In one of the most remarkable non-violent revolutions in history, the people of Estonia used music as their greatest weapon.

So you had the first inklings of free enterprise that the Soviet Union worked hard to ensure its music industry did not have. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) POPOV: (Through interpreter) When we started in ...

In the decade after World War II, the communist Soviet Union officially banned rock, jazz, and blues music. But people made bootleg versions of that music — recorded onto thin sheets of X-ray film.

Inna Faliks’ Soviet Union household only had three rooms for seven people and no telephone – but it did have music. Growing up, Faliks’ parents encouraged a creative childhood that included ...

Forty years ago in the Soviet Union, a group of underground musicians opened a venue where they and their friends could perform. The Leningrad Rock Club remains a legend of Russian counterculture.

After Stalin's death, people in the Soviet Union could begin to debate politics again without fear of repression. This "thawing" took place in private kitchens, where music and art flourished, too.

After leaving the Soviet Union in late 1975 with the help of the International Rescue Committee, Saifudinov spent a little more than six months in Europe, where he met a music journalist in Rome ...

And this, by the 1980s, was pumping out around 200 million vinyl records just within the Soviet Union. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) EISENBERG: With the death of Stalin, ...