The “The Near Abroad” (Blizhnee zarubezh’e) is often used when referring to the former Soviet Republics from a Russian perspective and which Russia considers its sphere of influence. Looking for a definition of the term for my dissertation I came across this interesting article written by William Safire in 1994: ON LANGUAGE; The Near Abroad
As I briefly mentioned in a previous post (“Who are ‘die Russen’ currently living in Germany?”) one area where a lot of ethnic Germans migrated to Germany from was Kazakhstan. I should have written the former Central-Asian Soviet republics because a large community also ended up in Kyrgyzstan. I mention this since the highly recommendable online magazine Transition online (TOL) just published a short but interesting article on the remaining ethnic Germans living in Kyrgyzstan: Exodus Over, Ethnic Germans Cling to Traditions. The author gives some background information and interviews both remaining ethnic Germans living in the village Rot-Front as well as teachers from Germany teaching there. The article also briefly mentions the transcultural flows which appeared due to migration between Kyrgyzstan and Germany.
Transition online is, by the way, also highly recommendable for those interested in following cultural, societal and political developments in the former communist countries in Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The group Televizor (Television) based around its vocalist Mikhail Borzykin has been around since 1984 and can be considered the 3rd generation of Leningrad Rock Club bands. The group’s first album “Shestvie Ryb” (Fish parade) was released in 1985, followed by “Otechestvo illiuzii” (Fatherland of illusion) in 1987. The latter album included the song “Tvoi papa - fashist” (Your dad’s a fascist) which created quite a controversy in the Leningrad Rock Club (while musically this is the song, I am not quite sure if this is the official video clip…):
What makes the song interesting today is that Borzykin rededicated it to Putin: “Tvoi Putin - fashist” (concert at B2, 23.10.2008):
read more…
This weekend’s New York Times magazine had an interesting and extensive portrait of the Russian/Ossetian conductor and artistic director of the Mariinskii Teatr Valerii Gergiev. He is - in my opinion - one of the top conductors of Western Art music today and definitively one of the most important musicians promoting Russian art music (that said, I did not opt for his interpretation of “Ruslan i Liudmilla” but for Alexander Vedernikov’s from the Moscow Bol’shoi Teatr which I bought earlier this month…)
Thinking about Alla Pugacheva’s departure from music (at least that is what she announced) it struck me that a large part of Russian estrada consist of Soviet era musicians who all are getting old (e.g. Sofiia Rotaru, Oleg Gazmanov, Valerii Leont’ev, Boris Moiseev).
On the other side, a young crop of singers have emerged - two with “close” ties to Pugacheva. One is the flamboyant Bulgarian born Filipp Kirkorov (born 1967), Pugacheva’s former husband (who the St. Petersburg based ska-punk group Banana Gang dedicated the song “Kirkoroff, welcome to hell” to).
The other is Maksim Galkin (born 1976), her current partner. A cabaretist, he has also attempted to sing - including this parody of Russia’s 2007 Eurovision contribution performed by Serebro. His version is a critique of Russian groups like Serebro singing in English (I especially like his Michael Jackson parody):
Russia Profile’s “Of Lyrics, Nationalism, and Gay Pride” gives a good summary of the recent Eurovision 2009 events in Russia discussing Stephane and 3G, Prikhod’ko and the planned gay pride parade (which Luzhkov, Moscow’s mayor is against) to be staged during the Eurovision contest.
For more reading on Prikhod’ko check out Kalle Kniivilä’s Domstol förbjöd ukrainska Melodifestivalen and Far From Moscow’s Let the Eurovision Scandals Begin and my earlier post on Stephane and 3G.
