Shine: The Year Russia Was Booed in Copenhagen

MAY 15 2014 · 12:30

Tolmachevy Sisters · "Shine" · Russia · 2014 Placement: 7th · Score: 89 · Language: English · Composers: Filipp Kirkorov, Gerard James Borg, Dimitris Kontopoulos · Venue: B&W Hallerne · Host: Copenhagen, Denmark · Type: protest · Broadcast: HD On May 10, 2014, inside the B&W Hallerne on Copenhagen's Refshaleøen, the seventeen-year-old Russian twin sisters Anastasia and Maria Tolmachevy performed 'Shine' for Russia. They were already Eurovision veterans, having won the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in 2006 as nine-year-olds. The song was a softly-lit piano-led ballad composed by the Philipp Kirkorov–Dimitris Kontopoulos Russian pop-export team; the staging centred on a large motorised seesaw the sisters stood on, their plaited hair physically linked together in a visual gesture meant to suggest twin connection. The visual was striking. The audience response was louder. When the Copenhagen hall announced Russia's qualification out of the first semi-final, the crowd booed audibly. The boos repeated through the live final on May 10, each time Russia received points. The reaction was widely reported as directed not at the teenage performers themselves but at the Russian government — specifically at the 2013 federal 'gay propaganda' law and at Russia's Crimea annexation two months before the contest. Russia finished seventh with 89 points. The boos became the year's secondary story. Context Eurovision 2014 was held two months after Russia's annexation of Crimea and eighteen months after the Russian federal law restricting 'propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations' to minors. Eurovision had been an openly LGBTQ+-aligned broadcast for at least a decade by this point. The Tolmachevy Sisters themselves were teenagers and had no public political profile. Legacy The 2014 booing of the Tolmachevy Sisters became a Eurovision turning point: the moment at which audience-level politics entered the contest's live broadcast at full volume. Subsequent Russian entries through 2015–2017 were booed to varying degrees; the practice was reportedly mitigated by anti-booing technology on later broadcasts. Mythology The Tolmachevy Sisters' booing is sometimes remembered as happening only in the final; it began during the semi-final qualification announcement.