Vinyl Nostalgia The story of AnTrop is one of the most extraordinary in the history of 20th-century phonography.
In 1978, Andrei Tropillo announced that he wanted to build a vinyl record factory and flood the USSR with Beatles albums. His friends thought he was crazy. A decade later, he became the director of the Leningrad branch of Melodiya (Мелодия).
AnTrop operated as a legitimate record label, and since it used Melodiya’s facilities, the records bore two catalog numbers—Melodiya’s numbers were a continuation of a sequence dating back a decade. The production of the records was humorously attributed to “the Rock ’n’ Roll Parish of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia,” when Tropillo moved AnTrop’s headquarters from Melodiya to the St. Petersburg Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The records included a note stating that the recording was taken from a radio broadcast, which—in accordance with Soviet law at the time—was intended to circumvent copyright issues in the context of commercial use. Beatles albums, for example, bore the notation: “from the collection of Nikolai Vasin.”
The catalog included, among others, *The White Album*, *Magical Mystery Tour*, *Help!*, *Sgt. Pepper’s*, *Revolver*, and *Let It Be*—as well as Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, *Led Zeppelin IV*, and others. The reported print run per title ranged from 200,000 to 500,000 copies. Tropillo later estimated that the total number of copies from all plants reached tens of millions.
AnTrop’s album covers are a chapter unto themselves. Tropillo often made changes to the cover art—sometimes subtle, sometimes spectacular. On the cover of *Sgt. Pepper’s*, he placed his own photo in the crowd behind the Beatles, and next to it—a photograph of the famous Russian Beatles fan Kolya Vasin. On the cover of *Abbey Road*, it was John, not Paul, who was walking barefoot.
AnTrop Records wasn’t even legal in Russia—which is why most secondary markets don’t deal in these releases. Melodiya, on the other hand, although it effectively operated as a pirate label releasing Western music without permission and without paying royalties for most of its existence, was an official state-run label, and its releases are considered legal.
Here is a list of unofficial (pirated) Beatles albums released in the Soviet Union (USSR) / Commonwealth of Independent States between 1991 and 1993 by AnTrop.