After the fall of the Soviet Union Germany emerged as one of the primary countries of Post-Soviet migration - with at least 2.6 Million Russian speaking migrants living in Germany at the moment (conservatively estimated). Putting this into perspective, there were 6 751 002 registered foreign citizens residing in Germany 2006 - about 8,2% of the total population of 82 348 399. The largest immigrant group are Turkish citizens (1 764 041) followed by Italian (540 810 - numbers taken from Kiss, A, & H Lederer, Migration, Asyl und Integration in Zahlen, 14 edn., Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, Referat 124 - Geschäftsstatistik, Nürnberg, 2006). While this statistic does not include naturalized migrants it shows that the Post-Soviet migrants (taking naturalized Turkish citizens into account) make up the second largest group of immigrants in Germany. When talking about the migration from the former Soviet Union to Germany the emigrants are often referred to as Die Russen (The Russians). This is, however, not quite correct - the migrants who arrived after 1990 actually consists of three major groups: Spätaussiedler (Ethnic Germans, aka Russlanddeutsche and Wolgadeutsche), Jews and “real” (in other words, ethnic) Russians, Ukrainians etc. I have a discussion of these groups in my dissertation, but the long version had to be chopped out due to place restrictions. Instead of relegating it to the waste bin, I thought it might be better off here - there must be somebody besides me interested in Post-Soviet migration to Germany: 
read more…
Despite that her singing qualities have declined over the last years Soviet Pop-Diva Alla Pugacheva (born 1949) is one of the most popular Russian estrada singers today (she was both 2006 and 2007 ranked 2nd in a popular survey of Russia’s current elite). So it was a small surprise that she at a press conference today anounced that she is going to stop her concert activities: Alla Pugacheva zaiavliaet, chto proshchaetsia s kontsertnoi deiatel’nost’iu. She cited health reasons and a series of operations which have affected her voice.
But she plans to remain active in other roles and will finish her singing career with a final tour (including Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Germany and the United States) and four final concerts in Moscow in April 2009. In other words, a loooooooong end to a long career.
While chopping away some parts of my dissertation I stumbled upon a short paragraph on the Vyborg/St. Petersburg based punk band Posledniye Tanki v Parizhe (Last Tanks in Paris, a.k.a. PTVP). The group was one of the few locally successful (in terms of playing for an audience of 200-400 listeners) St. Petersburg bands who during my stay in St. Petersburg (2004-2006) was openly critical towards the government and their policies.
I managed to hear them a couple of times. One of the concerts I attended they hosted together with the Hip-Hop group 2H Company and the reggae group S.O.K. at Red Club (a mid-sized St. Petersburg club) on 18.09.2006. Among the songs performed there was one referring to Putin called “Prava cheloveka” (The right of the individual - the song is on their 2007 album “Svoboda Slova”).
In an interview following the concert with the vocalist and lyricist Aleksei Nikonov the music journalist Sergei Chernov (St. Petersburg Times) quotes the verse of that song (I added the Russian lyrics and put the lines in the right order):
Bozhe, khrani Putina ot nashego prezreniia (God save Putin from our contempt)
Bozhe, khrani Putina i ego pokolenie (God save Putin and his generation,)
Putin - eto vlast’, ona diktuet zakony (Putin is the power, it dictates the laws)
Putin - eto ty, Putin - eto milliony (Putin is you, Putin is millions,)
While Chernov places the song close to Sex Pistols “God save the Queen” the song’s refrain Bozhe Khrani Putina (God Save Putin) for me points to the Tsar’s national anthem “Bozhe, Tsaria khrani” and is thus similar to MP44’s “Avtoritsarizm” which I discussed in the post Bozhe, Tsaria khrani & MP44.
Iurii Shevchuk (DDT) is besides Mikhail Borzykin (Televizor) known for being one of the more outspoken musicians within the russkii rok tradition. Following the presidential elections 2008 he has also performed at the Marsh nesoglasnykh and has been featured on the compilations “Muzyka NEsoglasnykh 1 and 2″.
On the first compilation the song “Kogda zakonchitsia neft’” is included which second verse starts with:
Kogda zakonchitsia neft’, (When the oil stops,)
Nash prezident umret! (Our president dies!)
I mir stanet nemnogo pechal’nei (And the world becomes a little mournful,)
A slezami grenlandskii led. (And the tears ice in Greenland)
In other words, slightly critical to the current government…
Now have a listen to what happens during a live performance shown on the Russian state television channel “Kul’tura” on May 20th 2007 (the second verse starts at about 0:40):
The president’s death is replaced by a horn riff while the camera shows the audience singing along (keeping the camera focused on Shevchuk singing would have made it even more obvious that the lyrics were bleeped out).
The fact that the lyrics were cut out is in itself not so interesting (there have been numerous efforts to silence critical musicians - mainly indirectly by e.g. pressuring concert venues, the musicians themselves or through fire hazard laws). What is interesting is the way it has been executed here - keeping the job quite obvious for people who know the song and/or who are critical watchers. Furthermore, the changes are obvious for anybody interested in music since the riff quite clearly breaks from the conventions for a rock/pop-song making neither poetic nor musically sense in the second line of the second verse. On the other hand, those who know the song and/or notice this discrepancy are probably not the target group of the censoring anyway…
[updated 26.02.2008 at 16:51 adding the television channel and date the DDT clip was aired]
