Tag Archives: entertainment

Soviet film about a Nazi-German false flag operation – A fragment of a 1985 film “Confrontation”

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You are about to watch a fragment of the 1985 film Confrontation, based on the novel by Julian Semyonov of the same name, written in 1979.

The film is a drama-documentary, intertwining documentary footage with a dramatised plot of the novel.


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Julian Semoynov is known for the usage of archival materials in the research for his novels, and the episode you are about to watch could very well have a real-life prototype.

The antagonist of the story, Krotov, defects to the Germans in 1941 and serves them. In 1945, through murder, he manages to assume a different identity, and only another murder that he commits in the 1970s leads the investigators onto his trail.

The German false flag operation, detailed in the episode, is situated subsequent to the liberation of Krasnodar from the fascists, which happened on 13th of February 1943, resulting in the order by Hitler, issued the next day, on the evacuation and the driving westwards of the population.

The operation must have taken place within a time frame from Hitler’s order until the first time Soviet troops crossed into Eastern Prussia on the 17th of August 1944.

The parallell between the film episode and the events in Bucha was so striking that the following was posted by us on the 5th of April 2022 in the article Bucha massacre – the script from the German Nazi false flags of 1945; Killing of the Russian POWs by UkroNazis

The UkroNazis are nowhere as thorough as their German Nazi “colleagues” were, so today we see a lot of plot holes in the UkroReich narrative. Back in 1945, the Germans used converted, now collaborating, Russian POWs, dressed in Soviet uniforms to do the killing (promising those POWs freedom), but then executing them on the spot to make a picture of a battle, where the Soviets would have seemingly killed the civilians, only to be killed by the Germans. And then the “indignant civilised West” in the face of the Red Cross observers would be invited to witness and document the false flag, thinking it was for real.

The not so peaceful “Peaceful Germans”

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Exactly 80 years ago, the Soviet satirical magazine “Krokodil” had a special drawing by I.Semyonov in issue №9 from March 24, 1945.

On one page we observe “Peaceful Germans”: a doctor, a typist, two clerks getting their money… and a text at the bottom:

“We forcefully recommend to look at them against the light.”

🤔 What can that be?

On the reverse side of the page we are met with several mirror-image amendments!

The video simulates how that caricature would look once you shone the torchlight of truth at the deceptive images! Watch it in full screen.


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The peaceful doctor is not so peaceful any more, the peaceful typist turns into a radio operator with a “code book”, the peaceful clerks are now seen getting money “for sabotage” and “for murder”!

‼️ There is a bit of context one has to keep in mind, when looking at the caricature. In the final months of the war, culminating in May 1945. the West started to present Germans as poor victims of the big bad Russian bear, with Goebbelsian propaganda myth about the misconduct of the Soviet troop, finding fertile ground in the Anglo-sphere. This caricature, as well as a number of others that we will present in time, aim to highlight this, puzzling to the USSR, change in attitude.

Here is a combined image, showing both the components and the combined result.

The materials are from our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, where the individual images can be downloaded in the comments section.

Oscar-winning film lies about the Red Army. A re-blog of MFA statement

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The re-writing of history is happening in two planes – the erasure of the actual history through the destruction of the monuments, and the implanting of a “new” narrative in the minds of the people. We told about the destruction of the monuments through a video clip from the film “Warsaw ’21” in the article “Warsaw ‘21” – a political thriller with a fragment on the essence of the Polish destruction of the Soviet memorials, while the alteration of the history with the “new narrative” is happening though the films, like the one criticised below.

For an additional story about the liberation of Poland, and how that event gets malformed in the minds of the Poles, see our 2015 article The Sorrow of a Warsaw Woman. Why Poland is not happy to be liberated from fascism?

Soviet and Polish soldiers plant the victory banner. Warsaw, January 1945. The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

Oscar-winning film lies about the Red Army

Nikolai LAKHONIN, Chief Counselor, Foreign Ministry Information and Press Department
March 17, 2025

The annual Oscars Academy Award ceremony attracts attention of the whole world. Recently, another such show took place. We would like to talk not about the American film Anora (rated R) with Russian actors (we congratulate them on their great success), but about the drama A Real Pain (rated R) directed by Jesse Eisenberg.

