Many people know the expression: "When guns speak, the muses are silent." His rightness is relative. So, in the Leningrad blockade, the muses were not silent. On the contrary, the poems of Olga Bergholz and Nikolai Tikhonov helped people survive, gave faith in victory.
And yet, quite often, those poems and songs that are born directly in the thick of things are doomed to failure — too much hasty and emotional in them. And, on the contrary, when an event becomes history, gradually receding into the past, there is a possibility of the birth of authentic poetic and musical masterpieces. The same happened with the songs about the civil war - some of them were born later than the events described.
In 1924, the Estonian poet Nikolai Kool published a poem “Death of a Komsomol Member” in one of the newspapers — a simple story about the death of a young Red Army man during reconnaissance and his farewell to a faithful horse. In the processing of the composer Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov turned song "There, across the river ..."
Kool, you're wrong! ...
In 2000, a sensation struck. On the pages of the Parliamentary newspaper, journalist Vitaly Aprelkov argued that Kool only redid the Cossack song of 1905, "Behind the Lyaokhe River", dedicated to one of the battles of the Russo-Japanese War, known as "the raid on Yingkou." And, they say, it has nothing to do with songs about the civil war.
However, it is possible that this statement was purely opportunistic in nature and pursued the goal of popularizing and reviving the Cossack movement in the country. So the song "Beyond the Liaohe River" can be just a clever fake.
Mikhail Svetlov - author of the poem "Grenada", became a popular song, especially thanks to the bard Viktor Berkovsky. Uncomplicated, in general, the story of the Ukrainian lad, who gave his life for a foreign country, still touches.
Poems were before
The funny thing is that backdating poems became associated with the Spanish Civil War, whereas it began after more than ten years later. And Svetlov wrote not about the state of Grenada, but about the Spanish province of Granada.
Songs about the civil war have absorbed and partial echoes. This is the poem by Demyan Bedniy (Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov) "Provody", written in the year 1918, crucial for the country. As a song, it is more known in the first line - "How my mother dear to me".
Even negros are applauding! ...
One interesting fact. When the famous bard Oleg Mityaev with then accompanist Konstantin Tarasov gave a tour in South Africa and showed the local public a few truly Russian songs, among them was the song "Provody". The experiment was, of course, risky - that the Negroes songs about the civil war in Russia? It is not customary for the South African residents to applaud during the performance, but for this song they made an exception, which is perfectly audible on the phonogram. So, apparently, they were imbued with history, to them, in general, strange and incomprehensible - how the family escorted the young Red Army man to the front. However, apparently, the point is not so much in the content as in the rhythm and emotions caused by it.
"Either, brothers, love" - a song traditionally considered to be Cossack. The Cossacks sought in the fire of revolution and fratricidal clashes a special, “third” path.
Time application
So it turned out that one historical event in this song was layered on another. The reason for the creation of the song was the battle of Colonel Matthew Platov with the vastly superior forces of the Turks in 1774. Blood was spilled on the river Kallah (translated into Russian - the Great Dirt). After waiting for reinforcements, the Cossacks rejected the enemy.
Interestingly, the lines of the final verse, where it is sung that "the gin will burn, marry another," correspond exactly to the historical truth. Platov's friend, Pavel Kirsanov, died in battle. His widow subsequently went out precisely for Platov, for the "other."
But in the more famous version of the song, the Terek became the scene of action, and the cavalry of Budyonny and the white General Pavlov collided head-on. It happened in the 1920th year. True, the real battle was on another river - Manych. And, indeed, from that and from the other side there were about forty thousand who fought. Songs of the civil war are often accurate in detail.
One of the "iconic", as they like to express it now, songs about the civil war in Russia has become a song "In the valleys and in the hills". It tells about one of the final battles of the civil war in the Far East in 1922.
For many years in Vladivostok, the radio station "Pacific Ocean" was broadcasting, whose call signs were the melody of this song. And still at the central post office in Vladivostok, the watches ring this melody at the beginning of each new period of time.
Domestic history of the twentieth century still keeps a lot of mysteries. Presents them and songs ...
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