If the political situation in Russia changes and you are offered a job, will you return?
I have had this choice before in my life. It was in 1990. Until 1989, I lived in London, I felt great, I had a job in publishing and at the same time in television. And then the well-known director Vitya Kryukov appeared, who said: “I have now moved to the main Russian channel Rossiya, which is a progressive channel, and we need you.” And he made me an official offer to become the main music director of the Russian channel.
And then my adventure began. I left London, my wife stayed, I went to Moscow and started working in Shabolovka. I thought it was important and interesting to me as a professional. I wanted to make modern music TV on a state-run channel and I fell in love with it.
Whether I regret it or not is a difficult question. Since I am still physically and mentally in good shape, if I were suddenly offered a large and super interesting job in post-Putin Russia, I do not rule out that I would move back, at least temporarily.
Why do you think myths and fantasies about the Soviet Union are so widespread among young people who have never lived in the USSR? What attracts them so much? What prevents young people from looking into the future?
The popularity of the Soviet Union among young people is completely natural. The idea of this comes from two sources. One of them is quite vague, shrouded in fog – these are the stories of parents, grandparents. I think that sensible youth should be critical of what their ancestors said. But still, ancestors have some influence. And almost everyone is nostalgic for the Soviet Union. The second and much stronger source is Soviet culture. How do they even know what life was like in the USSR? In 1973, they did not watch the TV program “Vremja”. And they don’t know what Komsomol meetings are. But they’ve seen “Hand of Diamonds” twenty times or “Gentlemen of Fortune” and all those “Service novels”. The old Soviet films, many of which were great, are impressive. And young people think that life was like that in the Soviet Union. That the people were so warm, the policemen so polite. And they have an idealized image of the Soviet Union. Even if we talk about the Soviet songs, which we as hippies and punks despised, it cannot be denied that they were composed by very powerful composers. I’m not even talking about Shostakovich and Dunaevsky, but about the songs I listened to on the radio stations in the kitchen when I came home from school. Songs by Pakhmutova, Ostrovsky, Feltsman – they had wonderful melodies. Even if the lyrics are insane, thanks to Pakhmutova’s more powerful melody, the song leaves an impression and gets stuck in the brain. I think that this is the main reason why young people have such a naive idealistic attitude towards the USSR. Another, perhaps more important, reason is that young people see what is happening in Russia now, and they categorically do not like it. And there are not many ways out of it. It is one thing to get away from the horrors of Russia; the other is to go back to the USSR, building it again.
But they don’t understand that “Gulag” is always added to the delicious “Plombira” ice cream. It refers to the “Gulag” as a metaphor for a general captive society and fear.
No, they don’t understand. Even I didn’t understand it. I lived in the USSR until 1991, that is, until I was 36 years old. I had the opportunity to leave. But I refused, because I was interested in living in that USSR. Of course, I led a purely informal lifestyle, I was a kind of cultural underground worker, but it was surprisingly interesting. There were talented people around – Makarevich, Grebenshchikov, Tsoi, Bashlyachov, Kuryokhin. It was amazing company and had incredible adventures. Many young people lived very full lives in the big cities. We had little interest in politics. As for the “Gulag”, the vast majority managed to avoid it. If it had been Stalin’s time, I don’t think we would have had that freedom, and it is very possible that we would have ended up in the ‘Gulag’. However, during the period of Brezhnev’s stagnation, the risk of falling into the “Gulag” was small – it affected only very sharp anti-Soviet political activists. Society was undeniably not free. When it came to fear, a lot depended on specific people. There are people who are shy, repressed, for whom fear is a basic instinct. To be honest, I’ve never been afraid of anything. I’ve always been an idiot – carefree, fearless, and somehow I’ve been somewhat lucky. On the other hand, I probably don’t do really risky things either in politics against the Soviet Union or in business. I wasn’t interested.
About the movie “Summer” and about Coju. How much do you agree with the plot and the movie as a whole?
I had a little bit to do with the making of this movie. I was one of those to whom Kirill Serebrennikov sent the script. I’m in this movie, I was hosting a house party there, I was hosting a Q&A, but then I connected with Mike somewhere…
After reading the script, I told Kirill that this is complete nonsense, that I have never said anything like that – and I am attributed with all kinds of speeches there, that I allegedly said to Mike: “Mike, you need to go to America, make a career in America, sing in English” , and so on—it was just ridiculous.
