The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! is a two-part TV film that has been a New Year's must in Russia for over thirty years since it was first broadcast on New Year's Day in 1976.
"The comedy born by the director Eldar Ryazanov is the most loved film of all Russia, — writes Lurkmore.—It is also an object of unbridled adoration (~) of all who are nostalgic for everything Soviet and the Soviet way of life. Every New Year from the time of its release the film is shown on at least one and sometimes several TV channels [in Russia]. Anonimus remembers an occasion when the film was on on three main TV channels at the same time (but staggered, not synchronised.) On New Year's night, it has become a good tradition in true Russian families to contemplate this example of the art of cinema with vodka-heavy eyes and a mouthfuls of festive olivier salad (because it will be off the next day.) A whole generation of citizens has grown and matured who have been watching The Irony of Fate from age two. They can imagine the holiday without the film no more as without the chimes of the Kremlin clock tower, olivier and hellish hangover on the morning of the 1 January. And they successfully instill the beautiful tradition in their children."
Dialogues in the film are in a perfectly correct Russian, to the point of being bland. This makes it a good aid for language lessons.
The songs, all of which have become national hits, are to the poems by Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, Marina Tsvetayeva (two), Bella Akhmadulina, Boris Pasternak, Alexander Aronov, Vladimir Kirshon and Mikhail Lvovsky. They are sung by Alla Pugachyova and Sergei Nikitin.
Here is the film in full with English subtitles.
(Episode 1, from the official Mosfilm YouTube channel)
Russia marks Victory Day today known as VE Day in Britain and Victoire in France.
In the past years the holiday has been built up in Russia as the day of national pride. A drumbeat of patriotic pomp and circumstance accompanies parades and celebrations in Moscow and throughout the country. (Wearing St.George's ribbon badge for Victory day was introduced in 2005. The gold and black are traditional colours of the Russian Empire.)
The literary and musical legacy of the Great Patriotic war, as world war two is known in Russia, is truly amazing.
Contemporaries and historians note, however, that real hits that soldiers and families took to heart were not the patriotic marches and songs of military feats but lyrical numbers, songs about love and personal loyalty in the face of death and separation.
The war also partially opened up Stalin's Soviet Union to Western pop culture.
In 1943 Leonid Utyosov, the popular singer and musician, released his version of the American song Comin' in on a Wing and a Prayer, by Harold Adamson и Jimmie McHugh, a number 1 hit in 1943. In Russian it was called Bombardirovshiki – The Bombers. The lyrics were written by T.Sykorskaya and S.Bolotin who kept the words close to the English original.
They changed the key line in refrain, though, from 'on a prayer' to 'on the word of honour' – na chestnom slove. This Russian idiom means 'only just managing', 'just holding on', in poor condition. Translators' find also avoided the religious reference that would have been frowned upon in Soviet times.
In this video Utyosov sings Comin' in on a Wing and a Prayer with daughter Edith. The footage is from the US film Memphis Belle. In the Russian version of Tetradki I publish a video with both English and Russian versions of the song superimposed over footage from the same film.
And this is a country style take on the song in a very smokey 1997 video version by the Russian group Chizh and Co.
Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter, died on 22 November 2011. She had a long and, at times, troubled life. A Kremlin princess until Stalin's death in 1953, in 1967 she defected to the USA, an event that was a big propaganda coup for the West. (see video below, wiki about her here).
There is a persistent myth linked with her name. At least I think it's a myth. The myth that there was a Soviet perfume named after her.
It was probably started by an American journalist's mention in the 1950s feature and found its way into other publications, including serious studies of Russia, and in a bounce-flash, is now mentioned, as fact, in Russian press. (See this article, which also includes videos about Alliluyeva.)
One blogger's obituary says: 'Growing up, she was a beloved celebrity in her home country. Thousands of girls were named after her. So was a bestselling perfume.'
The obituary links to an article from Russia by the AP Women's Editor Dorothy Roe. It is dated December 1957 and says: 'Just recently Russia started manufacturing perfume, the most expensive and prized of which is called 'Svetlana's Breath' – Svetlana is Stalin's daughter, you know'.
The American article is uncomplimentary about conditions of life for Russian women. But the correspondent obviously did an honest job walking around, observing and interviewing people. The year 1957 was an exciting time in Russia. Khrushchev has just denounced Stalin's crimes, Sputnik was launched and the International Youth Festival created an atmosphere of incredible openness and optimistic outlook. Khrushchev and Eisenhower were looking for a way to end the cold war.
The Moscow perfume factory, 'Novaya Zarya' – New Dawn, founded 1884, (link to their official web-site, small wiki article in Russian here), did indeed make a perfume called 'Svetlana', not 'Svetlana's Breath'. It is mentioned, for example, in this overview of the factory's products as one of its top quality brands. Either the correspondent misunderstood the name of the brand, or the interviewee made a joke about Stalin's personality cult that was lost in translation.
