Вся власть поэтом! All Power to the Poets!

Shevchuk rocks.

For most anyone from the former Soviet Union, Yuri Yulianovich Shevchuk needs no introduction. He is the lead singer, songwriter and soul of the band DDT - one of the longest lasting and most influential Russian rock bands of all time. Raised in the industrial city of Ufa in the western Ural mountains, he emerged in the early 1980's as a rebellious voice in the underground rock scene. Relocating to St. Petersburg in 1987, DDT performed with other legendary Soviet bands associated with the Leningrad Rock-Club (such as Kino, Akvarium, Television and Alica). His songs draw on the tradition of the Russian bards, Pushkin's poetry, and the absurdity & tragedy of Soviet and post-Soviet life. By 1989, DDT had achieved widespread fame throughout the former USSR. The 1992 hit "What is Autumn" (Что такое осень) is probably one of the best known rock songs in the Russian language.

The title for today's post comes from a a black flag waved by a fan at a DDT concert in 1996. I saw the show as it was broadcast on Russia's main TV channel (ORT) from the four story apartment building in Mary, Turkmenistan where I was then residing. The phrase is a play on an old slogan from the early days of the USSR - "Вся власть советам!" -- All Power to the Soviets." Before there was the Soviet Union, there were "soviets" - workers councils that emerged during the first revolutionary uprisings in 1905. By 1996, there was nothing particularly subversive about bastardizing a piece of Soviet propaganda, but there is nevertheless something profound and deeply Russian about the pun. In Russia, poetry may be king, but poetry has no political power.

Performing in St. Petersburg, Yuri worked the crowd with the enthusiasm and spirit of Bruce Springsteen - and the people responded in kind. I remember thinking that rock and roll isn't dead, that it lives on in a spirit of resistance to conformity and commercialization back in the USSR.

But Yuri doesn't just rock - he talks. It is worth listening to what he has to say. Last week, he gave an interview on the independent talk radio station, Echo of Moscow:



The entire interview is available on the Echo Moscow - Эхо Мосвкы website. He consistently returns to the same theme - urging his fellow citizens to think critically, to not just absorb government propaganda unquestioningly:

You will not meet any nation in history - at least I personally don't know of an example - where all the people, the grandparents, young people, etc., petition their government to go launch a war on their neighbors, and the government answers, 'well, if that's what you demand, let's do it.' What does this tell us? Politicians start wars. That our politicians have been involved in Tskhinvali [capital of South Ossetia] for 15 years...they failed us. What do we have to be happy about? 150 million people defeated 4 million Georgians. Why would we celebrate that?
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Let's recall those 15 years, when our high society politicians could have done something as politicians. We feed our politicians - they don't work in the coal mines. And for what reason do Russians need politicians? In order to avoid wars, in order to solve by political means the terrible legacy left by Stalin.

Yuri immediately places the conflict in Ossetia in the broader historical context, lamenting twenty years of ethnic conflicts that have occurred in the former Soviet Union. Fighting between Armenians and Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, followed by conflicts in Tajikistan, Georgia, Chechnya and more, right down to the present day. Politicians have failed the people in the newly independent states of the old Soviet Union. Let's hope Ukraine isn't next.

The new round of militarism in Russia, Shevchuk believes, is a deliberate attempt to distract people from internal problems that persist in post-Soviet Russia. He sees parallels between the current manufactured brand of state-sanctioned patriotism under Putin's United Russia party and the Brezhnev era slogans excessively lauding the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:

здравствует КПСС или «Единая Россия», опять эти парады, парады. В головах, в мозгах, в речах… Это невероятно, мы опять куда-то катимся. Опять ложь постоянная, информационные войны, нет объективной информации.

Again these parades, parades. In our heads, in our minds, in our speech...It is inconceivable that we that we are rolling down this path again. Again there are constant lies, information wars, there is no objective information.

Yuri Shevchuk is talking about an aspect of what is really happening inside Russia and how it effects the people living in Russia. Not that American or European politicians are superior, in his estimation. He suggests solving future conflicts by creating a new reality show, where generals, nationalist politicians and those Americans who think they should rule the world are given weapons - only not nuclear weapons - and left on an island to fight it out on camera.