It is also an American film, made by Americans primarily for Americans and about Americans. This is important. The picture is about historical memory in the perception of American descendants who survived the Holocaust. The genre is a road film: the main characters travel to memorial sites, get acquainted with monuments in the Polish capital and go to the Majdanek concentration camp museum. The picture has already been seen by millions, and after it received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, even more people will see it. The screenwriters of such films lay down powerful narratives. And since they contain a distorted view of the most important events related to our country, we cannot remain silent.

The myth of the Red Army

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Iosif Stalin, A Leader and A Poet

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It is a little-known fact that Iosif Dzhugashvili, future Stalin, had a passion for writing poetry in his student years, between 1893 and 1896. In the painting above, a young seminarist Iosif Dzhugashvili is depicted with a volume of Lenin’s work “What Is To Be Done?”

Only six poems by Stalin, published in 1895-96, in his native Georgian, survived until present day. Here is one of the poems, translated, preserving rhyme and rhythm, by Putinger’s Cat, from a Russian translation, providing us with a glimpse of who Stalin was as a young man.

The Russian translation from Georgian, used as the basis of the English translation, is provided below the English version.

💢💢💢

From a home to a home, he went,
Knocking on other folks’ doors,
With him, his oaken string instrument
And his unpretentious old song.

And in his song, and in his song,
As pure as sunlight’s shining gleam,
A profound truth was resounding,
A transcendental daydream.

Hearts that had turned into rock
He managed to make beat again;
Numerous minds he awoke
That, in deep darkness, had napped.

But people who’d forgotten God,
Their hearts holding darkness within,
A poison cup, filled to the top,
Offered him for a drink.

They said to him, “You, the cursed,
Here, bottoms up, empty this!
To us, that song of yours is foreign,
And we don’t want that truth of yours!”

💢💢💢

Ходил он от дома к дому,
Стучась у чужих дверей,
Со старым дубовым пандури,
С нехитрою песней своей.

А в песне его, а в песне –
Как солнечный блеск чиста,
Звучала великая правда,
Возвышенная мечта.

Сердца, превращённые в камень,
Заставить биться сумел,
У многих будил он разум,
Дремавший в глубокой тьме.

Но люди, забывшие Бога,
Хранящие в сердце тьму,
Полную чашу отравы
Преподнесли ему.

Сказали ему: „Проклятый,
Пей, осуши до дна…
И песня твоя чужда нам,
И правда твоя не нужна!»

💢💢💢

Credits for finding this poem and inspiring this translation go to Beorn and the Shieldmaiden.

Poem source.

The Chain of Historic Continuity

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From our Telegram post at “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

The Soviet animated film “We’ve Beaten, Are Beating, And Shall Be Beating Them” from 1941 shows the historic links between 1242, 1918 and 1941 – driving away the invaders from the West.


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The historic chain of western invaders and their defeats can now be added yet another link named NATO.
And with the same unbreakable certainty will the outcome of this new attempt to conquer and plunder Russia be the same: Victory over the unwelcome “guests”.

The peoples of Russia will prevail!

At “The Museum of the Broken Ones”, the foreseeing exhibition planners of the USSR even left a pedestal open for NATO when the time came..

Caricature by the Soviet art collective “Kukryniksy”, 1952

In the Museum of The Beaten and Broken Ones, an exquisite collection of historic relics of grand conquerors of Russia are on display. The foreseeing curators have left a pedestal open for the next invader.

Plaques on the pedestals read, left to right:
🪧 Teutonic Knights
🪧 Karl VII of Sweden
🪧 Napoleon
🪧 Hitler
🪧 Samurai
🪧 …. [empty pedestal, no plaque yet]

The text is the famous quote by Alexander Nevsky:

«Who comes to us with a sword, will die by the sword.»

