Yegor Letov
Igor Fedorovich "Egor" Letov (, ; (10 September 1964 – 19 February 2008) was a Russian poet, musician, singer-songwriter, audio engineer and conceptual artist, best known as the founder and leader of the post-punk/psychedelic rock band Grazhdanskaya Oborona (). He was also the founder of the conceptual art avant-garde project Kommunizm and psychedelic rock outfit Egor i Opizdenevshie. Letov collaborated with singer-songwriter Yanka Dyagileva and other Siberian underground artists as a record engineer and producer. Biography Letov was born in Omsk, Siberia to Fyodor Letov, a military man and World War II veteran from Northern Ural (Perm Krai), and Tamara Letova, a doctor of Russian Cossack origin from Kazakhstan. The Letov family had Russian, Mordvin, Komi and Turkic ancestors. The family moved to Omsk from Semipalatinsk a few years before Egor's birth. From a young age, Egor and his older brother Sergey had health issues, and Yegor experienced clinical deaths in his childhood. After graduating from school, Egor went to live with his brother, who was a relatively successful jazz saxophonist in Moscow at the time. In Moscow, Letov learned to play some drums and bass guitar, developed contacts with Moscow underground avant-garde artists, and enrolled in a professional technical