"Happy New Year, My Son"

A song released Dec. 20 by the anti-war Russian singer Maksim Pokrovsky (who now lives in the U.S.); the two actors are prominent Russian actors who have also fled Russia after signing a statement opposing the war. The video struck me as much more effective, because it is much subtler, than the video of his "Ukraine," and the lyrics are also subtler than some of his earlier, more directly satirical (though often very funny) work.

The music may at first come across as emotionally out of step with the topic—the death of a young Russian soldier in the war—but I expect that was a deliberate choice, and I think a very effective one. More broadly, in the words of the group itself, "yes, it doesn't sound particularly elevated, but that's very important."

You can read a translation of the lyrics by clicking the "Show more" link here, but there are also English subtitles in the video itself. The video has 2.5M YouTube views over the last month, so I think it struck a chord.

Here's Pokrovsky's explanation of the song, though, as he notes, it doesn't need much explanation:

This year [2022] we released many anti-war songs. Almost all were addressed to Russian citizens. The one exception was "Ukraine"—and that was only a partial exception, because Ukrainian blood flows through many Russians, because many of them have close relatives in Ukraine. The song "Happy New Year, My Son!" is entirely meant to appeal to the feelings of Russians. As in many of the songs [from our group, "Nogu Svelo!"] it includes sarcasm, but it has a far from central role.

I hate questions about what message I'm trying to send with one of my songs, but here all is clear: "See what awaits you." And this future can't give people joy, bring smiles or laughter, because this future is an immense tragedy for everyone on both sides of this awful war. It's just that not everyone has yet realized this, but death instead of Grandfather Frost [the Russian Santa Claus] is already knocking on every home's door.

Pokrovsky also adds a twist that I missed (because I didn't know about this particular New Year's Eve midnight tradition), about the father's turning on the television set at the end of the clip:

… The parents, driven insane by grief, are preparing to greet the new year, the first new year without their son. But still they don't forget to turn on the TV set at midnight, to see Putin's speech.

Comments

[Frank Drackman]

Wow, must be really tough to leave the (former) USSR and come live in the Race-ist/Sex-ist/Homo-fobe-ist (and wait till the (Very Wrong) Reverend Sandusky tells you about the Klingers) US of A,
Remember when Roosh-uns would come to Amurica and be like Drago in "IV" (If you have to be told which "IV" I'm talking about you're not "Experienced") walking around dumbfounded by our Extravagant Consumer culture, where even illiterate Welfare cheats drive BMW's, and McDonalds on every corner doing it your way (In Russia, you do it McDonalds way!)

Frank "Russian's go Home!"

[Dr. Ed 2]

I remember when some Soviet fishermen went into the then-relatively small supermarket in Rockland, Maine.

They were guests of the US State Dept and thought that was why they were allowed in -- they were amazed that *anyone* was allowed to shop there...

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

A friend (EE engineer) sponsored some Soviet EE engineers back in 1980s I think, for a couple of weeks. Supermarkets were almost literally unbelievable even after several visits. The Sizzler buffet baffled them; they loaded up their plates and stuffed themselves, and did not understand the flat pricing all-you-can-eat style. I am sure they had trouble convincing anybody at home.

[John F. Carr]

In the late 1980s I knew a grad student whose Soviet-admiring colleague got to visit the USSR and came back horrified. Yakov Smirnoff jokes are not a substitute for seeing how bad things were for ordinary people.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"The parents, driven insane by grief, are preparing to greet the new year, the first new year without their son. But still they don't forget to turn on the TV set at midnight, to see Putin's speech."

That happened here during Vietnam.

[Dr. Ed 2]

This is the American version of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX-JeV37Uqw

It came out in 1974, a year after we pulled out of Vietnam, and that war changed this country -- Nixon, who'd won a 49 state re-election victory, would go on to resign the Presidency that summer.

I wonder how much this war will change Russia.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"anti-war Russian singer Maksim Pokrovsky (who now lives in the U.S.); the two actors are prominent Russian actors who have also fled Russia after signing a statement opposing the war."

Putin's going to start assassinating some of these dissidents -- we have no idea who's walking across the Mexican border at this point.

[Ed Grinberg]

From John Derbyshire's 10/7/22 Radio Derb podcast:
(Mr. Derbyshire is commenting on Putin's speech to the Russian parliament.)

So, some fragments of truth there in among the bluster, victimological self-pity, and historical dishonesty.
You could of course say the same of the "democracy under assault" speech that Joe Biden delivered on September 1st with that lurid creepy red-lit background. The two speeches, in fact — Biden's on the first day of September, Putin's on the last — make an interesting pair of parentheses for the month.
On one point at least the two speeches are opposites. In Putin's mind it is foreigners that are the enemy, or some subset of foreigners: "Western elites," "Anglo-Saxons."
Biden, by contrast, had nothing to say about foreigners at all. In his mind it is his fellow Americans that are the enemy, or some very large subset of them. The threat to America, Biden actually said, is "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans."
Putin thinks the threat to Russia is from foreigners seeking to dominate her, impoverish her, and destroy her culture. Biden thinks that the threat to America is me, and you, and the other seventy-four-million-plus Trump voters.
That, it seems to me, is a deep and noteworthy difference.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Eritrea was officially ruled to have been the aggressor in a war with Ethiopia.

“At the same time, on 21 December 2005, another commission at the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that Eritrea broke international law when it attacked Ethiopia in 1998, triggering the broader conflict.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers_Agreement_(2000)

There weren’t a lot of politicians and news reporters in the West that I recall preaching about the duty to help the valiant Ethiopians for the sake of democracy, and how only Eritrean stooges would question the value of a massive intervention.

Let the woke crowd consider possible explanations for the difference.