We’ll see, perhaps the crutched 75-year-old will run completely out of steam and munitions before they manage to get their bearings straight.

The power of monuments of the past. Part 1. Ivan Krylov’s “The Wolf in the Kennel”

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The material originally posted at our Telegram channel “Beorn An dThe Shieldmaiden”.

One of the reasons why NATO and the Ukro-Nazis, among others, are so panic-stricken in the face of the Soviet and Russian monuments that they seek to destroy them is of course that the monuments represent the power of the collective past of the nation, giving strength and guidance to the present generation.

In the autumn of 1944 issue № 41 of “Krokodil” we can admire such a guidance in a drawing on page 8.

Here the Soviet soldiers are driving on the armour of a tank past the monument to Ivan Andreevich Krylov, the famous Russian poet, fable-writer and translator. On the pedestal they read the words from one of his works, “The Wolf in the Kennel”, written in the fateful year of 1812:

You shan’t make peace with wolves in any other way,
Than flogging their skins away.

To which they salute, exclaiming:

— The task to flog the skin is understood, Ivan Andreevich!

Artist: M.Cheremnyh

📖📖📖

“The Wolf in the Kennel”

by the Russian poet Ivan Krylov, written in 1812.

A wolf at night, thinking to get into the sheepfold,
Got to the kennel in its stead.
Suddenly the whole kennel yard rose up –
Sensing the Gray bully oh so close,
The dogs are barking in the stables and wishing for a fight;
The dog-keepers shout: “Oh, guys, there’s a thief!”
And instantly the gate is locked;
In a minute, the kennel became hell.
They’re bustling: one with a club,
Another with a gun.
“Fire! – they are shouting, – fire!” They came with fire.
My Wolf is sitting with his back pressed into the corner.
Teeth snapping and fur bristling,
With his eyes, it seems, he would like to eat everyone;
But seeing that he’s not in front of a herd here
And that the time of reckoning, at last,
comes to Him for all the sheep, –
My cunning man started
With negotiations
And he began like this: “Friends! What’s all the fuss about?
I, your old matchmaker and godfather,
I came to make peace with you, not at all for the sake of a quarrel;
Let’s forget the past, let’s set up a common mood!
And not only will I not touch the local herds in time to come
But I’m happy to fight for them with others
And I affirm it with a wolf’s oath,
that I…” – “Listen, neighbour,”
Here the hunter interrupted in response, ”
“You are Gray, and I am, buddy, gray haired with my age,
And I’ve known your wolf nature for a long time;
Therefore, the custom of mine is:
You shan’t make peace with wolves in any other way,
Than flogging their skins away.”
And immediately released on the Wolf a pack of hounds.

📖📖📖

Here is the original text of the fable in Russian, taken from Russian poetry
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Soviet New Year Toys – A Fragile Nostalgia

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Happy Old New Year to all of you from us at Beorn And The Shieldmaiden!

A short documentary film from NTV which, in the course of just 10 minutes, manages to tell the story of the Soviet Union, seen through the colourful New Year tree decorations.

The feeling of nostalgia, so accurately conveyed by the film, is very much familiar to all of us who either had such New Year toys, or is still keeping them on the upper shelf, in a wooden box…


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🎄🚩☃️

The documentary mentions several classic Soviet films. Here they are:

🎦 “Grunya Kornakova”, 1936 — a film about the riot of the workers of a large porcelain factory. The events in the film take place in pre-revolutionary Russia. The first Soviet full-length colour film created using a rolling method.

🎦 “Circus”, 1936 — A musical film based on the comedy of I. Ilf, E. Petrov “Under the Dome of the Circus”. In the mid-1930s, an American Marion Dixon fled the US with a small black son. Knowing the facts of her personal life, the circus actor von Kneitschitz blackmailing her, forces her to work with him. Arriving with an original attraction in the USSR, Marion finds here friends, a loved one and decides to stay here forever.

