Russian TV reverts to Stalin’s music
NewsThis is what they are showing on Russia’s Channel 1 – a martial number by Alexandrov, composer of the official Soviet anthem.
Who ever imagined that this stuff would be back?
Meanwhile in Russia. Back to the USSR, but somehow even worse. pic.twitter.com/J4gzD2ILzH
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) June 2, 2022
Leni Riefenstahl would have said, “Not too bad….”
Sometimes it is very difficult to discern Soviet music from film music from game music; they mostly co-exist in the same wavelength.
It may have been the official Soviet anthem, but it is still the official Russian anthem, with different lyrics. And a lot of people were mightily relieved when it became so, as it was by almost universal acclaim the best (musically) national anthem in the world. I learned it — including the old lyrics, in Russian, from the Romanised version — as a child. I can still sing Soyuz nerushimyy…never learned the new lyrics.
Heck, this may mean that Shostakovich’s 2nd and 3rd symphonies have some value after all. And the Khrennikov symphonies, too!
Next thing you know, they’ll be showing Alexander Nevsky 24/7 on Russian TV.
Springtime for Putin. Or as one twitterer called it, more Russ—it
For those who doesn’t understand Russian: please take a look at the clip below with the English subtitles – and you would have to agree with me that if anybody has the perfect right to perform THAT song with THOSE words in the year 2022 – it’s Ukrainians: it is THEIR land has been invaded since last February by the Russian rapists and robbers and sadists, so it is THEIR noble rage should boil over like a wave in their sacred war in defense of their homeland. Just to think that this famous song, which was written a few hours after Hitler invaded Soviet Union in 1941 and which has the most profound meaning for anybody whose life was affected by that Great Patriotic War, directly or indirectly, – to think that it is being used and abused now as a soundtrack for a kitschy, preposterous performance while Russia is being whipped into a fascistic frenzy by the Hitler (or Stalin?) wannabe Putin and his propaganda machine, and while Russian army is committing massive war crimes day and night in Ukraine, yeah – isn’t that precious?! Something else in this world is upside down – not just that Russian acrobat on top of the ridiculous pyramid! I happen to have had many Russian-speaking relatives, who defended their homeland from Nazis some 80 years ago; what a brazen, blasphemous insult that “performance” looks like in 2022 to their sacrifices and their heroism and their memory…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEB7BkPsWOk
Everyone in Russia knows that song. It’s not “stuff that is back”, you could hear it regularly around May 9th and it is quite a revered song from WWII. It’s like saying “they brought back Kalinka”.
THIS is so tragic for the Russian people. Apparently obligated to return to their horrific roots of veiled nationalism. I have no animosity for them, but silently mourn their forced silence and blindness. I can only speculate as to the Kremlin’s next move towards all-out repression.
Another waste of artistic ressources.
Lustily sung with fine voices, nice choreography. Superb jingoistic visual candy. Otherwise, cringe, be very afraid. A very dark future looms, first over Europe later over the extent of our little planet. I hope they don’t once again try to assuage our fears with that laughable helmeted turtle and the unconscionable “Duck and Cover” doctrine. It should have really been “Duck, Cover and KYAG (Kiss your Ass Goodbye).” This time around no amount of ducking or shielding will suffice. None, my dears. None…
Perhaps Valery Gergiev will fill a gap in the catalogue and record a cycle of the symphonies of Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov.
Stalin’s quotes have been in bus shelters all over Russia for some years.
“patriotism” has been de rigeur for 2 decades now.
It’s only you don’t know that, because you never travel in RF.
I am used to hearing apologies for the Stalin genocides of the 1930s, “it was a time of great progress, industrialisation…..sacrifices had to be made… etc”.
In Perm 36 gulag museum, the official line was adopted & reinforced after the forced annexation of parts of Ukraine, (by kicking out the administrators who showed what Stalin had really done).
Solzhenitsyn was compromised by Putin at the end of his life, then the slow but steady re-sovietisation of the country has inexorably followed.
(because no desovietisation was ever attempted)
Without a full lustration & desovietisation of Russia, the country has headed rapidly back to the middle ages, and will continue its cannibalistic traditions from history,
… a time of slavery and mental subordination by the equally criminal orthodox church.
You only have to visit the Kremlin museum in Yaroslavl to see how the Tsar’s church were a band of rich abusive criminals.
You only have to see how “memorial”, Meduza and Moscow Times were closed down recently to understand the current “commander in chief” Putin cannot tolerate any form of free expression. And you are suprised??
What planet are you living on?
Lyrics (brace yourself for this):
Rise, huge country!
Rise for the deathly battle
Against the dark fascist force
Against their cursed hordes!
Refrain:
Let our noble wrath
Seethe like waves
The national war is moving,
The Sacred War!
All correct thinking (right ideas)
Will resist the oppressors
(These two lines are inverted – word-order and phrase order is less meaningful in Russian than it is in English.)
Rapists, bandits
Tormentors of the people
(Refrain repeats)
Their black wings do not dare
To fly over our Motherland
On our immense fields
The enemy doesn’t dare to tread!
(Refrain repeats)
Let us put a bullet into the brow
Of the rotten fascist vermin
Let us make a strong coffin
For such breed
(Refrain repeats)
Written: 1941
Lyrics: V. Lebedev-Kumach
Music: A. Alexandrov
Translation: from the Russian by Igor Koplevsky
Transcription/Markup: Liviu Iacob, 2006, modified for clarity and commented on by myself.
Goosebumps. And not the good kind.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QOkSvLqkafU
I guess the Russian public will take this in stride as it has everything else since 1917?
Nothing like progress.
Crazy world.
Meanwhile, back in the USA, where vestiges of democracy and sanity still exist in certain states, we wonder whether the next elections will once again, voluntarily and knowingly, give up freedoms and move us in the direction of American fascism, a kind of USSR on Potomac. And the American public will undoubtedly take THAT in stride as well.
Wacko world that doesn’t learn from simply looking around!!
It was better with the original goose steps.