Window on Eurasia

Is Kremlin Behind Rap Group’s Ultra-Nationalist Lyrics?

Paul Goble

Vienna, August 1, 2006 – The unexpected appearance of ultra-nationalist
lyrics in a new album by one of Russia’s leading rap music groups has
raised suspicions that Kremlin political technologists may be
attempting to exploit popular culture for political gain just as their Soviet-era
predecessors did.

The latest album of the popular Russian rap group “Avariya”
(Accident) contains one song whose lyrics contain something that has
not appeared in any of the group’s previous offerings: nostalgia for the
Soviet Union, hatred for the United States, and a robust form of
Russian nationalism
[http://www.globalrus.ru/column/782930/].

This song stands in stark contrast to the group’s normal offerings,
including such popular hits in the Russian Federation as one about a
drunken Father Frost and his adventures in alcohol, Moscow commentator
Oleg Kashin wrote on the Globalrus portal yesterday.

Although there is no direct evidence of Kremlin involvement, he said,
“few doubt” that someone in or near the country’s top leadership
is “seriously concerned” that music and all other forms of popular
culture will help promote “a positive model of the contemporary
man” just as was the case in Soviet times.

One of the reasons for that, he continued, is that there have been
“rumors since last spring about the efforts of the Russian government
to use show business for its own political goals” particularly after
Kremlin insider Vladislav Surkov convened a highly public meeting with
some of the country’s leading rock musicians.

The current song in question, called “Evil,” suggests that there is
a struggle going on in the world between “the forces of evil” that
spread their ideas across the world to destroy all who differ from it
and “the forces of good” who seek to defend their national
traditions but who in recent times in Russia at least have been on the
defensive.

“Evil smiles … when you forget your past,” the lyrics go. It
encourages you to sell out your friends so that you can enter “the
paradise of the stars and stripes” and “suck the candy” that
system offers “on the remnants of empire.”

The song continues with a question: “have you forgotten the just
sword your great ancestors bequeathed to you?” But whether its listeners
have or not, the song ends, “something has been sold out, something
has been stolen, and something is gathering dust in a drawer alongside
the medals of your great grandparents.”

Kashin argued that if it should be the case that the singers
“themselves want to sing in this way, then, that means that something
is not in order. This is like the mass run on salt in central Russia in
March, for which there was no real reason but which nonetheless
happened.”

But if as seems more likely to Kashin at least Russian officials are
behind this song, then, he advises that they should remember “genuine
works of art or social though are not born on order.” No bureaucratic
order works, “a simple truth” that “the rich experience of the
Union of Soviet Writers confirmed.”

Despite the best efforts of Soviet ideologists, that body failed to
create “a single great work on order.” And consequently, those in
the current regime who seem inclined to copy the failed past should
save their money and their efforts. But unfortunately, refraining from such
doomed exercises is not given to everyone, Kashin wrote.

Those prepared to allow individuals and society to develop on the basis
of their own though are those “who are confident in themselves,
something alas that you would not say about” many of those who work
for the current government of the Russian Federation.

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