🎦 “The Siberians”, 1940 — This film is filled with mystery and the expectation of a miracle. Two boys (6th grade students Seryozha and Petya), having heard from an old resident of their village a story about the distant events of the pre-revolutionary period, set out to find one very important thing… If it were the Holy Grail, a treasure trove, or a meteorite, at the very least, it would be fine, but the peculiarity of this touching story is that the boys are enthralled by the search of Comrade Stalin’s pipe.

🎦 “Carnival Night”, 1956 (with English subtitles) — A new chief of a “Culture House” is planning to hold a terribly boring New Year concert. A group of young amateur actors are doing their best to liven up the concert. Obviously, no one wants to change the program with only a few hours before the show, much less to replace it with something so boring. So everyone teams up in order to prevent Ogurtsov from getting to the stage. They manage to trap Ogurtsov by any means necessary so that the acts can perform their scheduled pieces, and celebrate New Year’s Eve as originally planned.

🎦 “Chuk and Gek”, 1953 — A touching story about how young Muscovites – seven-year-old Chuk and six-year-old Gek – went with their mom to their dad, who was on a distant geological expedition, and how they struggled with a harsh winter and all sorts of difficulties because their dad, having set out on an urgent expedition, did not meet them, but sent a telegram, which the children threw out the window without letting their mom read it… Based on the story of the same name by Arkady Gaidar.

“The Winter Fairytale” and “When New Year Trees Light Up” – Soviet New Year animation films to all of you!

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Our warmest congratulations and presents from the New Year eve on our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”!

Happy New Year of 2025!

We wish our dear BATS readers a very happy New Year!

Let the coming year bring happiness and good fortune, let there be peaceful skies above our heads and normalcy in our world!

🎄Postcard from the New Year of 1962 – 1963 with the scene from the animated film “When New Year Trees Light Up” — from Beorn’s family album.

The Winter Fairytale

A 1945 magically musical New Year animated film from the USSR.

A cold winter has arrived, and the New Year is coming soon. The forest animals gathered to meet him. Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost), Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden) and the Snowman help them in this. A New Year’s tale with musical scenes around the New Year tree.

Directed by the legendary Ivan Ivanov-Vano, and set to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Chaikovskij. This is the last Soviet colour film that was created using the tri-colour method.


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When New Year Trees Light Up

The cartoon about the magic of the New Year season — when all the dreams manifest themselves, but also about the importance of being true to your word!

The film was created by the animation studio “Soyuzmultfilm” and appeared on the Soviet TV screens on the 31st of December 1950.

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Happy New Year of the 80th Anniversary of the Great Victory!

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We present a selection of posts with drawings and caricatures from a very special edition of the Soviet satirical magazine, “Krokodil”. More can be found at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”!

Greetings on the coming Year of the 80th Anniversary of the Victory!

No doubt was left: the New Year of 1945 would finally bring Victory! As attested by the painting by L.Brodat on the cover of the combined issue №47-48 of “Krokodil” from December 1944.

🎄🎄🎄

— Who is coming?
— New Year!
— Password?
— Victory!
— Advance! *

🎄🎄🎄

* The final command — Advance! — is a play on the double meaning of the phrase “Coming New Year”, which translates literally as “Advancing New Year”, when at the same time, in the military context, the first word would also carry the meaning of “to attack” or “to charge”.

In the posts leading up to the New Year, we bring some of the drawings and caricatures from that issue of “Krokodil”. Some of them, as you will see, are surprisingly relevant now, in December of 2024!

At the Fascist Flee(ce) Market

The caricature by Yu.Ganf from the combined issue №47-48 of “Krokodil” from December 1944. It sums up the departing year in humorous detail, accompanied by a longer text with a month-by-month blow, which are translated below!

Let us admire the caricature in all its Bruegelesque detail, starting with the upper left corner.
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100 Year Anniversary of the Soviet Art Collective “Kukryniksy”

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KUKRYNIKSY is 100 Years!

We present the material from the series of posts at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, celebrating the centenary of this illustrious art collective!

