“As long as you listened to the music at home, everything was OK,” explains Radchenko, “but if you were caught while buying or selling a record on a black market or – even worse – playing it in public at dancing party at school then you might find yourself questioned by a school master or even by police.

“The worst case would be getting caught with a group of your friends, while celebrating John Lennon’s birthday, for example, and singing Beatles songs. That may be considered as anti-governmental demonstration.”

Radchenko, a 52-year-old management consultant, was born in the Ukraine and believes he may have been the only person in the USSR who listened live to John Lennon’s last radio interview, conducted just days before his death.

“For me, the most important was their music and the message delivered with it – of love, of life in its simple natural beauty – particularly in solo careers of John and George,” he says.

“Rock music for us was part of an extremely remote invisible galaxy, from which we were receiving sound signals from time to time.”

BACK From the USSR is at the Liverpool Academy of Arts until September 1.