Distant rumblings—’Kill the Yankees’ a Mantra of Counterculture

The late Alexander Nepomnyashchy.

Editor’s Note: The arrival of raging capitalism in the former Soviet Union has meant (as usual) wealth for a handful and poverty and insecurity for the vast majority.  The unleashed forces of Social Darwinism have taken and continue to take an awful toll.  Not surprisingly, the Russian nouveau riche, the native breed of “carpetbaggers”, are now perceived by a new strain of Russian youth, a new counterculture, as the new “Ugly American”—a label that depicts both the marauding American business executive (and his underlings, the meddling diplomats, armies and mercenaries doing the bidding for the global rich), and the local native associated corporadoes.  This disenfranchised, embittered youth have embraced the refrain heard in so many foreign lands—from the Philippines to Nicaragua, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia and so many others— for more than a hundred years, “Fuera Yanquis!” Or, as some homegrown rock bands are putting it, “Kill the Yankees.” Incidentally, and this bears repeating, even among fierce nationalists, there is no real hatred for the American people as such, only their government and globetrotting business elites. Most youth around the world, when not poisoned by invidious ideologies, are naturally peace-loving. Murderous hate, as the famous lyric from the operetta South Pacific reminds us, has “Got to Be Carefully Taught.”—PG

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

Alexander Tarasov
‘Kill the Yankees’ a Mantra of Counterculture

If you believe what you see on television, no songs of protest are being sung in today’s Russia.

But that’s a false impression. In the hungry, penniless provinces, where social, property and class contradictions are all the more obvious than in Moscow, a particular world, a particular youth culture has evolved, one opposed not only to the present political regime, but also to the “culture” that regime endorses. This youth has created its own culture, including its own music. They have their idols, groups like Che Dance, Mental Depression, AK-47 and others that are never on the hit parades because of the openly subversive content of their songs. That’s understandable; what sane DJ would dare play, say, a song by the group Ilich Ramirez Sanchez with the refrain, “I’d rip Chubais’ balls off”? (Ilich Ramirez Sanchez is the well-known terrorist “Carlos” who is doing a life sentence in a French prison.)

But most popular of all was the late Alexander Nepomnyashchy, a rock singer and one of the leaders of the “new left” organization Violet International. This is a unique phenomenon. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of adolescents (and not just adolescents) throughout the country are crazy about his songs, which have never been played on radio or television.

Nepomnyashchy combines in his music the Russian national tradition with the traditions of Western rock (creating a kind of country-rock). Nepomnyashchy is one of two Russian rock musicians who perform true, unsimplified reggae based on poetry in Russian (“All Who Love Babylon,” “Ja Won’t Leave Us”). The second person who performs true Russian reggae is Umka, the living legend of the Soviet hippies, also totally ignored by the mass media. Umka also hates the new “masters of life.” The essence of market reforms that have taken place in this country are expressed in one brilliant line: “Take the pie with the nails on the shelf – sink your teeth into it” (“I was with my people”).

But the main thing Nepomnyashchy offers is not so much his music, but his lyrics. Here are words from his “Kill the Yankees” (“Ubei Yanki”):

Burn the shop with the American shit!

Advertise the hard-currency store with a brick!

Blow up with a grenade their pretty Chevrolet!

Draw a hammer and sickle on their advertising logo!

Kill the Yankees!

And all who love the Yankees!

This is one of Nepomnyashchy’s most popular songs; thousands in Russia know it by heart.

They stuffed the Stars and Stripes in the john.

There’s no future – there’s Russian punk rock.

Feed the yuppie with “Pedigree Pal” kasha –

And add a little lead, so he doesn’t run away!

Kill the Yankees!

And all who love the Yankees!

This isn’t so much nationalism as it is a “classical approach.” Yankees (and all who love the Yankees) represent the world of the sated, rich, satisfied, the world of the New Russians, managers, businessmen, bureaucrats. Nepomnyashchy stands on the other side of the barricades, with the poor, the hungry, the disenfranchised, regardless of their nationality or the color of their skin:

Jello Biafra is Russian, born in Moscow,

Kurt Cobain is Russian too, also born in Moscow,

Jim Morrison is Russian, and born in Moscow,

Jimi Hendrix is Russian, born in Moscow.

Kill the Yankees!

These lyrics were printed immediately in several newspapers of the “new left” and even in a radical Komsomol newspaper called Bumbarash-2017. At Nepomnyashchy’s concerts, the audience sings “Kills the Yankees” in unison, as a choir, standing.

The Voronezh “new left” newspaper Mass Protests published the text of another Nepomnyashchy song entitled “All Who Love Babylon”:

Buy Tampax tampons,

Chew Spearmint gum,

Eat a Snickers bar,

Drink Hershey’s –

No matter what, a bullet will be found for you.

No matter what, a bullet will be found for you …

Have a Barbie doll,

Live on planet Reebok,

Smoke Camel cigarettes,

Wash your hair with Procter & Gamble.

No matter what, a bullet will be found for you …

Live in concrete prisons,

Chop up the wood for them,

Save up all the money you can

For a long, well-fed retirement –

No matter what, a bullet will be found for you.

Nepomnyashchy, Che Dance and Nick Rock-n-Roll serve as substitutes for those dissatisfied with former rock idols: Andrei Makarevich, Boris Grebenshchikov and Konstantin Kinchev. The young rebels disdain them, call them “well-fed prostitutes.” Makarevich is especially scorned for his TV cooking show, “Smak.” As one 15-year-old girl from the town of Kalachinsk in Siberia said in an interview, “It’s the same as if Jesus Christ climbed down off the cross to advertise women’s bras and panties. You think that after that there would be even one Christian left on Earth?”

