How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin: The Untold Story of a Noisy Revolution

Imagine a world where Beatlemania was against the law-recordings scratched onto medical X-rays, merchant sailors bringing home contraband LPs, spotty broadcasts taped from western AM radio late in the night. This was no fantasy world populated by Blue Meanies but the USSR, where a vast nation of music fans risked repression to hear the defining band of the British Invasion.

The music of John, Paul, George, and Ringo played a part in waking up an entire generation of Soviet youth, opening the...