Or so the story goes. Apprently the Soviet propaganda wanted to take also the Eurovision trophy in the crazy years of change in the late 1980's. Back in 1987 the Minister of Education for the Soviet Union Veselov brought out the idea. He even had proposed popular singer Valery Leontiev as the ideal debut artist but both president Gorbachev and the leaders of Communist Party considered the idea "too radical". LOL. The talk continued until the whole union was gone by 1991. Russia did enter the contest in 1994 and despite sending local superstars Philip Kirkorov and Alla Pugatseva among others failed to make an impact, even not qualifying in the 1996 pre-selection. They took a break of a couple of years before re-entering and have been very succesful ever since with one victory, 4 second places and two third places so far.... Nine other former republics of the Soviet Union have entered the contest since 1990's though: Lithuania 1994, Estonia 1994, Latvia 2000, Uk...