It is no surprise that he can speak freely on Echo of Moscow. Coincidently, the station itself was recently featured in an article by David Remnick in the the New Yorker. Remnick reviews the development of the radio as the primary tool of Soviet propaganda and its evolution under Glasnost, when Echo Moskvy got its start. What is remarkable about Echo is that it continues to provide a platform for more or less independent, critical voices in a landscape otherwise dominated by a mass media that is functionally controlled by the Kremlin.

But, as Remnick notes, freedom of speech is threatened even at Echo. Aleksei Venediktov - the station's editor in chief - was recently called to the carpet by Putin himself in a meeting between the Prime Minister and journalists. Putin thought that Echo had gone too far in airing criticism of Moscow's actions in Georgia. In front of the assembled journalists in Sochi, Putin told Venediktov that "you will have to answer for this!"

In the Echo interview, Yuri also alludes to a piece he wrote for Novaya Gazeta. That's the paper where the journalist Anna Politkovskaya worked before she was mysteriously slain. At least 260 journalists have been murdered since the fall of the Soviet Union. That kind of physical intimidation, on top of overt government control over the main broadcast television stations and implicit limits on other forms of media, puts a real limit on what many news outlets will broadcast. But so far, it does not appear to have slowed down Shevhcuk as a citizen rocker. For example, he participated in the Dissenters March earlier this year:

Hello my dear friends. There are bearers of culture, and there are peddlers of culture. Yesterday we saw peddlers of culture on television in red square....But I want to tell you for us, rock musicians in St. Petersburg, rock music is not just Chuck Berry or Little Richard, it is soul and freedom -- freedom before of all things. It is that freedom that brought me here to be with you.

Yuri notes in the Echo interview that DDT is not regularly featured on radio or television, but that it is still easy to perform live shows. In response both to the recent war in the Caucus mountains and to the militaristic brand of nationalism that is on the rise in his homeland - Shevchuk recently organized two concerts in Moscow called "Ne Stryelyai." The concert is named after an early DDT song, which simply means "don't shoot" - (see DDT perform Не Стреляй - Ne Stryelyai in 2003), written when the first Soviet soldiers began coming home in coffins from Afghanistan. The concerts featured musicians from Georgia, Ukraine, and Ossetia and sent a powerful message of peace and understanding. But will the state dominated media in Russia allow the message to spread beyond clips on RuTube?



As I have reflected on the Russia-Georgia conflict on this blog, it has been easy to loose site of the basic truths expressed by Yuri. He is right to first recall the young, poor boys from the countryside who are sent off to fight in wars like this one, while the sons of the policians live lives of decadence and ease. He is right to think first of the tragic disruption in everyday life brought on by this fighting. My goal has been to offer context and perspective to a situation that is too often described in the United States from an outdated Cold War perspective. Shevchuk reminds us that Russia's military action in Georgia is partly designed for domestic consumption. He uses the great Russian phrase that literally translates to "hanging noodles on your ears" - a version of "pulling your leg" - when describing the Kremlin's chest beating about Russia's strength. If Russia would focus on using its wealth to build its economy, its infrustructure - to humanize, then Ukraine and other neighbors would come to close relations with Russia on their own.

Everything he says goes double for us back in the U.S. If instead of reckless adventures in Iraq, we had a responsible defense budget...if we focused less on showing off our military hardware on the world's stage and instead focused more on building our infrastructure, maintaining oversight over our financial markets, and educating our people, think of how much further we could have come in the last several years. Think of all the wasted opportunities.

U.S. politicians and pundits criticize Russia, but in many ways, politicians there are emulating U.S. policy more than we might like to recognize.

There is much to love about Shevchuk - the way he rolls his "r's," his dramatic facial expressions, his poetic writing, and his sense of humor:


When the Oil Runs Out (Когда Закончится Нефть) (performed in 2007)

When the oil runs out....
You will be with me again
When the gas runs out
You'll come back to me in the Spring

We'll plant forests and
Build paradise under canopy of branches
When everything runs out
There'll be a fullness in our souls

As if the entire premise of the song is not provocative enough, in other performances of the song, Shevchuk adds the line: "when we run out of oil, our president will die!" Here's to hoping that regardless of whether the oil runs out anytime soon, Russian politicians don't take down the whole country with them on their demise.

I leave you one of the all time great DDT songs, "Дождь" ("Rain"):