Going Positive

In a rare interview, Yuri Shevchuk speaks to the St. Petersburg Times about protest and optimism.

By Sergey Chernov

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: March 6, 2013 (Issue # 1749)

Sergey Chernov / spt Yuri Shevchuk in his St. Petersburg recording studio last Friday.

Yuri Shevchuk and his band DDT, a leading force during the Russian rock revolution of the late 1980s and early 1990s, still pack the stadiums today, despite being effectively banned from major television channels due to Shevchuk’s uncompromising stance and his involvement in political and social protest.

During the past few years, Shevchuk has participated in the anti-Kremlin Dissenters’ March, campaigned to save St. Petersburg’s UNESCO-protected skyline and the Khimki Forest near Moscow from state-backed developers, spoken on behalf of political prisoners, and famously confronted Vladimir Putin about the lack of civic freedoms in Russia during a televised meeting with arts and entertainment celebrities.

In the meantime, DDT has put together a bombastic stadium concert set called “Otherwise,” and has performed 80 shows across Russia and abroad over the past 15 months.

Shevchuk spoke to The St. Petersburg Times at his recording studio last Friday.

Q: The past year has seen a renewed interest in your work, both at home and abroad, prompting some to say that Russia is changing, not unlike perestroika in the 1980s. What do you think about this?

A: Public interest in rock music exploded during perestroika because it was on the cutting edge of all the issues. It sang about all those topics that were then simply exploding in Russia, no matter whether they were social, moral or ethical. Rock and roll is a bold musical form and it spoke about all these conflicts. The guys — Alexander Bashlachov, Boris Grebenshchikov, Viktor Tsoi, the legendary Mike Naumenko and many others — all sang about this honestly and sincerely, and it was interesting for everybody to hear. And the music was sufficiently cliche-free; there was something fresh in Russian rock at the time. It was everything. And there was a movement, a rock movement, after all.

Much has been said and written about the rock movement in the West in the years between 1968 and 1970, during the Paris Spring and the student movement against the Vietnam War in the U.S. There were powerful explosions of youth protest: The hippie movement and, a little earlier, the beat movement in the U.S. In London, too, the walls shook from large-scale hippie events. That all happened. It happened here, too, albeit a bit later, as usual. But what happened here was no less cool. There was an explosion of ‘passionarity’ in the country — a fresh breeze was blowing through people’s heads, and everybody was hungry for some sort of radiant future. The country was on the rise, but it ended as it always does — in depression — the same old same old. The rock movement is over; it doesn’t exist anymore, in my view. And on the one hand, rock music has become mainstream, like jazz. On the other, it still hasn’t lost all of its relevance, but it has failed to become the headline to everything that happens in the country. It has even become somewhat elitist — no longer the people’s music it was when any band describing themselves as “rock” had stadiums [full of people] on their feet in the early 1990s. That no longer exists now, but that’s okay.

Q: Rock bands used to express what everybody felt and thought about at the time. Why do you think this is no longer the case?

A: Many people have escaped into extreme individualism and shielded themselves from the world — from the streets where rock-and-roll grew up — with money and with cars. This is understandable. People have started to make money; they have a certain amount of material security, fame and popularity. I understand this completely. But if I listen to Russian rappers, they have this connection to the street, to the world, to the life of some guy wandering the streets and not knowing what tomorrow will bring, because he doesn’t believe in this “tomorrow,” because he has no social elevators, no prospects — especially in some of the working-class neighborhoods. The only thing he can be part of is some little gang, that’s it. And this is what rappers sing about: the perennial problems of the man from the streets, the teenager, the working stiff. Rap is much more democratic than rock-and-roll. Rap has less need for all those tons of equipment, lights and sound — all that “showbiz.”

Everything flows. This power, this spirit, it lives where it wills. Something is fading away. At one time jazz was extremely revolutionary and was not seen as mainstream. What can you do about this?

Q: It was more clear-cut during Soviet times: You either supported the authorities or listened to rock music. It changed in the 2000s, when Putin received Paul McCartney at the Kremlin, while a top official boasted of having a complete set of Beatles albums on vinyl. The borders have blurred, haven’t they?

