I’m looking for people like me, / Crazy and weird, / Crazy and sick. / And when I find them / We’re getting out of here / We’re heading out into the night / We’re leaving the zoo!

While many believe this to be an authentic Russian folk song, in fact it was written by the bard Юлий Ким, with the original title Губы окаянные (cursed lips).

I sometimes joke with students that if one were to summarize the entire Soviet project with a single Russian word… then my vote would be “идём” — “we are underway, we are on the march.” The verb appears on countless propaganda posters.

Letov was a master of appropriating Soviet symbols and rhetoric and turning them on their head. For example, when he sings of "a long and happy life" or "everything's going according to plan," he does so with bitter irony. Today's song is an impressionistic description of a shattered prison landscape, and is suggestive of an escape.