Collective Love-Making in
the Sea of Blood
The greatest mistake one can make when discussing old Soviet songs is
to distinguish between ‘’ideological’’ and ‘’non-ideological’’ ones. Of
course, there were purely political or militaristic songs, which no one would consider
seriously today, something like:
Братишка наш Буденный, с нами весь
народ,
Приказ – голов не вешать и смотреть вперед,
Ведь с нами Ворошилов, первый красный офицер...
Сумеем кровь пролить за ССР!
The idea is more or less clear with all these songs about revolution,
war, peace, Lenin, Stalin, Party, Komsomol, Pioneers, trade unions, Red Army, Red Navy,
Red Aviation, Soviet motherland, one’s beloved kolhoz, other’s dearest factory or
brave chekists. No serious attempt has been made to bring them back to life since the
collapse of the Soviet system. (There is no contradiction here with the fact that Russian
national anthem is such a song, because very few Russians take their national anthem
seriously). The problem is the so-called “old songs about basic things’’, which are
claimed to have no political meaning.
...А утром у входа
Родного завода
Влюбленному девушка встретится вновь
И скажет “немало
Я книжек читала,
Но нет еще книжки про нашу любовь...”
Charming, isn’t it? One would say that, in our cynical, materialist
epoch, such songs are exactly what we need to remember the bright and noble feelings our
parents and grandparents experienced.
But let’s face it: every song in the Soviet Union (with the exception of those
underground ones, which are not the subject of our current discussion) was propagandistic.
The only acceptable style in Soviet arts and literature was “socialist realism”. Any
song or other piece of art which did not fit this standard was automatically censored. And
what was socialist realism?
Unlike any other sort of realism, it was never supposed to reflect “reality” as such.
Rather, it was to reflect the ideal reality which was supposed to exist in a communist
system.
...Песнями любви и изобилья
Славится советская страна.
Indeed it did. And these love songs were, perhaps, the most horrible
things in the Soviet culture. Not even because they would always underline love’s
secondary place in the Soviet scale of values, like:
vПервым делом, первым делом –
самолеты,
Ну а девушки, а девушки – потом.
but also, they would offer substitutes for love, like
...Свою винтовку, верную подругу
Опять возьмет ударный комсомол.
Indeed, the most appropriate girlfriend for Komsomol.
But this is not the worst. The worst, and the most common thing for all the “old songs
about the basic things’’, is the totalitarian regime’s claim on your soul heard
there. Not only did the Bolsheviks force their slaves to have collective feelings,
emotions, and even love; they took from people the most fundamental, the most ancient
right – to love personally.
The message these songs was to deliver was: DO LOVE NOW! ALL TOGETHER!
No one can decline love! You must love when (and only when) the Party says to do so.
This problem has a reverse side. These hymns of collective love-making are extremely
hypocritical. The system which denies personality, therefore denies personal feelings,
like love. Therefore, love is always false under socialism, and so are the love songs.
This is what makes such Soviet songs extremely vulgar, much more than any contemporary
pop-music lyric may be.
A grand orgy among dead, de-composing bodies is love-making I would not appreciate. I
hope, you too. So, let us stop singing those old songs.
By Pavel Stroilov,
3rd year Moscow University for Humanities students
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