Moscow on the Fourth of July

After a very satisfying dinner of burgers, fries and onion rings at the American-style restaurant Corner Burger, I came home to my dorm room and was struck with a sudden desire to listen to a song by DDT, a Russian rock band. 

This impulse is unlikely to surprise any of my Russian-speaking friends, as I make no secret of the fact that I basically think that DDT's lovable lead singer Yurii Shevchuk walks on water. DDT came out of the ‘80s Leningrad rock scene, which also gave birth to other legendary russkii rok bands as Kino and Akvarium. Their first hit, “Ne streliai” (“Don’t Shoot”), was a protest against the Afghan War, and they have been writing hummable anthems—political and personal—ever since.

The song I wanted to listen to was one of DDT's most popular songs: “Rodina,” which translates as “homeland” or “motherland.” It came out in 1992, when Russian morale and prestige was at a nadir. The Soviet Union had collapsed. The public conversation about the legacy of Stalinism that had simmered since the late 1950s had come to a rolling boil after glasnost’ freed the press from censorship. “Rodina” is an effort to find something worth singing about after the long process of coming to terms with the political violence of the twentieth century. This is salvage patriotism.

Yurii Shevchuk sings "Rodina" at Bolotnaia Square.

(Dmitrii Bykov is having way too much fun in the background here.)

The singer starts off with a wail:

God, how many years have I been walking without making a single step?  

God, how many days have I searched for that which was always with me?

The next stanza evokes the victims of the Great Terror of 1937, when the dreaded “Black Marias” visited people during “restless nights.”

Black headlights at the neighbor’s gate.

Trap doors, handcuffs, a torn mouth.

How many times did my head roll

From the overflowing executioner’s block?

Against this background, Shevchuk launches into the chorus:

My native land—  

I’m homeward bound. 

Let them cry that she’s a freak, 

We still like her! 

Even though she’s not a beauty, 

And puts her faith in scumbags…

Having affirmed his love for his homeland despite the horrors of the past, he turns his gaze from the victims to the remorseless perpetrators.

God, how much truth is in the eyes of the state’s whores! 

God, how much faith is in the hands of the retired executioners! 

Don’t let them roll up their sleeves again, 

Don’t let them roll up their sleeves again!

Shevchuk makes it clear that it isn’t easy to love his native land, to navigate the narrow waters between despair and cheap patriotism. He looks long and hard at the past and asks people to make a different choice.

I had never made this connection before, but on the Fourth of July the message of that song reminded me of nothing so much as the mission of one of my favorite bands, the Drive-By Truckers. For those of you unfamiliar with them, the Drive-By Truckers are a band from Alabama with grungy guitars and amazing songwriting. Their concept album Southern Rock Opera is a series of interconnected songs about the state of Alabama. Throughout the album, but especially in the series of songs “Birmingham,” “The Southern Thing,” “Three Great Alabama Icons,” and “Wallace,” songwriter Patterson Hood dissects Alabama’s history of racism and tries to forge a new form of Southern pride based on a different set of values than the ones espoused by Alabama governor George Wallace during the era of segregation. It’s hard to sum up a series of songs that concludes with Wallace meeting the Devil in Hell (apparently, the Devil’s a southerner—and drives a Cadillac), but this quotation from “The Southern Thing” comes close:

You think I'm dumb, maybe not too bright 

You wonder how I sleep at night 

Proud of the glory, stare down the shame 

The duality of the southern thing 

In the spoken-word piece “Three Great Alabama Icons,” Hood explains that it was only when he left Alabama did he realize the dire need to address this topic:

“…and you know, race was only an issue on TV in the house that I grew up in. Wallace was viewed as a man from another time and place, but when I first ventured out of the south I was shocked at how strongly Wallace was associated with Alabama and its people. Racism is a worldwide problem, and it's been like that since the beginning of recorded history, and it ain't just white and black, but thanks to George Wallace, it's always a little more convenient to play it with a southern accent.”

In the end, Hood envisions a future where "no man should ever have to feel that he don't belong in Birmingham," the epicenter of Wallace's segregationist south. You can agree or disagree with Patterson Hood’s raw and uncensored attempts to redefine Alabama identity in his lyrics, but I have to say that I find what he and Yurii Shevchuk are trying to do a lot more compelling than the two usual reactions that we often see when confronted with the ugly side of our native land: vigorous, flag-waving denial or the “screw it, I’m moving to Canada” brand of despair.

“Any truth told without love is a lie,” Yuri Shevchuk reminded the crowd at Bolotnaia Square at the protest for clean elections in Moscow on February 4, 2012, after singing “Rodina.” 

“We will be human beings,” he told them. “We will try.”