Ryssland lanserar egen version av Eurovision

The Intervision Song Contest (ISC) was an international song competition organised by the International Radio and Television Organisation. It was the Eastern Bloc equivalent to the Eurovision Song Contest. It was transmitted to national broadcasters via the Intervision network. The contest took place in Czechoslovakia, and in the Forest Opera in Sopot, Poland. The ISC was organised from 1965 to 1968 and again from 1977 to 1980. Since 1977, it replaced the Sopot International Song Festival (Sopot ISF) that had been held in Sopot since 1961. In 1981 the ISC/Sopot ISF was cancelled because of the rise of the independent trade union movement, Solidarity, which was judged by other Eastern bloc communist governments to be "counter-revolutionary". A revived contest took place in 2008, though subsequent editions planned to stage the contest again in both 2014 and 2015 did not materialise. After Russia withdrew from the European Broadcasting Union upon being excluded from the Eurovision Song Contest 2022, another revival of the Intervision Song Contest was announced by the Russian Ministry of Culture in 2023.