2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the day when the first cartoon of Mihail Vasilyevich Kupriyanov, Porfiry Nikitich Krylov and Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov was printed in the magazine “Komsomolia” with their common signature “Kukryniksy”.

👉 Mihail Vasilyevich Kupriyanov [October 8 (21), 1903 – November 11, 1991]
👉 Porfiry Nikitich Krylov [August 9 (22), 1902 – May 15, 1990]
👉 Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov [July 8 (21), 1903 – April 17, 2000]

The “y” at the end is the Russian plural form — that is, “Kukrynikses” — preserved for the authenticity of the collective’s name.

Mihail Kupriyanov was born in the city of Tetyushi, Kazan province of the Russian Empire, Porfiry Krylov — in Tula, Nikolai Sokolov — in the village of Tsaritsyno, Moscow province, and his entire childhood and youth were spent in Rybinsk.

Young talented artists would hardly have had the opportunity to meet if it were not for the “Higher Art and Technical Workshops” (VHUTEMAS). In 1922, Kupriyanov and Krylov began working together in the wall newspaper of VHUTEMAS under the signature of Kukry and Krykup.

At the same time, Sokolov, while still living in Rybinsk, put the signature “Niks” on his drawings. In 1924, he joined Kupriyanov and Krylov, and the three of them worked in the wall newspaper of VHUTEMAS as Kukryniksy.

Our team, to tell the truth, consists of four artists: Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov and Kukryniksy. All three of us treat the latter with great trepidation and care. What was created by the team could not have been mastered by any of us individually.
— Kukryniksy

The Exhibition in honour of KUKRYNIKSY

I do not know if there ever existed — and I do not think that in the field of caricature there could exist — such a “consubstantial and indivisible trinity” as our Kukryniksy.
— Maxim Gorky

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The gas pipeline in the American side, anno 1982

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The Gas Wars, of which we translated a documentary “The Great Gas Game” – An Excellent Documentary from Vesti and published a number of articles, like The Third Gas War: EU and US must pay for their “successes” in Ukraine, the saga with Navalny, and the ultimate blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline by the USA in order to freeze Germany out of competition, are just the recent manifistations. Lets us look at the events of 1982, and see how USA was opposing the gas pipeline from the USSR to the Western Europe.

We illustrate it through a series of caricatures and posts, which we originally published on out Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

Piped Piper of a Pipeline

Bill Mauldin’s caricature, published in the Chicago Sun-Times in 1982, shoes an issue that remains relevant for decades. It was drawn when the United States and Europe were at odds over the construction of the world’s first transcontinental gas pipeline Urengoy – Pomary – Uzhgorod.

The construction was colossal, the whole of the USSR contributing to it, with other interested countries taking part in it – Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR. At first, it was planned to pull the gas pipeline from Yamburg, but later the Urengoyskoye field was chosen.

The United States, as always, tried to prevent the implementation of a project beneficial to Europe. But back then Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy still had a voice and teeth. And the sanctions imposed by the United States were quickly lifted.

Yuzhniigiprogaz Design Institute from Donetsk became the general designer of the gas pipeline. It had previously performed brilliantly in similar, albeit more modest projects.

The construction was completed ahead of schedule. On July 9, 1983, labour collectives reported on the commissioning of the integrated gas treatment plant No. 9.

👉 4,451 kilometers of steel pipe had been stretched to solve the ambitious task of supplying natural gas from Siberian fields to consumers in the USSR and European countries.

👉 2.7 million tons of pipes were laid during the construction of the gas pipeline.

👉 120 kilometers were laid through permafrost, 360 kilometers through swamps.

Gas went to Europe on January 13, 1984, making the USSR the leader in its production and sale.

A lot of cartoons appeared on the topic, no less biting on the Soviet side.

The facility built by the whole country later became the basis of political speculation of the state education called “Ukraine”.

Source: Our Donbass – edited

«The unfeasible dream of the overseas pirate»

This is the title of the caricature by Yuri Cherepanov, published in the November issue №31 of the Soviet satirical magazine «Krokodil» in 1982.

