Indian movies were very popular in Soviet Union. Even today many people in Russia and in the surrounding countries remember Bollywood stars and think about Hindi films with very warm words. There are several reasons why people remember these films with so good emotions.
One of the main reasons was that Hindi films were almost the only films coming to be shown in Soviet Union that were made outside of the soviet system. The other films were mostly movies about the great victories of Soviet army and about bad enemies from the war. The films were mostly depressive and there were few if any romance in them ever. Hindi films on the contrary were mostly about love, romance, family life. If you would ask people to describe what comes to their mind, when they think back of the Indian movies they saw in Soviet time, they would talk about sad love stories, lots of crying, people dying for their love, beautiful songs, the fight between the good and bad.
The films were all dubbed to Russian, so they wouldn't hear Hindi language, but people got the sense of Indian culture from the films. This was something special for people in Soviet time as they could not travel around the world those times, it was the iron curtain that kept them behind on one side of the border. So it was wonderful to see some other parts of the world through films.
Some stars of Bollywood have huge amount of fans still in previous Soviet Union countries. The main guy remembered from those times in of course Raj Kapoor! There are talks that when he visited Moscow, people started to recognize him on the streets and ask for autograph.
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