Yesterday I wrote about a video, showing a choir of brainwashed children led by the Russian MP Anna Kuvychko in a performance of the song Uncle Vova, We’re With You.
The stridently militarist song features, among other outrages, a promise to follow Putin on a re-conquest of Alaska and the Baltics.
Predictably, my Anglophone readers, brought up in vestigial civilisation and untouched by Putin’s fascistic propaganda, reacted with revulsion. But how did the Russians react?
Back to YouTube I went, expecting listeners’ comments to confirm my worst suspicions about the devastating effects of totalitarian propaganda. To my pleasant surprise, however, there wasn’t a single even mildly approving comment.
Either the 84 per cent who supposedly support Putin don’t watch such videos or they don’t comment on them. Or, as is distinctly possible, the figure is bogus.
The Russophones among you are welcome to read the comments for themselves. For the rest, here’s my translation off the top, with no deletions or editing, and only a few parenthetical comments when a clarification may be necessary. I apologise for the language, which is at times robust. But then so are the emotions.
“Very deep. Parliamentary language is capable of inhuman efforts to penetrate the most profound depths…”
“Uncle Vova won’t bat an eye when the time comes. Like with the storming of that Beslan school.” [A reference to 1 September 2004, when a group of Chechen militants took a school hostage. On Putin’s orders, special troops stormed the school using flamethrowers and killing 385 hostages, most of them children.]
“Even during the late USSR there was nothing like that…”
“What a diabolical f***-up, Lord…”
“For Putin, for Sechin, for Rotenberg! Not a step backwards!” [Igor Sechin is chairman of Rosneft and de facto deputy to Putin. Rotenberg brothers are Putin’s billionaire cronies.]
“Loony bin.”
“These loudmouths are rearing dummies for wars…”
“A cunning, disgusting creature who looks like the lowest prostitute is infecting with her patriotic syphilis the brains of young generations for centuries ahead…”
“A f***ed-up country! No Hitler could even dream of this. Heil Vova! SHAME!”
“The most hellish hell! Slavic North Korea!”
“We used to have a cult of personality. Now we have a cult of scum.”
“More hell!!!”
“A prison of a nation is glorifying the head screw… The population is being set up for porridge and glorification of a wonderful prison regime and its warden. Go f*** yourselves.”
“Young cannon fodder is ready to croak for the palaces and ambitions of a f***ed-up 65-year-old dwarf.”
“F***ing shame!”
“I thought nothing would surprise me…, but this… This isn’t even madness, this is a crime committed by the authors of this song and the idiot deputy who wants to kiss a certain part of ‘Uncle Vova’s’ anatomy… What are they doing to the children???”
“F***ing North Korea!”
“You go and die, while Uncle Vova will look on from his bunker.”
“Degenerate Putinjugend”
“This is North Korea, Mark 2!”
“Impale the militarist imperialist aggressors!!! Funny how the slaves deify their masters.”
“Takes an effort to f*** children’s minds so… But what one wouldn’t do for full Deputy benefits”
“Children of camp guards have reared a new generation ready to perish in penury defending the tsar and his gang…”
“A question to these children’s parents: ‘How will you look them in the eye when they grow up?’”
“This Kuvychko creature, is she herself going to fight too?”
“All of this is disgusting… not to say TERRIFYING!”
“Anna Kuvychko is a slag and scum, Russia’s shame!”
“The rarest of s***s”
“Well, go on singing as you croak for Putler, Sechin and Rotenbergs!”
“Let’s die for Vova! Let’s die for offshore funds! Let’s all rot for ‘spirituality’, for Sechin, for Miller!” [Alexey Miller is chairman of Gazprom]
“Fresh cannon fodder for a ghoul’s fun”
“The work of madmen”
“The idiocy of the bald retard and his s***-faced horde is off the scale!!! It’s 100 years now that they’ve been “fighting and winning” for “the bright future”, while sinking deeper and deeper into vice and poverty. A herd of complete nonentities!”
“Didn’t see such drivel even under the commies.”
“Thank you. I’ve puked.”
“Stockholm syndrome!”
“Ha-ha, and we dare laugh at North Korean TV. But the f***-up is right here, under our noses, personified by a deputy off her rocker and children dumbed-down by propaganda. Off to the loony bin with this cretin, together with Uncle Vova. Send the children home, take their uniforms away, and give them textbooks.”
“Degenerates”
“Real believers should be in no doubt: this is Satanism.”
“This song would go down even better against the backdrop of yachts, palaces and Rotenbergs”
“Get the f*** away from the children, you political paedos!!! This is beyond crazy!”
“Takes rotten scum to indulge in such propaganda. In normal countries, children reach out for science, knowledge, discoveries – and here it’s all about laying down their lives for Uncle Vova.”
“It’s very rotten to draw children, who understand nothing, into this political prostitution”
“I was ashamed watching this…”
“Putinjugend in full bloom…”
“And Mrs Kuvychko’s own children, are they singing there too? Or do they go to school in London and America and have no time to die for Putin?”
“Putlerjugend in all its beauty!!!”
“An attempt to rear today’s Putinjugend”
“Uncle Vova, c***sucker”
And so forth, ad infinitum. To be fair, many other patriotic videos attract very different comments from Russians. But I was struck by the unanimity of these. Perhaps there’s hope for the Russians yet (there’s none for our own useful idiots).