Dear friends,
I just got a moving letter from Russia which, after asking the author’s permission, I want to share with you “as is”, exactly as I got it myself.
Kind regards,
The Saker
——-
It is a song about Great Patriotic War and memories of it. I am a grown up man in his 30ies (a Russian, so sorry for my English grammar) and I can’t, simply can’t watch it without tears. It contains EVERYTHING about relations between Russians and war. It is a memorial song, but look at it…I cant describe how it feels for me… something is really, audibly tearing apart inside me. I have a son. Very young still, but I will rip anyone’s heart out for him NOT to be there in the trenches. I’ll die myself first – but l’ll do so in his place in the trenches if allowed, NOT advocating for peace with an enemy if country will be under direct attack. And yet…. if his fate is to fight in future wars defending Russia – so be it. We can not let down those who literally let us live – even if they are no longer among us. Sorry for the pathos but I tried to convey what I feel. Impromptu translation following (better to check it out or to rewrite completely)
“The movie is running –
Platoon is fighting.
It is a distant year
On an old film.
A difficult path
(to walk) just a bit more –
And war’s blazes will be over.
A happy May!
Beloved country,
Hurry to greet
your soldiers!
From wounds and insults
The land is trembling.
We will warm it
with the warmth of our souls.
Refrain:
And everything about this spring
I saw in a dream.
The dawn has come and smiled to the world –
The snowstorm has passed,
The pussy-willow has bloomed,
And my greatgrandfather came back from the war.
In slashing fight
In foreign land,
Let love and faith
Be their keepers
So that more of them
Come back home alive
Privates and officers alike.
They will come back in spring
Like my greatgrandfather,
And open doors in their dear homes
I do remember light
Of those years past
And I will keep faith
In my country!
Refrain.
This translation is most likely a shoddy one, so feel free to twist it in any way you see fit as to make it better. This song and clip is a perfect illustration to your article about Russia being ready for war. Do we want war? God forbid, no, we lost too much loved ones to it already! Will we fight through hell and back if attacked? Absoultely – and not in the least to not to be ashamed before loved ones we lost to The War once we cross over to them. I will not be able to look my granddad in the eyes and say that I was cowering somewhere safe while country was under attack and I was able to fight back and didn’t. He lent me his life.
Regards,
“A”
Both of my grandpas fought in that war. One never came back. He is buried somewhere in Hungary, we could not find his grave. My mom’s family suffered under occupation. A family legend tells that a romanian soldier stuck a dirty cloth in her mouth: as a baby, she used to cry a lot. My dad’s family managed to run away, and was starving in Urals. My whole life I thought that that was then. People were stupid, they did not know better. We are smarter, we learned from their mistakes. Little that I knew. Humanity seems to be hopeless.
Thank you for this beautiful song. I cried.
Saker,
This clearly backs up with your description of Russia as a military, collective culture historically.
In contrast, the Americans never think of war, being invaded and are free to be selfish, ignoring their own enslavement to debt and tyrannical loss of freedom to the Elites.
America twerks while Russia defends.
I was moved to tears. What a beautiful song.
Wow, just wow.
I thought about someone criticizing it as brain washing the kids, but…….
Immediately I saw the hand on heart bullucks in american schools with the
“pledge of alleagence”.
Thank God we did not have that overt stuff in Britain, but we got it in
more subtle and sinister ways no doubt. Poppy days and ‘never forget’.
One day a year and then back to the pub and football.
P.S I don’t drink nor follow football in case you are wondering.
Yeah you forget it was Indian army that first deployed in ww1 and same indian army that ended your empire in ww2. LOL!
Dear “A”,
Thank you for sharing this. Very moving.
Rgds,
Veritas
That is an old great song I’ve heard many times.It always brings tears to my eyes too.This one was one of the best renditions of it I’ve ever seen. And the sentiments expressed in the letter are exactly the way I’ve hoped people in Russia would feel.It shouldn’t even be a question that they would feel that way.It is such the right way to feel.
Very moving, very stirring. I grew up in post-war England, and for the first ten years of my life or so I think the war was in every single thing that anyone said. It was still so close and so real, all of daily life was involved with it. As kids we played on bombsites, a little piece of open space in the city, but I was a teenager probably before it dawned on me why they were called bombsites, and that a building used to be there. We thought of them as an amenity, like a park, and they were everywhere. Older people I’m sure used them for crime, and love.