A: It’s a nebulous time, so what? Remember the story of Vladimir Vysotsky. After you’ve buried a great man, you can do whatever you want with him, right? They filed down his teeth and claws, and turned him into someone cute and furry. His birthday is celebrated every year and it is mostly his fun, satirical songs that are performed. They are turning him into a poster-boy for the establishment. Vysotsky’s work and life, as well as many of his fans, do resist this, for sure. It’s the same with rock-and-roll; they are turning it into sort of relic of the past. But rock-and-roll is still alive. Many talk about its death, by the way, saying that it’s not so relevant, so sharp-toothed or sharp-clawed. Certainly there has been a bit of this, especially in the 2000s.

But a new, younger generation has come of age: They are more active and I believe in them. They’ve again returned to honest songs; to socially engaged, topical songs. And the rappers don’t let you relax, either. That’s normal.

Q: Speaking of the younger generation, the Kremlin tried to corrupt it by setting up the Nashi movement and the Seliger youth camp, didn’t they?

A: But they’re always trying to build some new Komsomol [the Communist Union of Youth in the U.S.S.R.]. They try to live in the past, try to unite young people, but once again, only on this superficial level because there’s no love there. No real love.

I don’t believe in it, in these organizations. They are totally for show; they do what they do for money and the promise of la dolce vita, for the ascension of these Seliger youth in social elevators to a bureaucratic heaven. And these boys and girls drool over it because they have nothing ahead of them in their small towns near Moscow, that’s for sure. What are they going to be? The third assistant to a fifth deputy or minister? I experienced this with the Komsomol, from which I was expelled with a bang back in the day.

It was the same thing back then. When I was in college, at school, the loudmouths and the kids hungry for perks went into the Komsomol. But where is it now? It’s gone. These organizations will disappear, too, because the people are getting wiser. And life is much more serious and profound than all these organizations. Recently, I read the charters of the Hitler Youth and Nashi on the web and they’re quite similar. Some lines are identical, in fact. “Motherland,” “Our dear president,” “Together we’ll build” — it all sounds the same. Yeah, we’ve been there and done that.

Q: What do you feel about what’s happening in Russia now? Some people feel depressed about the situation.

A: Many people are depressed. I understand them incredibly well, for sure. It’s the intelligent people who want to live in an enlightened country and see that reactionism is setting in. Many people are depressed. But I’ll say it again: We don’t give up. They won’t take us so easily. No way. We’ve been around the block and have seen many things. We’ve outlived all sorts of monarchies and social systems. The [current powers-that-be] can’t scare us that much. But it’s a long process. It’s not like bleaching your hair. I understand now, like many other people, that it’ll take decades upon decades to build an enlightened Russia.

Q: Two years ago, you posed questions about freedoms of speech and the right to assembly to then-Prime Minister Putin during his meeting with artists, but things have only grown worse since then. What do you think about this now?

A: But Putin himself was talking differently then. People continue to go online [to watch the video of our exchange] and it has gotten simply millions of hits. I think I did expose some lies, and as a result, the truth surfaced. [Putin] said one thing, but in life something else has happened. There’s an example for you, something to think about; it’s all clear. Something positive happened. I tried to ask the questions that concerned me as best as I could, though maybe not all of them.

The atmosphere at that meeting was quite gloomy. Thank God, I managed to ask at least some questions. It was gloomy because there were numerous guards who stood around us, who viewers didn’t see, with these steely gazes that bored right through you at every word you said. [Neither did they see] those frightened journalists from the Kremlin press pool, who giggled merrily at his every joke, like lackeys. And my colleagues, who were simply scared to death and looked as if they wanted to say, “When will he shut up? My God, they’re going to shoot us all now and strip us of our titles, awards and salaries.”

For some reason, this atmosphere affected even Putin himself. He was fiddling with a cup of tea, and his hands even trembled. I’ve only ever experienced a gloomier atmosphere at funerals. It was just icy, I don’t know why. Fear gripped the whole table during this conversation.

Q: It has been a year since the members of Pussy Riot were arrested. You took part in their support concert last year. Did you expect they would be sentenced to real prison terms?