The pirate in question, sailing under the US flag, has «Threats» and «Sanctions» written on his sails.

40 years ago, Western Europe managed to stand up for its own intetrests. Now… the USA simply blew up the completed Nord Stream.
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Last Year’s Snow Was Falling – Soviet New Year Animation, 1983

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A small New Year present to our readers, first published on our Telegram channel Beorn And The Shieldmaiden yesterday! ☃️

No New Year is complete without this plasticine animated film from 1983, directed by Alexander Tatarsky and voice acting by Stanislav Sadalsky.

The film plays on many Russian folk tales, but with unexpected twists. It reached a cult status after its first appearance on Central TV. The aphoristic remarks of the characters, full of absurd humour, turned into colloquial proverbs.


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Information Wars – An illustrative cut from the 2018 “The Sleepers 2” series

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In this cut from “The Sleepers 2”, a Russian TV spy series from 2018, a strategy behind turning everyday news into information “bombs” is unveiled in detail.

And, as an added bonus, everything is Vladimir Putin’s personal fault, as per usual.

Translation by Putinger’s Cat

Russia Running Out of Weapons 2.0 – A Documentary

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It was very surreal listening last year to Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech, standing there in a brown suite, giving a OUN/UPA Nazi collaborator greeting, and then proclaiming that Russia was taking chips out of dishwashers. So much so, that it prompted us, while working on the translation of “2 Years” – A Danish Underground Publication from 1943, to create a historical parallel caricature. At the same time, media was in a frenzy about how Russia, any second now will run out of missiles, or had actually already done so. It was also presenting a portent analogy to the media frenzy in the German-affiliated press in 1941, just as Nazi Germany invaded the USSR. I was saving the links to those publications back then, for a better time, which happened to be now…

Bizarre delusions of grandeur to go with self-seductive propaganda narratives seem to be inherent as Western imperialism once a century launches project “defeat and conquer Russia”.

German Nazism once displayed it big time, and EU and NATO now parrot their predecessor while openly aligning politically with Fascism.

Since the start of the SMO western MSM have consistently reported “Russia out of missiles”. A mantra that didn’t age very well and the humour is lost on no-one, when the articles are viewed in one take. We added some 1940s deja-vu, plus a little something for the full-spectrum experience.

Earplugs!

The video is also published on the “Beorn and The Shieldmaiden” Telegram channel.

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Western songs of the ’90s that codified the youth of the USSR – Pet Shop Boys and Scorpions

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Back in the early 90s I, just as lots of other youths in Russia and the post-Soviet space listened to a multitude of Western pop groups, like Scorpions, Pet shop boys, A-Ha. With my command of the English language becoming more solid, I was also starting to understand the lyrics – remember, there was no Internet to check the texts, so you got by with what you understood on your own.

And the understanding was that of a warm and fuzzy welcoming feeling – the West invitingly offering to become the best friend of Russia. Or so it seemed. Later, in the naughts, came other musical preferences, and Scorpions with PSB faded into the background.

Now, many decades later I re-listened to some of my favourites from that time. And, what is more important, re-watched the clips. It’s important to keep in mind that not all music of that time had a political undercurrent or agenda, in fact, the majority of the clips were perfectly innocent in this regard. And then there were occasional musical items that failed the smell test of time.

“Wind of Change” by Scorpions seemed like a nice peace-building work of musical art, a hand of friendship outstretch to the new Russia… until 2023, when they changed the lyrics to suite the new political agenda of pandering to Ukraine, with Ukraine becoming the new target for this song.

Pet Shop Boys has two clips that drew my attention with the modern knowledge of the past events. Watch closely “Go West”. I always thought of it as addressing the wider Soviet audience, luring people into the sweet embrace of the West (that with the hindsight turned out to be a sweet honey trap). Yet, watch closely the clip.

Pay attention to the blue-and-yellow “Ukrainian” colour scheme…

…the gesture of the OUN-UPA Bandera Nazi collaborators nonchalantly thrown at three places in the clip…

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