CHOBA B CCCP

Background and recording

Following the tepid reaction to his 1986 studio album Press to Play, McCartney spent much of the first half of 1987 plotting his next album. In March he recorded an album's worth of songs with producer Phil Ramone, but those sessions only produced the single "Once Upon a Long Ago" backed with "Back on My Feet", released only in the United Kingdom that November.

After a series of jam sessions with various British musicians playing his favourite 1950s songs, McCartney decided to record the songs live in the studio. Over two days in July 1987, he recorded twenty songs. Other tracks recorded during the sessions but not included on the Melodiya album were "I'm in Love Again" (later on the international release), "I Wanna Cry" (an original song released as a B-side in 1989), "It's Now or Never" (on a 1990 compilation), and an unreleased version of the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There".

Title and artwork

The album’s Russian title, «Снова в СССР» (Snova v SSSR), translates to "Back in the U.S.S.R.," sharing its name with a 1968 Beatles song. It is also called Back in the USSR or the Russian Album. English speakers frequently mispronounce the first word due to Cyrillic letter differences.

Michael Ross designed the cover. The Soviet release featured liner notes by Roy Carr, translated from English. In its debut year, the album sold over 400,000 copies.

Release

McCartney's first plan was to put the album out in the UK through unofficial channels, so it would look like a Soviet contraband item. EMI rejected that. Instead, his manager had a small run of LPs pressed with Russian text on the covers as a Christmas gift for McCartney. That sparked the idea to actually release it in the Soviet Union as a peace gesture during glasnost.

A deal with the state label Melodiya licensed 400,000 copies for Soviet sale only, with no exports. The album came out there on 31 October 1988. The initial pressing of 50,000 copies had 11 songs and sold out instantly. A second pressing, adding "I'm Gonna Be a Wheel Someday" and "Summertime," followed about a month later.

Soon after, copies started showing up outside the USSR, selling for between $100 and $250 in the US and up to £500 in the UK. A worldwide release finally arrived in 1991, with 14 tracks including "I'm in Love Again," a song not on the Soviet versions. That release mistakenly printed the title as СНОВА Б СССР. It charted at number 63 in the UK and number 109 in the US.

Half the album's songs had already appeared as B-sides between 1987 and 1989. In 2019, Capitol Records reissued the album as a newly mastered edition, replicating the original 11-track Melodiya vinyl. It was remastered at Abbey Road Studios as part of a broader McCartney catalogue re-release series.

Did You Know?

• The album's title is often mispronounced by English speakers because the Cyrillic characters 'С', 'H', and 'В' have different sounds than their Latin equivalents.
• McCartney's manager had a batch of LPs pressed with Russian-language covers as a Christmas present for McCartney, which inspired the Soviet release.
• Copies of the album were sold outside the Soviet Union for up to £500 in the United Kingdom and between $100 and $250 in the United States.
• The international release in 1991 misprinted the title as СНОВА Б СССР, using the Cyrillic 'Б' instead of 'В'.