We March in the Silence

This song, from the 1997 album (recorded in 1995) Солнцеворот (“Solstice” - cover art featured above), is actually entitled “The road is long (there’s lots of fun ahead),” casting a wantonly gleeful, even childishly innocent light on a song typical of Гражданская оборона (Civil Defense) in terms of its depiction of violence and cruel indifference to suffering. It also masterfully appropriates and subverts a central rhetorical motif from Soviet propaganda — if not THE central motif. 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. This single word in Russian conveys two important messages: first, its subject is the collective “мы,” and the kind of motion it describes is determinate: “we” are on our way somewhere — toward Communism, toward Utopia. Perhaps some would suggest “коммунизм” as an obvious one-word summary of Soviet ideology, but I’d object that inasmuch as this describes the journey’s glorious destination, something eternally out of reach, it remains somehow devoid of content, and ultimately irrelevant. Indeed, one could replace it with any other Utopian end-point, and nothing else — the blind faith in progress, the anonymous onward march, the total disregard for anything standing in one’s way — would change. The Czech novelist Milan Kundera, in his novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” calls this the “velký pochod,” the “great march,” suggesting that Communism has more in common with other kinds of political faith than many would care to admit, particularly in the deluded self-righteousness it instills in those who join the march. The band’s leader, Yegor Letov, was a professed anarchist, by the way.

This song seems to depict a march “по” various things — things that are trampled underfoot: buildings, heads; the green earth (perhaps a nod to ecological destruction); broken glasses (suggestive of the ever-suspect intelligentsia; by the way, Yegor Letov, wore glasses); badges from the Komsomol (the Soviet youth organization), bloody words (suggesting the link between Soviet rhetoric and the real bloodshed of political terror), hungry years (the Holodomor, perhaps), etc. Whatever associations these phrases call to mind, together they comprise a kind post-apocalyptic ruin of the Soviet state: these things are already broken or dead, and “we” continue mindlessly trampling them. An obvious question arises: is the “we” really meant to depict the Soviet collective, or is it rather a caricature of early post-Soviet society?

The verse returns to the crucial phrase “in silence,” and comes to a shocking conclusion: we trample underfoot “those crucified in their sleep and completely forgotten.” One is reminded that many victims of the purges were arrested in the middle of the night, many of them never heard from again. Some argue that post-Soviet society has yet to come to terms with the purges, though in recent years a Gulag museum has opened in Moscow, for example. So, we have on the one hand the triumphalist rhetoric of Soviet discourse, the “words,” the “great deeds” it speaks of; and, on the other, a brutal reality that is passed over in silence. The “we” of this song are clearly complicit in that silence, and, quite importantly, are clearly aware of it. But they continue marching — and, rather paradoxically, singing! This song is really built on the striking incongruity of their professed silence and their sing-song enumeration of their every crime, in a kind of forced confession. In this sense they are puppets in Letov’s hands.

The song ends with a cryptic sort of still-life, a nature morte. Can we untangle its meaning? There’s a pile of letters, presumably on a kitchen table; the “не скучай” is clearly a refrain found in those letters: “don’t miss me,” I’ll be home soon. Then — a death notice. Then — the “sticky” tea, which to me suggests that everything in this person’s world, even the mundane pleasure of a cup of tea, has become repulsive in the wake of this devastating news. Life has lost all meaning. Letov has so succinctly depicted, with the pile of letters, day after day of hoping for a loved one’s return — and the crushing betrayal of that hope. This intimate domestic portrait seems to have nothing — or everything? — to do with the march just depicted. The person sits alone in silence.

Who are these letters from? Two obvious possibilities come to mind: a soldier, or a prisoner, a victim of repression. The latter possibility would seem to better fit the content of the song. Yet the figure of the soldier surfaces constantly in Grazhdanskaya Oborona’s lyrics, much as in those of Viktor Tsoi — the soldier as the embodiment of a courage and anonymous self-sacrifice that can be unambiguously salvaged from the Soviet experience. However we interpret this text, it is certainly a powerful and provocative one, and a highlight in Civil Defense’s extensive catalogue.

I might also draw attention to Letov’s vocal delivery: his singing shifts abruptly back and forth between a kind of neutral tone, an overwrought, almost operatic one, and a bestial howl. It is very interesting to hear how he switches between these voices as he navigates his lyrics, which so often involve appropriated speech. The most noticeable moment in this song is perhaps the howl with which he delivers the words “ворох” and “похоронка.”

The Road is Long
(There’s a Lot of Fun Ahead)

We march in the silence, across the murdered spring,
Across shattered buildings, across heads of gray,
Across the green earth, the blackened grass,
Across the fallen bodies, across great deeds,
Across broken glasses, Komsomol badges,
Across bloody words, across hungry years.
We march in the silence, across the murdered spring,
Across those crucified in their sleep and completely forgotten.

A pile of letters, “don’t miss me,”
A death notice, sticky tea.

Далеко бежит дорога
(впереди веселья много)

Мы идëм в тишине по убитой весне
По разбитым домам, по седым головам
По зелëной земле, почерневшей траве
По упавшим телам, по великим делам
По разбитым очкам, комсомольским значкам
По кровавым словам, по голодным годам.
Мы идëм в тишине по убитой весне
По распятым во сне и забытым совсем

Ворох писем, не скучай
Похоронка, липкий чай             

Vocab notes

впереди: ahead • веселье: fun, merriment • тишина: silence • убивать АЙ / убить Ь: to kill • весна: spring • разбивать АЙ / разбить Ь: to break, shatter • седой: gray-haired • голова: head • земля: earth, ground • чернеть ЕЙ / почернеть ЕЙ: to be or become black • трава: grass • падать АЙ / упасть Д: to fall • тело: body • дело: deed, matter • очки: glasses • значок: badge • кровавый: bloody • слово: word • голодный: hungry • год: year • распинать АЙ / распять /Н: to crucify • сон: sleep; dream • забывать АЙ / забыть: to forget • совсем: completely • ворох: pile (of papers) • письмо: letter • скучать АЙ / соскучиться И по кому: to miss / to come to miss • похоронка: death notification • липкий: sticky