A monument to Soviet rock legend Viktor Tsoi has been unveiled in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, the second such memorial to him in the Central Asian country.
A member of the late musician's Kino rock group, Yury Kasparyan, prominent Kazakh film director Rashid Nugmanov, and Almaty Mayor Bauyrzhan Baibek attended a ceremony unveiling the memorial on June 21.
Tsoi and his group, Kino, were extremely popular in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.
His songs stand as symbols of the hopes for freedom and political change.
Tsoi, who was of Korean-Russian origin, died in a car crash in the then-Soviet republic of Latvia on August 15, 1990, at age 28.
Tsoi wrote many of the songs in his final album in Almaty in 1988, and his father was born in Kazakhstan.
The monument was placed on a beautiful pedestrian avenue in downtown Almaty, where the last scene of the blockbuster film Igla (The Needle), in which Tsoi played the main character, was shot in 1988.*
The monument was unveiled on what would have been Tsoi's 56th birthday and on the 30th anniversary of the film.
It is the second monument for the late rock legend in Kazakhstan.
In August 2017, a monument to Tsoi was unveiled in the central city of Qaraghandy.