The war was everywhere and always the most real thing, the yardstick of measurement. Even decades later in the nineties it was still permissible to ask in an argument, why did we fight the War if not for such and such, etc. And all of this was in England, which gets a bad rap in these columns, and deservedly so, but the poor always feel the brunt of war in any country. Even so, what I experienced must only be a fraction of the war consciousness beating very strongly in the Russian heart and daily life.
I missed all that when I moved to the US. People here had been out in the world to war, but no one seemed to have that same feel of war in the home country, on home soil. Nothing of war had come home. In one way I was always happy for the US people that they could just get on and build their drive-in theaters and beautiful cars and live a prosperous life. Their lack of knowledge of the outside world was always a sad thing, I thought, but one could chuckle at it because at least it seemed harmless.
It becomes impossible to chuckle now, when the US ignorance of life in the world shows in its every cruel and presumptuous act. I suppose they just don’t understand how deeply and personally the values of war are woven into the fabric of life for many people in many countries. I suppose it truly is possible, given this US culture of ignorance, that all the leaders and players within the empire actually have no idea of how close to disaster they’re coming, prodding the Bear.
Not all, grieved. I’m American. My wife is from St Petersburg. I am talking about the city by that name north of the Mason Dixon line quite a bit further than our border with Canada. My sons live in America, but also love Russia. Their mother stubbornly overcomes every bad influence around them to make sure they are straight A students, and practice their piano and second musical instrument every single day. The youngest has an iron will and completely defeats me when I am left alone with him for hours. He knows every tactical trick in the book. However,when he hears the garage door rising, he runs to the piano bench and begins to play, While blaming me for not knowing what to feed him (he rejected everything, so he could play video games, despite constant ploys and threats from me……).
One day I explained to him the scorched earth reaction of the Russians to Napoleon’s invasion, and the aftermath of the French “victory” at Borodino, Moscow in flames, and the retreating general vowing, “We will make them eat horsemeat.”
My eight year old looked at me with the most serious look I have ever seen on his face, and said, “That explains a lot about mom.”
what a beautiful letter to receive Saker, especially at Easter.
Music is the easiest and eloquent form of communication, when it is done with the heart.
Watched the following video a few months back.
A comment on this video says that three years ago Russians were divided, and now they have found real unity,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYO-qdehaSs
The song Выйду ночью в поле с конем… в автобусе,
My Horse and Me
People able to sing like that must win.
Please compare with this:
.https://youtu.be/PmILOL55xP0
The music is nice but this looks to me like war propaganda. The Russian government,if they in fact made this video, may want to mobilize their public for a possible war with the U.S.
You will agree that it is better than bringing down skyscrapers and murder 1000s of their own people, or blowing up their own ships and killing everyone on them so they can “mobilize” their citizens to invade and kill millions of people who did nothing to them.
Ibrahim, I am not criticizing the Russian government. I think it is normal for governments to rally their publics when the country is threatened. At the same time, at some level there is some manipulation, and there is the question of how much one wants to buy into it.
I do agree with you that there has been some pretty nasty propaganda from the U.S.
Ed,
I did not think or implied that you were criticizing anyone in your first post, far from that. I apologize if I sounded that way.
Greetings all,
There are two excellent and high quality documentaries on Star Media YT channel (Russian) CC for English subtitles.
I was extremely impressed with the historical details rarely seen in other documentaries and I must admit it brought tears to my eyes.
“Soviet Storm: World War II” – 18 episodes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhXKlYnSWjA&list=ELlzBS5WrPu4s
World War I – 8 Episodes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ucjJ7SQ5eY&list=PLhuA9d7RIOdaPM9tBwNA6nDF4yszMucl7&index=1
http://rt.com/usa/248369-senate-gathers-encyclopedia-spying/
apr9, but likely not seen needs to be.
In an effort to keep track of the US government’s sprawling spy efforts, a Senate oversight committee has been compiling a ‘secret encyclopedia’ of surveillance programs ever since the 2013 Snowden revelations.
Begun under former Senate Intelligence Committee chair Diane Feinstein (D-CA) in 2013, the program continued after the Republicans took control of the committee in January, AP reported, citing several Senate staffers who spoke on condition of anonymity.
real take on that UN resolution (says another was passed in Feb) on Yemen/Houthis from those directly involved, instead of another op-ed “opinion”.
Yemen’s Ansarullah (Houthis) movment condemned a UN Security Council resolution imposing an arms embargo on the group, saying the decision supported “aggression”.
Churkin said Russia’s “constructive proposals” were not taken into account during the drafting of the resolution, the second passed on Yemen this year. The first was passed in February.
Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the UN, said her country strongly supported the resolution as it “shows that the Security Council will take action against those who continue to undermine the efforts to the reconciliation”.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=246137