The banjo never left Obninsk How a Russian teacher is keeping American country music alive in a city outside Moscow

In 2003, Alexey Gvozdev’s music students were nominated for a Grammy and appeared on the television show “60 Minutes.” The group lost the Best Country Instrumental Award to the Dixie Chicks, but Bering Strait remains the only Russian band ever nominated in the ceremony. The group’s members are originally from the city of Obninsk, roughly two hours southwest of Moscow, where Gvozdev still teaches American country music to young students, despite Moscow’s strained relations with the West following the invasion of Ukraine. Journalists from Novaya Vkladka visited Obninsk and met with Gvozdev to discuss how his work has weathered the new realities of Russia’s international situation. Meduza presents an abridged adaptation of this story.

In the 1990s, “Russia was falling apart,” Alexey Gvozdev told Novaya Vkladka, explaining why his music students decided to stay in the U.S. after scoring a record deal with Sony. “They were 18–19 years old, everything [in Russia] was uncertain, and staying there was prestigious.” Looking back at how their careers turned out, he added: “I can’t say everything worked out for all of them: one’s fixing cars, another’s working on a farm. Only Toshinsky became a serious musician.”

Ilya Toshinsky was the first member of “Cheerful Diligence,” Gvozdev’s student group, which later became “Bering Strait” when its performers relocated permanently to the United States. Toshinsky’s banjo work helped Cheerful Diligence gain notice in Russia, both for his skill and the exoticism of the instrument itself. (Novaya Vkladka describes the banjo to its readers as “something like a tambourine with a neck and strings.”) Toshinsky now works as a session guitarist, composing instrumental music for well-known country artists like Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift, and others.

Obninsk is home to more than 130,000 people today, but it is a young city, founded after World War II and built to host the world’s first nuclear power plant created to generate electricity for a power grid. Obninsk’s deep integration with Russia’s scientific research industry led to its sister city agreement in 1992 with Oak Ridge, Tennessee, another settlement with origins in the 1940s, when it served as a key node in the Manhattan Project. 

Alexey Gvozdev first saw Tennessee in the 1990s when he came to Oak Ridge as part of a delegation from Obninsk. America and its people did not make the best impression on him. On this journey and subsequent trips to the U.S., as well as when Tennesseans visited Russia, Gvozdev said he was shocked by American parochialism. He recalled to Novaya Vkladka how locals in Oak Ridge refused to believe that Obninsk built the world’s first nuclear power plant. “What are you talking about? The first nuclear plant was here in Oak Ridge!” Gvozdev said, mimicking the locals. He added that Cold War–era Soviet propaganda was intense, but “not to the degree it was in the U.S.”

Even after almost 20 years of sisterly ties, the wealth imbalance between the people of Obninsk and Oak Ridge remained awkward for many visiting Russians. Alexey Polyakov, an Orthodox priest who joined a delegation to Tennessee in 2010, told Novaya Vkladka that true parity between the two cities was impossible due to the vast gap in living standards. People in Obninsk “wanted help” from America, said Polyakov, and viewed the U.S. as an “older brother” in the 1990s. The state of American civil society also presented uneasy comparisons, given the relatively limited scope of volunteer work in Russia. Polyakov recalled witnessing soup kitchens and women’s shelters in Oak Ridge that operated on “a whole different level.”

Cheerful Diligence’s first U.S. tour ended poorly. Gvozdev said the group enjoyed performing concerts at different local businesses, but the welcome mat was abruptly pulled back when the band decided to stay in America for a few extra days to attend a big country music festival. The Oak Ridge City Council — “a bunch of crusty old men,” said Gvozdev — contacted the authorities, and “a convoy of three police cars” escorted the Russians to the airport to board a return flight home. Back in Obninsk, the local newspaper branded the musicians as “defectors,” assuming that they’d wanted to stay permanently in America. 

Despite the unflattering publicity, Cheerful Diligence continued to gain popularity in Russia, even performing at a government-organized live concert aboard an icebreaker at the North Pole in 1994. 

Gvozdev’s ensemble still plays today, though concert life rarely takes the group beyond Obninsk’s boundaries. Russia’s community of American country music lovers is small and shrinking. Most fans are now in their 50s, and traveling to the West to join festivals abroad is no longer practical or even feasible. 

These days, when Cheerful Diligence performs songs in English, there’s often someone in the crowd who shouts back, “Sing in Russian — enough of that American language!” Under these circumstances, Gvozdev said he has started adapting more Russian songs into a country style, though one of his current students told Novaya Vkladka that she and the other band members convinced him to let them continue singing in English at country music gigs.

For his part, Gvozdev said he doubts he’ll live to see another U.S.–Russian rapprochement. “America only pursues its own interests,” he complained. “Since the 2000s, they’ve seen Russians as nobodies. I think to myself: You bastards, you need to be put in your place! Thank God Putin figured all this out in time — he’s a smart guy, after all,” Gvozdev told Novaya Vkladka.

In 2023, the Oak Ridge City Council came close to dissolving its partnership with Obninsk due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, Sister City proponents and Oak Ridge scientists lobbied the council to reconsider, arguing that the partnership was rooted in connections between the people of the two cities, not their governments. “Every one of us, at one time or another, has looked at our leaders and been ashamed by their actions and decisions,” Sean Seyfert, a local middle school art teacher and the Sister City board chairman, wrote in a letter to the council. Ultimately, city leaders voted to keep the agreement but ended its public funding.

Though he supports Vladimir Putin and sneers at American arrogance, Alexey Gvozdev continues to teach country and bluegrass to young musicians in Obninsk. Students who spoke to Novaya Vkladka said he invests his own money in their training, providing them with instruments worth thousands of dollars. The wall of Gvozdev’s rehearsal room is adorned with posters from Cheerful Diligence’s past performances in different countries. “This one’s from Finland. Those are Swedish,” he told journalists, saying he hopes international travel will soon reopen for his students. “The hardest thing is not being able to take the band abroad. For the kids, it’s a major loss. They need motivation to grow. After all, they’re always learning from each other.”