Russian War Songs III: Chechen War
Songs without known authors became part of popular folklore just months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with the invasion of Chechnya by the Russian Federation. In the midst of political chaos, music became a vehicle for collective expression, reflecting the despair, anger, and nostalgia of a society falling apart. This musical journey does not begin with war anthems, but with melodies that speak of everyday life and what was lost.
The post-Soviet era was one defined by strife. The collapse of a world superpower into poverty and crime, as well as the economic pillaging by Western capital and homegrown oligarchs, is something that has no equal in world history (although our American readers might soon find themselves in this position). What had been the imperial core of the Soviet Union, what is now the Russian Federation, would quickly be consumed by gang warfare, fighting between gangs and the government, and terror campaigns. This era would not only be the stage for ‘Gangster Capitalism’ but also one where Russia fought for its place as a world hegemon.
To this effect, the newly formed Russian Federation is eager to prove its enduring military might after the debacle of the Soviet-Afghan war. And despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union only months prior, the Russian Federation would invade Chechnya. The history between Russia and Chechnya is long and very much defined by the violence that Russia would inflict upon Chechnya. Most pointedly, the genocide of Chechens and Ingush under the Soviet Union in 1944. And so to massively condense a lot of political things that are important but are not music, Chechnya declared independence from the Russian Federation in 1991, after which Russia would unsuccessfully invade Chechnya in the first Chechen war.
My yard
One new music concept in this piece is the term Мой Двор (My Yard). Most of the songs found online will be attributed to it. However, it is not a single prolific singer-songwriter but a cultural term. To the best of my understanding Мой Двор is a catch-all for songs that have no known writer but have entered a sort of folk status. As such, these songs don’t have official titles, so I am picking the names for them that I have seen that I like best.
These circumstances are why I am starting this piece not with a war song, but a song from the band Kino, that being “Summer” on their Black Album. The song is deeply melancholic, with the chorus translated “I am waiting for an answer, there is no more hope, summer is ending soon, this”. I highly encourage the reader to listen to this song and find a translation to read, it is one of my favorite songs I found while researching this piece.
Though the lyric “And so the years will go by, and life will pass, and for the hundredth time the butterbrod will land butter side down” sounds funny when translated directly, it is a reflection of the hopelessness so pervasive in the culture at the time. Not only will nothing good ever happen again, but even small things will always go wrong. The small scale of the misfortune is not to show it as trivial, but rather how wrong everything is, that you will never catch a break, that you will never be lucky. This attitude is not only crucial to understanding the cultural backdrop of the war in Chechnya, but will prove to be especially poignant to an upcoming song.
Goodbyes outside Grozny
“Mozdok” is my favorite of all the songs I found during research for this piece. Ostensibly from the perspective of a soldier ending his mobilization, he bids farewell to a brother in arms with the slightly ominous phrase “we will not be seeing each other again”. He wishes his fellow soldier luck and life in the rest of his deployment, telling him to keep singing.
This leads into the chorus, with the narrator saying goodbye to Khankala. Khankala is a major Russian airfield in Chechnya, and the nerve center of the Russian forces in the region. The soldier is not saying goodbye to only Khankala, the place, but also to the military by extension. He finishes his goodbye by repeating what he has said to his fellow soldier, that never again will they see this place. Though if this song was (as I suspect) written during the first Chechen War, the narrator would be proven tragically wrong about that.
The next verse focuses on the VDV, the elite paratroopers of the Russian army. They go out in the night, as the narrator and his unit stay in the base playing songs from the Soviet Afghan War. The “Berets,” as the narrator calls them, lose men while on patrol, just like his own unit has. This brings the point of the verse into focus, whether you are a normal soldier or VDV, death is waiting to claim you.
Surviving Chechnya
“Kiss the Rails girls, I’m going home” describes the joy of the protagonist at having survived his time in Chechnya. The song opens with the singer rejoicing that he has served, or more accurately, that he has survived, his two years of service. He thinks of his mother and his girlfriend, happy to be able to see them again soon. This leads into the chorus, “Kiss the rails girls, I’m going home, Kiss the rails girls, I’m alive, I’m alive, The sun shines upon the rails, I’m going home, Kiss the rails girls, I’m alive, I’m alive“.
These soldiers would go years without hearing from their families that they were missed, and they knew that if they died, the army would not miss them either. The narrator thinks happily of returning home to his family, sharing wine and food. He imagines his mother saying to him that she didn’t sleep at night while he was gone. Imagination is all that these men on the front had, much like in the Soviet Afghan War, the average Russian did not think of Chechnya. They were living in a failed state, with not enough food and not enough fuel to go around.
Ultimately, the hope and joy that the narrator expresses is rendered tragic by the situations to which they were returning. They might be out of the war, but in the 1990s in Russia, you did not need to be in the war to be shot at.
Chechnya in flames
Perhaps best read as a spiritual successor to the previous two songs, “Second Afghan” reflects the hopelessness of Russian society. Told from the perspective of a man working in a conscription office, the narrator relays the story of a young man who comes in one day. The “grey-haired boy” begs to be sent back to Chechnya, much to the shock of everyone in there. The Colonel looks at the boy, asking him why he wants to go back. He calls Chechnya a “Second Afghan” and asks him what he is running from.
The response he gets is that the young man has nothing left to live for. He has seen the horrors of war and death, come out alive, but with nothing to go back to. He is all alone in the world, the woman he loves has fallen for a different man, but in Chechnya, he has work to do.
