I don't believe this !

[Applezotz]

This little gem,is a piece of history,from the "Glasnost" era.It's an attempt to make the Soviet national anthem,"hip" and "relavent" to the kids who were watching pirate transmissions of MTV in the 80s.It's one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS0Fc1MzzJ8

:roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:

[The Lone Groover]

...is just totally, totally, brilliantly funny.

It's like a Russian version of Band Aid. I think it should be called "Do They Know It's Crap(mas)".

Tonight thank God it's them instead of you.

All those Bono look-a-likes. Frightening. I particularly liked the fat soldier with the headphones, but freaky-hair-man on keyboard was good too.

Thanks for posting. I shall be passing this on.

[Terwilliger]

Imagine presenting a rockified version of the state song to those pickled old Communists. He'd have been lucky to have survived.

Still, I'm amazed that anyone in the Soviet Union was allowed to look like some of those people. I'd bet most of those "rockers" didn't think they'd ever be in that position.

[chlamor]

Holy shit that's hysterical.

Mother Russia must be crying with laughter at that.

[plasticwidow]

:roflmao:

...the word "cheesy" comes to mind. LOL .. funny LOL and I'm half Russian. :P
The original and, as far as I know, still intact Anthem, is very stirring and impressive. Unchanged as far as I know from the original. Thank you for sharing. :P

BTW .. what was that big pink fluffy floating thing going across the video? A rabbit? LOL

:roflmao:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Obviously that is the most popular pop singers of the time, along with a Red Army Chorus soloist (the guy with the operatic voice) and a traditional folk singer (the Patti Smith lookalike'--obviously she's not wearing her sarafan, but she has the Pyatnitsky Folk Choir sound).

I used to know a Russian emigré who was a pop singer in the 1970s Soviet Union. The authorities allowed what they considered "harmless" imitations of Western pop and rock music, and this fellow's group V'esoliye Rebyati was like Boston or Fleetwood Mac. Once he emigrated, his fellow band members told him that new printings of their recordings had his photo and name removed from the album cover.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Back in the days when Mary Hopkin's recording of Those Were the Days was popular, my Russian teacher told me that it was an old Russian pop song from around 1900.

It turns out that she was right. To whit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xazMJtUXCbg

[RichM]

idea that your Russian teacher long ago told you of the origins of "Those Were the Days," what ever made you realize you could find a video like this on YouTube? There must have been some middle step that I'm not seeing. You couldn't just have gone to YouTube and searched for "Those Were the Days" and "Russian", could you? Hmmmm ... :hmmmm: :questionmark:

[RichM]

cool that they wanted to imitate us. That's what really gives me the creeps about it. They wanted to be like the Beach Boys, or maybe Donnie Osmond.

Lenin would be rolling over in his grave. Err..., mausoleum.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

The presence of the folk-style singer in the first video gave me the idea of looking for videos of Russian folk ensembles. (I've been fond of Eastern European folk music ever since I sang with the Yale Slavic Chorus.) I was hoping to find the Pyatnitsky Folk Choir, THE folk ensemble of the Soviet era, but no such luck.