The trap here, for a translator – and a journalist, is in the word дух – spirit, ghost, which also means smell, scent. In fact, Pushkin played on the word in the introduction to the poem Ruslan and Lyudmila: "Там русский дух, там Русью пахнет" – "there is the Russian spirit, it smells of Russia there". Dahl's dictionary (словарь Даля), the biggest collection of Russian words, gives the whole range of meanings in an article on дух(link to Vasmer's etymological dictionary on dukh, which in turn links to major Russian dictionaries, click on Dahl). Дух is cognate with душа (soul) and дыхание (breath) but духи in plural with the stress on the last syllable has only one meaning – perfume.
The name of the perfume, after Khrushchev's 1956 denunciation of Stalin, is unlikely to
have been linked to Svetlana Alliluyeva, but, I am almost sure, is a reference to
'Lullaby for Svetlana', a hit number from the musical "Давным-давно" – 'Long Time Ago'
(play by Alexander Gladkov, music by Tikhon Khrennikov). In 1962 Eldar Ryazanov made a film version,
"Гусарская баллада" ('The Hussar Ballad). Svetlana is the name of the doll belonging to the main character Alexandra (Shurochka). She sings the lullaby 'Sleep, my Svetlana' before
running away from home to join, disguised as a hussar, the Russian army
fighting Napoleon in 1812.
The play was written in 1941, just before Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, and staged for
the first time in 1942 in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), where many Moscow organizations
were evacuated. Scenes and musical numbers from the play were broadcast over the national radio. It has remained a signature production for the Central
Army Theatre in Moscow ever since. Its patriotic theme was apt for the time and the catchy tunes are still, seventy years on, popular.
My
grandmother and mother, a little girl then, were also evacuated to Sverdlovsk – and my mother had
a doll there called Svetlana. That's where my sister later got her name from. I didn't
know about the doll, mother only told me the other day when I mentioned the death of Svetlana Alliluyeva. My mother doesn't remember the perfume, nor the play from those times, but she and my grandmother
may have seen it then.
The name Svetlana in the play might have been 'inspired' by Stalin's
daughter, but would have been linked to the poet Vasily Zhukovsky's 1808-1812 romantic
ballad 'Svetlana' based on Gottfried Burger's Lenore (wiki on Lenore). Zhukovsky
did another version of Lenore titled 'Lyudmila'. Both Svetlana (meaning the Light One) and
Lyudmila (Beloved by the People) remain two of the most popular pre-Christian Russian women's
names. It is possible that Stalin's daughter was named after Zhukovsky's heroine. While 'thousands of girls named after Stalin's daughter' is obviously what was happening at the height of his cult, the name had its own life, separate from Stalin.
Stalin's daughter or not, the lines from Zhukovsky's ballad "О, не знай сих страшных снов, Светлана" – 'Oh, never shall you know those terrible dreams, Svetlana' are widely known, and during the Stalin period would have had certain reverberations – abduction, having a dead man for a groom, trying to figure out your fate and then waking up from a bad dream.
Novaya Zarya has a long tradition of giving their perfumes women names with romantic connotations. In the 70s one of the popular brands – which I remember buying myself – was called 'Natasha', possibly after Tolstoy's Natasha Rostova. One of their current brands is 'Yelena'. My theory about 'Svetlana' perfume could only be confirmed by evidence from the Novaya Zarya archives or by someone who remembers how the name was assigned. For now, I simply offer this as a theory.
The Hussar's Ballad can be seen on YouTube in full. The lullaby scene begins at 22 min. (Embedding is disabled, copyright is owned by Mosfilm). RuTube has a clip with the lullaby:
Here Svetlana Alliluyeva speaks at the press-conference after her defection in 1967:
Picture, an illustration to Zhukovsky's poem: Karl Brullov, Svetlana's Magic Fortunetelling, 1836, o/c, 94 x 81 cm, Art Museum of Nizhny Novgorod.
Special thanks to Languagehat for the prompt to make this post.
Today is the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, a tragic date deeply ingrained in the minds of Russians – 22 June 1941 (it was a Sunday).
The war left a huge legacy of literature, songs, music and graphic art. I have mentioned before (here) an important resource, the web-site Soviet Music (sovmusic.ru), which was recently reorganised to let visitors use it by historical periods (only the Russian language side of the site, the English language side is classified by theme). Its primary purpose is to preserve the original versions of Soviet patriotic songs, but it also contains records of speeches by war-time Soviet leaders and numerous posters. The Great Patriotic War section is here.
All files are free to download (read terms and conditions for limitations) and the full collection is available (for sale) on disc.
