold War, took on a special significance. Cultural figures, especially representatives of the stage, became an instrument of ideological propaganda, "detachments on the front line", their songs penetrated through radio receivers, destroying the usual picture of the life of listeners and promising them a "better life". In 1969, the Soviet singer Larisa Mondrus refused to perform the ideologically sustained "civil theme" imposed by the USSR Ministry of Culture.

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