To Mossy,
Your reply to me puzzled me in its absence of logic. You have twisted and spun everything.
“So you’ve shown us that you can cherry-pick lovely Russian songs and mean, nasty English, American and French songs. So what?”
Are you serious? I didn’t “cherry-pick mean, nasty English, American and French songs.” I quoted national anthems. Do you understand the concept of the national anthem? it is the most important song in the country. Every American, Brit and Frenchman – especially Presidents/PMs and other political leaders – sings these lyrics many-many times each year.
And I didn’t ” cherry-pick lovely Russian songs”. We are talking about one particular song – “Where homeland begins” – that Putin sang. It has a beautiful (to Russians) melody and very normal, inoffensive peace-loving lyrics. So, what’s wrong with singing it? My own parents were anti-Soviet dissidents and they sang it.
“The point is that Putin sat around singing Soviet patriotic songs,…“
Yes, it is patriotic. Yes, it is a song. Yes, it was written by two Jews and sung by a third Jew during the Soviet period of 1917-1991. But it is not a “Soviet patriotic” song. It says nothing about Lenin, Stalin, communism, socialism or collectivization. It doesn’t even mention Soviet Union. It is a universal song, saying that patriotism means love for parents, neighbors and friends; love for the countryside; and love for one’s own language, books and learning. The lyrics apply to any country. Here is a YouTube video applied to Israeli patriotism:
It has received 37,223 views so far. Ironically, the singer of that particular version is an Estonian: Georg Ots.
“He didn’t sing patriotic Russian songs…“
This is not a patriotic Russian song?! Why? Because you don’t consider Russian Jews to be Russians?
What do you mean by “patriotic Russian songs”? Songs like “God save the Czar”? Very few popular songs in Russia, USA or anywhere else pre-date 1917. The vast majority of the popular songs were written after 1917.
“He didn’t sing folk songs. He didn’t sing pop songs…”
Yes, he did. “Where homeland begins” is a stereotypical pop song. To this day, it remains in the top 100 all-time most popular pop songs to listen and in the top 20 to sing, not only in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, but even as far as Israel. What are the most popular Russian pop songs in America?
1. “Moscow Nights” – a patriotic song about the majestic beauty of Russian countryside, a song of equal level of “patriotism” as “”Where homeland begins”.
2. “Katyusha” – a very patriotic song about a girl writing a letter to her beloved, a soldier, telling him to defend his country. It is infinitely more military-related that “Where homeland begins”.
“…including one from a movie about spying on foreigners.“
First of all, what difference does it make for what movie genre this song was originally written for? Most people don’t even remember which movie it came from. What matters are the words, which are good.
Second, the “foreigners” that you are talking about are German Nazis! I am trying to be as polite as I can, but anybody who considers it wrong to resist the Nazis and to spy on them – he is a degenerate neo-Nazi in my book.
Look, I can’t say that this is the first time I read somebody condemn anti-Nazi resistance. I have been around Usenet long enough to encounter many posts from white supremacists. But even they, when condemning anti-Nazi resistance, acknowledge that their view is in the minority in America. But you and Craig say that it is bad to spy on the Nazis with such aplomb, as if such opinion is commonplace in America. Isn’t it considered noble to have spied against the Nazi, or is my perception of the American public opinion skewed by the fact that many of my friends are Jewish-Americans and thus hate the Nazis?
Third, don’t Americans and Brits enjoy listening to and singing songs from movies about spying on foreigners? Take the master spy Bond, for example. James Bond. Agent 007. Stirred not shaken. There is a whole slew of songs from his movies that became highly popular. Many-many dozens, including one that I like a lot:
Carly Simon – Nobody Does It Better
Here is a Wikipedia article on them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_music
Would it be wrong for a US President to sing this song just because it originally comes from a movie about spying on foreigners?!
Extreme russophobes like yourselves expect Russians to bury and forget all the cultural works developed between 1917 and 1991 just because Russia was part of a communist dictatorship called USSR. And I surely agree that cultural works, devoted to propaganda of communist ideology, should be forgotten or at least redone. But not songs and movies about resisting the Nazis or about the love for friends or for mothers or for countryside or for books.
Just because the government or the political system in a country during a certain period was bad, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be proud of its art or music or literature. Sure, to the narrow-minded brainwashed people on the outside, anything created in the Soviet Union may be “criminal”. Just as to some people, anything created in South Africa during the apartheid, may look “criminal”. But that’s not the case.
Or let’s take something that’s a million times worse than even the apartheid: human slavery. Look at the United States in the 18th and 19th century, when it not only practiced slavery on a mass scale, but also exterminated Native Americans and expropriated their lands. The entire continent! What can be more despicable than that? And yet, should we ban the American anthem, that was written during those horrible times, and all other patriotic songs written before 1860s? Should we erase all mentioning of Thomas Jefferson and other American Founding Fathers because most of them owned slaves? And while owning human slaves, these hypocrites wrote that “all men are created equal”. What was the value of as black man then? Was it three fifth that of a white man? Should all pre-1860 American patriotic works be banned? You tell me.