A: Sure, I had no doubt about it. [The authorities] acted like hacks again. They decided to stage a public punishment and did it in an uncivilized way. And it turned out that this is not 21st-century Russia, but Nicholas II’s Russia, with cudgels, lashes and running the gauntlet — all those medieval things we love so much. But nevertheless I thought [the sentence] would not be so harsh. Sadly, though, the powers-that-be lack a liberal arts education. They all act like petty thugs. You were picked on, so take what you’ve got coming. They failed to become like Mahatma Gandhi, whom Putin praised once upon a time.

They hand out prison sentences to scare everybody, to keep people from yapping. It’s a typical lash-and-whip system to frighten people. Well, you can scare people for a long time, but there’s no future in it. This has been proven many times in human history. People just get angrier and that’s all. They respond to violence with violence, eventually. Nobody wants this in our country. It’s a huge mistake. A geopolitical mistake, I believe.

Q: How do you see DDT in Russia now?

A: I am still a restless guy at fifty-something. I haven’t lost my interest. I am interested in thinking about the world and about life. I am interested in looking at man, contemplating him, say, at this given time, at this given minute or second of life in this country, in Russia, and that is why the songs still get written. We’ve put together a set entitled “Otherwise.” It’s a very serious show. We tried to do it to a European level of quality, and many people say we’ve pulled it off.

But I am thinking about a different set now. I don’t want something so heavy, so philosophical, but rather something light, because living in Russia is getting more complicated, and more difficult. Speaking of music, in my view there are huge numbers of uncreative people, hacks, that is, sitting in the State Duma and the government, and like hacks they pass laws that absolutely nobody needs. The recent series of laws, from 2012, are totally laws [that have been] written by hacks. I understand they won’t last long, but all this endless lip-synching, so that when anyone opens their mouths all they can do is sing the praises of the past, represents a fear of the future — a deadly fear. It has made me recall the old expression, “cognitive dissonance.” The heads of this gray herd that rules over us are all filled with this endless cognitive dissonance.

That’s why I want to do something like I did back in 1985, when I wrote a very fun set called “Time.” I “buried” [party official] Ivan Ivanych there back in the day, and the set was filled with really fun songs, life-affirming songs. I’ve come now to this understanding of our time: What we need now is total, insane positivity! Because everything is so dark, gloomy and grey in this country that you need to grin, sneer and smile at this entire abyss and show it the middle finger: “Fuck! You can’t grab us by the throat just like that, no way.” That’s what I am trying to write now. I simply want some great melodies and fun, mischievous, socially engaged songs, and that’s it. That’s how I feel.

You have to be a colossal optimist in Russia not to be devoured by the bureaucracy, booze, traffic cops on the roads and all this crap. You have to be a total, uncontrollable positivist.

You can be melancholic in the West. Things are fine as they are in Europe, and you can become sad and make a film about the delicate psychology of a gay man or someone else, dig around in your childhood, recall Uncle Freud… But here in Russia there is such a battle going on, such a knock-down-drag-out fight — in every kitchen, in every mind — that we just don’t have time for such nuances.

Our country is facing bigger and more meaningful things. Where are we headed? Either we’ll follow the Fuehrer who might emerge after this semi-rotten Weimar Republic, this country simply sagging under the weight of thieves who warp people’s brains in order to stay in power, or we’ll start building an enlightened Russia and getting rid of the endless lice. That’s the main thing, I think.

You have to be convinced and in a positive mood. Not pop, poster-style positivity, but the hard-earned kind. The kind we had in the 1980s. It was a bit naive, because we thought, “Oh, democracy… Rivers of milk and honey will flow, and manna will rain down from the heavens, and everybody will be sated.” But nothing came out of it. It was a downer, an awful, metaphysical downer.

We and the young people have to get ourselves out of this downer. So we work with the young people and try to tell them about this. “Hey guys: Read, think, ask questions!” Ask yourself at least one question, kiddo, and try to answer it. Once you start untangling Ariadne’s thread, you’ll get out of this maze in the end. That is, if you start asking yourself questions, rather than dumbly chewing the bubble gum they feed you. That’s what we’re about now.

DDT will perform at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 7 as part of the Chart Dozen festival alongside Korol i Shut, Spleen, Lumen and Lyapis Trubetskoy at Yubileiny Sports Complex, 18 Prospekt Dobrolyubova. M: Sportivnaya. Tel. 498 6033.