Singer Katya Volkova told how she was persuaded to perform at a concert before the 2020 elections and why she left

Katya Volkova. Photo: singer's Instagram

Katya Volkova is a Belarusian singer and songwriter who has been building a new life in Germany for the past few years. Earlier, she participated in the casting show "I Want to Join VIA Gra", and later built a solo career. In 2020, she was detained at a women's march and given 12 days of arrest.

On her YouTube channel, the singer spoke in detail about what forced her to leave her homeland. The reason for the frank confession was the resonant story of her colleague Aleksey Khlyostov, who, after being blacklisted, went to work as a taxi driver.

According to Volkova, her career problems began a year before the elections, when the pandemic hit. While the authorities claimed that "there is no coronavirus," artists' performances were massively canceled.

"All my performances, all my concerts were canceled. I was also working as a presenter back then. And all my corporate events, everything I had, was simply canceled, and I still had a loan hanging over me," the singer recalls.

At the same time, the mechanism for paying royalties for song rotation on radio stations changed — previously, they brought the singer "more or less a good salary for an average Belarusian" every month. But at one point, this income "simply decreased by 10 times":

"I came to this copyright organization and said: 'Have I been played less on radio stations? Why zero?'. (...) And they told me: 'You haven't been played less'. They just introduced some tax on tax, (...) and so this rate, which used to be received for one spin — well, hypothetically, 10 dollars (...) now became 1 dollar," Volkova explains.

As a result, Volkova claims, royalties "simply came to naught." And concert work had already been destroyed by the pandemic.

Offer to perform at a concert before the elections

In the summer of 2020, a week before the elections, when the singer was broke, she received a call with an offer to perform at concerts throughout the country. These were supposed to be concerts during "days of silence", when campaigning is prohibited. The fee was promised to be three times higher than usual.

"I was just so hungry for concerts and money that I understood with my brain that it was related to politics, but I asked 10 times: is this really not related to politics?" she says.

However, during the subsequent conversation, as the singer recalls, it turned out that it was not so simple:

"The next question was: 'Well, you're not posting anything opposition-related, are you?'. And at that moment, I was already clearly expressing my position. I said: 'I am posting'. And they told me: 'Let's do this. You will now delete everything opposition-related that you have on social media, and you will not go out to protest on August 9th after the voting'. They basically told me a week in advance who would win the election, that there would be protests, and that I couldn't go to these protests."

Moreover, according to Volkova, she was warned: if she was seen at protests or if "opposition symbols" were found on her social media, she would not receive money for the performance.

"I looked with hungry eyes at this piece of meat thrown to me and said: thank you, but I will not delete anything from my social media," the singer recalls.

"I was registered under another singer's passport"

After participating in the protests and spending days in detention, the singer ended up on blacklists. Volkova admits that "hungry times" came. She called all her acquaintances, asking for any work. Some organizers risked to help her.

"There were several concerts where state organizations, where normal, adequate people worked, gave me work and registered me under another singer's passport," Volkova shares, recalling that even then she was receiving calls from the Investigative Committee and being summoned there.

"I said: 'Send a summons.' But they didn't send me a summons. But it was terribly scary. I lost my peace, sleep, and was taking strong antidepressants," the singer recalls.

As Volkova explains, at that time she finally decided to leave the country. But she needed money for that. She started looking for work through all her acquaintances.

"Some people took me to perform in their groups. That is, Katya Volkova was not on any posters. I just wore the same costumes as the group members, and nothing was advertised at all. And I might have performed in some city, and you don't even know that I performed there. I no longer cared how much money I performed for, I no longer cared what to sing, what songs. It was important for me to gather enough money to leave faster," the singer emotionally recounts.

"People will be eating, and we will be singing in the canteen?"

One of the most humiliating moments for the singer was a friend's offer to go on tour performing in sanatoriums.

"I went. And everything would have been fine, until he said: 'Now we need to go and sing one song in the canteen for advertising, so that people come to this concert'. I said: 'What do you mean? People came from the beach, they will be eating, and we will be singing in the canteen?'" Volkova recalls.

However, the greatest humiliation occurred at the concert itself, which only 10 people attended. The reason for such low attendance was the temperature of +35 degrees Celsius in a room without air conditioning:

"We sang, sweat was pouring off us, people were sitting, dripping with sweat. (...) The amount I received — well, considering that we spent money on gasoline, there was also a sound engineer with us, and I wasn't the only one performing there... I don't remember how much, maybe 5 dollars was the net income."

After that, the singer bought a ticket to Kyiv and left (this was before February 2022).

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