How one concert united Russian-speaking diasporas and homelands in Istanbul
The Belarusian hip-hop star Max Korzh gave his first concert to Belarus and Russia-based fans in a visa-free country, Turkey, since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine. It was a cultural summit of those who left with those who stayed, revealing stubbornly potent myths of post-Soviet “unity” and abstract anti-war sentiment.
September 11, 2026 -
Alexander Neuman
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Issue 5 2026MagazineStories and ideas
Max Korzh during a concert in Warsaw, Poland. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Istanbul’s streets were transformed. Kanye West had just convened 118,000 fans to paralyse the city’s traffic, and the following week brought little relief. On June 6th, the Belarusian rapper Max Korzh, who sings almost solely in Russian, performed in the packed Beşiktaş Tüpraş Stadium. His visit appeared to make Russian the second most-spoken language in the city, adding to the surge of Russian tourists in Turkey since the onset of European visa cutbacks and Iranian attacks on Gulf destinations.
The arrival of Korzh’s fans gave the city a chaotic injection of energy that resembled a colour revolution: a mass march of Russian-speaking fans in their 20s and 30s, a coordinated party boat procession on the Bosporus, fusillades of fireworks from the Galata Bridge and in the streets, with shirtless men waving glowing red road flares. I thought it revealed some of the pent-up energy from the digital lockdowns of Belarus and Russia, now bursting through Istanbul’s pressure valve. “We don’t want you to misunderstand us,” Korzh addressed the people of Turkey. “These people hadn’t had a concert in exactly seven years, and we’ve just been so happy over the past three days.”
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diaspora, Max Korzh, Russia, Ukraine