Here is the link to the speech made on 22 June by the commissar for foreign affairs Vyacheslav Molotov. You can hear the nervousness, a shade of distress in his voice. It is also interesting that Molotov separates 'the German people, german workers' from the Nazi rulers. This internationalist motif was later drowned in the drumming up of nationalist, anti-German rhetoric. Molotov also evokes the patriotic theme, mentioning the invasion of Napoleon in 1812.
Stalin did not speak until 3 July. The closing words of Molotov's speech: 'Ours is a just cause. The enemy will be routed. Victory will be ours' are associated with Stalin, but they are in the middle of his speech and not as rhetorically stressed as in Molotov's version. They are in a subordinate clause, inside a bigger sentence. The confident 'Victory will be ours' ("Победа будет за нами") also appears in a slightly less powerful variation 'we will have to/must win' ("мы должны победить").
VE Day - Den' Pobedy - is a huge holiday in Russia. It is marked on the 9th of May, not on the 8th as in Western Europe. The difference is because of the time zones - what happened late at night on 8 May in Berlin, was already the 9th Moscow time. But I also like to argue that we, Russians, celebrate the first day of peace, while in the West the last day of war is celebrated.
My correspondents write to me that over the recent years the holiday has become the biggest event in the Russian calendar of official festivities. This is probably connected to the resurgence of Russian nationalism. A multitude of militant nationalist groups practically hijack the event. There is also bitterness and anger in the former Soviet republics where nazi collaborators and nationalists who fought against the Soviet Union freely parade and harass the Red Army veterans.
However, as everywhere in Europe, in Russia the end of the Second World War was a powerful liberating moment. The soldiers returning home stood tall, walked proud, the felt free and not afraid of anything. The feeling was universal - from the private to Generalissimo himself.
Of the war books I've read recently I was most impressed by Antony Beevor's 'Stalingrad' (1998.) It has been waiting on a shelf for a long time. Something in me resisted picking it up. As a Russian, I've read many books, fiction and non-fiction, on Stalingrad. Konstantin Simonov, Vassily Grossman and others. I started on Grossman's 'Life and Fate' and then remembered that Beevor cites him often. Then I saw 'Enemy At the Gates' (Jude Law as the Russian sniper, Ed Harris his German opposition and Bob Hoskins as Khrushev) - and decided to have a go at 'Stalingrad'. It was unputdownable. I read it first in one go, then again with a pencil and a wad of stickies.
Beevor the historian is meticulous. His every sentence is supported by a wealth of documental evidence, and where that evidence is dubious or politically or ideologically slanted, he indicates it. Beevor the narrator is a brilliant master of multi-angled technique. Close-ups of events described through the eyes of participants on both sides, from ordinary riflemen to officers in the field to staff members to commanders and politicians are then interspersed with commentary and analysis, also by participants and observers. We see the unfolding battle from the trenches, through tank sites and from the cabins of airplanes above the ruined city. We go from Stalin's Stavka (HQ) to Hitler's Wolfsschanze.
The result is both a convincing historical account and an exciting read.
All over Russia today war-time songs are played. Beevor mentions the 'Dugout' (Zemlyanka) as the most popular song among the Russian soldiers. The words
It is so hard for me to come to you And here there are four steps to death.
were especially poignant, as the Army commander in Stalingrad Vassily Chuikov ordered the positions never to be farther than 50 metres away from the German lines. That made it impossible for the Germans to use heavy artillery and bomb Russian positions from air.
Here is the Dugout sung by Lidiya Ruslanova in 1942. Text of the poem in English as quoted in 'Stalingrad' is below the video.
The Dugout (or In the Dugout), lyrics by Alexei Surkov, music by Constantine Listov
The fire is flickering in the narrow stove
Resin oozes from the log like a tear
And the concertina in the bunker
Sings to me of your smile and eyes.
The bushes whispered to me about you
In a snow-white field near Moscow
I want you above all to hear
How said my living voice is.
You are now very far away
Expanses of snow lie between us
It is so hard for me to come to you
And here there are four steps to death.
Sing concertina, in defiance of the snowstorm
Call out to that happiness which has lost its way
I'm warm in the cold bunker
Because of your inextinguishable love.
(1998.) It has been waiting on a shelf for a long time. Something in me resisted picking it up. As a Russian, I've read many books, fiction and non-fiction, on Stalingrad. Konstantin Simonov, Vassily Grossman and others. I started on Grossman's 'Life and Fate' and then remembered that Beevor cites him often. Then I saw '
' (Jude Law as the Russian sniper, Ed Harris his German opposition and Bob Hoskins as Khrushev) - and decided to have a go at 'Stalingrad'. It was unputdownable. I read it first in one go, then again with a pencil and a wad of stickies.
