ДДТ: Don’t Shoot!
Площадь Революции station in Moscow. Touch the dog’s nose for good luck.
Here’s a classic anti-war song from ДДТ, written in 1980 in response to the Soviet war in Afghanistan, which dragged on from 1979 till 1989. In the early years of the war, Soviet citizens were propagandized to believe that the activity in Afghanistan was a purely humanitarian, civilizing effort; they were unaware of the severity of the violence there (for those interested, check out Svetlana Aleksievich’s book Цинковые мальчики — in English, “Zinky Boys,” with the “zinc” referring to the zinc coffins in which the dead were returned to Russia). DDT’s frontman, Yuri Shevchuk, touches on these points in his account of how this song arose:
“We’d just received the first coffin from Afghanistan; my friend Vitya Tyapin brought it; he was a former schoolmate of mine, who’d served there as a lieutenant since the very first days of the war. He brought the first coffins back to Ufa, where I lived at the time. He and I spent the whole night talking. Now, at that time, there was a lot of hot air on the ‘boob tube’ about how all we were doing there was building kindergartens… But the truth was that it was a war. My friend spent all night telling me about this war. We drank — and the next morning this song somehow wrote itself, came out of me.”
“Первый гроб мы получили из Афганистана, мой друг Витя Тяпин привез, мой одноклассник, который там служил лейтенантом с первых дней войны. Он привёз первые гробы в Уфу, я там тогда жил. Мы всю ночь тогда с ним проговорили. А у нас тогда «дули по ящику», что мы там детские сады строим… А на самом деле там война была. Друг всю ночь мне рассказывал об этой войне. Мы выпивали, а наутро как-то написалась, вышла из меня эта песня.”
Shevchuk took heat from Soviet officials for performing the song. Throughout his career, he has visited this and other “hot spots” (in Russian, горячие точки, a term also used in the song) to give concerts and spread his message, and he has said that, after seeing such things first-hand, he has gained a deeper understanding of this song. As he’s said: «…на войне я увидел ужас, кошмар и разложение личности. Первое, что война убивает, — это личность» (“in war, I saw horror, nightmares, the disintegration of the human self. The first thing killed in war is the human self.”). This is a good example of the centrality of the concept “личность” in Russian thought and literature!
At any rate, the song stands alongside familiar Western anti-war anthems, and also hearkens back to the Russian tradition of non-violence, taught most famously by the pacifist Leo Tolstoy, whose teachings, of course, had their origin in the Sermon on the Mount: “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Tolstoy, of course, first made his name in literature with his “Sevastopol Sketches,” which unsparingly depicted the horrors of warfare, as witnessed by him personally in the Crimean War. But perhaps the most memorable anti-war work in Russian literature (that I can think of) is Vsevolod Garshin’s short story “Four Days” (Четыре дня) — check it out! (And don’t miss Repin’s portrait of Garshin at the Met in New York, of all places!).
Don't Shoot!
by DDT (Yuri Shevchuk)
Don't shoot at sparrows,
Don't shoot at pigeons,
Don't shoot for no reason
From your slingshot.
Hey, kid, don't shoot
And don't boast to others,
That you hit without missing
Aiming at living targets.
You've been to every last firing range,
Amazed the crowds
At how such an excellent shot
Would win prizes.
You shot with a smile, without aiming,
Snap-shooting, at flying targets.
And all around you they'd say:
Wow, this guy is lucky!
Don't shoot! Don't shoot!
Don't shoot! Don't shoot!
And it happened, once upon a time -
What he's always dreamt about:
He wound up in
one of the planet’s hot spots.
And when at last
He returned home
He gave his little old firing range
a wide berth.
And when someone
Would reminisce about war,
He would drown his conscience
in heavy wine.
Before him, as if alive,
That little guy stood,
The one who begged him
for one thing:
Don't shoot! Don't shoot!
Don't shoot! Don't shoot!
Не стреляй!
ДДТ (Юрий Шевчук)
Не стреляй в воробьёв,
не стреляй в голубей,
Не стреляй просто так
из рогатки своей
Эй, малыш, не стреляй
и не хвастай другим,
Что без промаха бьёшь
по мишеням живым.
Ты все тиры излазил,
народ удивлял
Как отличный стрелок
призы получал
Бил с улыбкой, не целясь,
навскидку и влёт.
А кругом говорили:
Вот парню везёт!
Не стреляй! Не стреляй!
Не стреляй! Не стреляй!
И случилось однажды,
о чём так мечтал -
Он в горящую точку
планеты попал,
А когда наконец-то
вернулся домой
Он свой старенький тир
обходил стороной
И когда кто-нибудь
вспоминал о войне,
Он топил свою совесть
в тяжëлом вине.
Перед ним, как живой,
тот парнишка стоял,
Тот, который его
об одном умолял:
Не стреляй! Не стреляй!
Не стреляй! Не стреляй!