That Nepomnyashchy is wildly popular in the provinces doesn’t mean no one in Moscow knows him. During the war in the Balkans, a group of youths besieged and threw everything they could at the U.S. Embassy; many people printed leaflets with the text of Nepomnyashchy’s “Kill the Yankees” and brought them to the embassy. Next time, they might bring his “Counterculture Blues”:

Behind the scenes, everything’s going according to plan:

For example, the bombing – and the baby will die before morning.

You can’t fight it, it’s fate: The F-16 has taken off with its cargo.

Uncle Scrooge has made his profit, the general has calculated the coordinates,

The Mason’s got his apron and compass, and the wing flashes by as a black shadow –

With the mouse next to the screen, it’s reached “Level 5,”

Mister Architect, kind Prince of this World –

And figures are running around. Except those who don’t want to run …

These kids also have their own rock festival, “Oskolskaya Lira,” based in Stary Oskol. At it, they sing true songs of protest, true political rock. No television program or major newspaper has covered the festival. But those who listen to Nepomnyashchy and come to the festival don’t read Izvestia or Moskovsky Komsomelets. They have their own world, their own newspapers.

They believe the future belongs to them. They believe the day will come when they will kill live Yankees – and all those who love them.

[This is a repost of an essay originally run on April 26, 2000.]

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR (partial portrait)

A. Tarasov

The first thing that must be understood about A. Tarasov is that he can’t be easily understood. Protean in his output and interests, a polymath ranging over a number of disciplines, the only thing for certain is that he abhors the current global status quo, is not happy with Putin, and has little patience with anarchists and Neofascist nationalists—a powerful strain in modern Russia. The Wikipedia entry offers the following facts:

Alexander Nikolaevich Tarasov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Тара́сов, born March 8, 1958 in Moscow) is a Soviet and Russian left-wing sociologist, politologist, culturologist, publicist, writer and philosopher. Up until the beginning of the 21st century he referred to himself as a Post-Marxist[1][2] alongside István Mészáros and a number of Yugoslav Marxist philosophers who belonged to Praxis School and emigrated to London. Since in the 21st century the term Post-Marxism has been appropriated by Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and their followers, Alexander Tarasov (together with the above mentioned István Mészáros and Yugoslav philosophers) stopped referring to himself as a Post-Marxist.

Tarasov has paid a high price for his iconoclasm. In the 1970s —after founding a new radical underground group called the Party of New Communists, later “Neo-Communist Party of the Soviet Union” (NCPSU), he was imprisoned for over a year by the KGB and subjected to harsh treatment, including beatings and chemical injections that severely affected his health to this day. When “perestroika” started, he soon firmly positioned himself as a professional sociologist and politologist.  Tarasov has penned 1030 publications in sociology (mainly on youth studies[6] , education issues and conflict resolution); politology[7] (current politics, political radicalism in Russia and abroad, mass social movements); history (history[8] and theory of revolutionary movement[9] and guerrilla warfare); culturology[10][11] (popular culture issues, intercultural and inter-civilization contradictions); economics (comparative research). He is also a literary and movie critic (modern literature and cinema, popular culture and politics, history and theory of the cinematography of the 1960s and 1970s). He has been the first to study and describe Nazi-skinhead subculture in Russia.[12][13][14][15] A.Tarasov is the author of the first profound research on the influence of far-right ideas and organizations on the subculture of football fans in Russia[16] (November 2009 – January 2010).

In 2008, neo-Nazis have included A.Tarasov into the list of their enemies who must be physically exterminated. The list was published on radical right-wing sites.[17][18] In 2011, Russian pro-Kremlin group “Nashi” named Tarasov among “168 most loathsome enemies” of this group, of Vasily Yakemenko (group’s leader) and of Vladimir Putin’s regime.[19]

Tarasov is known among Russian anarchists as their consistent critic, first – of the practice of anarchism (as fruitless and unpromising), and partially of the theory (as outdated and unscientific).[20][21][22] Tarasov’s criticism has caused open animosity towards him among anarchists.

Tarasov’s reaction to 2011–2012 Russian protests was negative. He criticized the protests from the left, considering them to be the movement of petit bourgeoisie and “consumers’ rebellion” alien to the goals and objectives of left-wing forces in Russia and irrelevant to the revolutionary struggle against capitalism.
(Summary by P. Greanville)

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ADDENDUM

How is this trend being seen by the Western media? Here’s an excerpt from TIME (World) edition:

Rockers of the World Unite!

By YURI ZARAKHOVICH Ivanovo

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,97844,00.html#ixzz2AXLhR0fb

“Kill the Yankee! And all who love the Yankee!” The shrill, hysterical, mawkish voice belting out these lyrics spells out just how the enemy is to be handled: “Burn the kiosk with the American sh–! Advertise their hard-currency stores with a brick! Scratch on the billboards the word ‘pr—‘! Stuff the Stars and Stripes in the latrine! Kill the Yankee! Kill the Yankee!”

Alexander Nepomnyashchy, 32, the author of these exhilarating lyrics, strikes a chord with his audience. He is one of the best know exponents of a new trend in Russian rock: anti-American pop. Nepomnyashchy hails from Ivanovo, a depressed regional center 288 kilometers southwest of Moscow. Once famous for its textile production, Ivanovo was never particularly prosperous, even when it worked to capacity. Now that only some 30% of its industries function, Ivanovo has the look of a dying city. Textile workers mostly get paid in kind. “Will swap three kilometers of calico for a one-room apartment,” runs a typical add in a local daily…(Feb 2, 2001)

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,97844,00.html#ixzz2AXKqq9aV

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