But there were other, more serious mistakes. However, despite the fact that the film contains a lot of perfect garbage, I, unlike many who vilify it horribly, reacted loyally to his film.
Only because I saw this movie in a completely different way. I didn’t see it as a biopic. I saw it as a “La La Land” movie. This is a “La La Land” movie about free life in a free country. If you see it like that, then there are no special complaints against this film. I believe that this film is honest, but not in the biographical details. It is a film in a different way – it expresses the spirit of the time.
Mizulina junior phenomenon. What is it?
Mizulina Jr. is a professional con artist, and now there are quite a few of them. This is bad news, of course, and it is one of the features that sets Putin’s Russia apart from the Soviet Union, even for the worse. Under Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, there were informers, fraudsters and full-time KGB officers under cover. There were wannabes, anonymous people, and unwittingly there were many scammers. I knew several. These were young guys who got busted for something, say, speculation with records. They were taken and invited to an interview with the KGB. And there was a standard scheme. They were told: “You are speculating, but do you know how many years you will be in prison? But we are ready to forgive you everything, and you will not even be expelled from the institute, but please write us reports! Tell me about the mood among the students!”
And there were a huge number of such informants, tens if not hundreds of thousands. But it was embarrassing. They all disguised themselves, they all categorically did not want anyone to know about it. I knew a guy from the province. He studied at some prestigious technical university and was caught speculating in music records. He jumped out of the dorm window. Such was the attitude towards these things during the time of Brezhnev and Andropov. And now it is even darker – Pavliks Morozov accuses everything and anything – his parents, relatives, friends, acquaintances. I can’t put up with it, I’ve never faced anything like it before. This is the degradation of the whole society, even compared to what it was like in the not-so-beautiful Soviet times.
What do you think is keeping anti-war artists like Splin and DDT in Russia? Maybe it would be right if they moved abroad instead of continuing to pay taxes that go to the maintenance of the Russian army?
Here, history is complicated not only politically, but also humanly. For example, DDT is Shevchuk, who, of course, is against the war. Nevertheless, he cannot leave St. Petersburg for a long time, because he is responsible for a large group of musicians, as well as technical and administrative staff. It is insanely difficult to drag all this colossus abroad, to move them, to equip them to make a living. If we talk about groups, there is another subtle point. It often happens that there is no unity of opinion about what is happening in the group. For example, there is the former drummer of the group “Tequilajazzz”, who categorically supports all this fascism and does not want to go anywhere for ideological reasons. I don’t want to condemn anyone, except for those scoundrels who are now performing on the “Z Festival” stage for money – Vadim Samoilov, Sergej Galanin and, unfortunately, Garik Sukachev. There are people in Ukraine who are currently in a state of suffering between heaven and earth. I run out of censored words to describe those who support the war.
There are many people in Russia, including representatives of creative professions, who do not support the war, but also do not declare their position. The approximate estimate of irreversible losses is 150-200 thousand people. How many more people have to die and what has to happen for those people to have their say?
I’m afraid these terrible numbers don’t work. Putin is absolutely indifferent. For most people, it’s just an excuse to stick their head in some kind of mink cave, to disconnect from everything. For those people who feel like hostages, who worry, suffer, I think there is no significant difference – 150 or 300 thousand. Those who understand what is happening – they already understand, but nothing can be done. I do not believe that the Russian people can revolt. I don’t believe that our people will take to the streets. It doesn’t work that way because people are just oppressed. And when people are oppressed, flattened by fear and do not believe in change, it is impossible for this mass to somehow move upwards. There may be some exceptional cases, for example, when someone’s best friend or child has died, it can “scald” someone so much that they suddenly break the boundaries of silence. But the statistics of fifty, three hundred, five hundred or thousand deaths do not mean much. In order for the Russians to revolt, it must be hit on a personal level – so that they feel that war is suffering.
2023-09-02 02:15:24
#Artemijs #Troitskis #Russians #capable #revolting
