Red Plenty by Francis Spufford: Galich

Akademgorodok at sunset (postcard)

Galich

In the 1950s Aleksandr (Sasha) Galich was the insider’s insider on the Soviet literary scene: successful, cossetted, trusted to express only acceptable thoughts in his screenplays, stage plays and song lyrics. He was a Stalinist song-and-dance man. And then, in the early 1960s, he went into unpredictable, conscience-driven metamorphosis, and turned himself into an underground balladeer. His bitter, witty ‘bard songs’ circulated as magnetizdat, illegal tape recordings. On the one occasion when he did perform in public, at Akademgorodok in 1968, the scandal of what he sang led to a wholesale crackdown in the town. Gradually he lost all his privileges, and in 1974 was expelled from the USSR. He died in Paris in 1977. I’ve used him as a character in Red Plenty, but I couldn’t make his Russian voice audible on the page. Here you’ll find a couple of Gerald Stanton Smith’s translations of his songs, some footage, recordings and photographs. Follow the links for more.

In Red Plenty I show Galich bringing the house down at Akademgorodok in 1968 with his song ‘The Goldminer’s [or Prospector’s] Waltz’, because that one is easier for a Western reader to come to cold and see the outrage in; but this is what he really sang that shattered the Soviet decencies and made the scandal.

IN MEMORY OF BORIS PASTERNAK

‘The governing body of the USSR Literary Fund announces the death of B L Pasternak, writer and member of the Literary Fund, which took place on 30 May this year, in his 71st year, after painful and prolonged illness, and conveys condolences to the family of the departed.’

(The only announcement of the death of B L Pasternak to appear in the newspapers.)

They dismantled the wreaths to make yard-brooms,

For about half an hour we wore long faces;

We contemporaries, we’re so proud of it --

It was home in his bed he departed!

Third-rate fiddlers torturing Chopin’s tune,

At the solemn progress of parting,

In Elabuga* he didn’t soap a noose,

In Suchan* he didn’t run ranting!

Even ‘penpashas’ in from the provinces

Arrived in time for the party;

We contemporaries, we’re so proud of it

It was home in his bed he departed!

It’s not as if he’d just turned forty,

A good age to die -- spot on seventy!

And he wasn’t some adopted orphan --

Litfond member, the late lamented!

Those big hands of his sprinkled with evergreens,

His snowstorms have fallen silent...

And we’re so proud, rotten non-entities,

It was home in his bed he departed!

‘A snowstorm raged o’er all the earth,

In every corner;

The table bore a candle’s flame,

A candle burning...’

No! Not one candle there at all --

Electric light bulbs!

The executioner’s spectacles

Flashed fast and slyly!

The yawning audience all were bored

As windbags ranted,

‘Tain’t jail or exile, after all,

Or death by shooting!’

Condemned not to a crown of thorns,

On the wheel harrowed, --

Instead, his face with cudgel scourged,

To death by ballot!

Someone kept asking, in his cups,

‘What for? Who was he?’

And some were chewing, someone chuckled

About a story...

That laughter we shall not forget,

Nor yet the boredom!

We’ll know each one of them by name

Who did the voting!

‘The murmur dies. On stage I’ve made my entrance.

And leaning on the framework of the door

I try to catch...’

Argument and slander silent fallen,

Eternity, it seemed, had granted us parole...

But above the coffin rise the looters

In a ceremonial patrol!

*Elabuga and Suchan are the places in the Gulag where the poets Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam respectively died.

And this is his Gulag ballad ‘Clouds’, which floated away from his authorship and was frequently taken in the USSR in the 1960s and 1970s for a genuine ex-prisoner’s lament. Among other things, it was an act of penance by Galich for his own safety throughout the Gulag era.

CLOUDS

Oh the clouds go by, floating by,

Like in films they float, soft and slow;

I’m chewing chicken (spiced and fried),

And my brandy’s running low.

Floating clouds sail off to the east,

Soft and slow they float, soft and slow;

I bet that they’re warm as toast,

But me, I’ve been chilled to the bone!

Once I froze like iron to ice,

Digging roads with a pick in my hand!

I left twenty long years of my life

Back in those bloody labour camps.

I can see that frozen snow-crust,

Hear the cursing when we were frisked...

Hey waiter! -- pineapple chunks,

And another double of this!

Rolling clouds go by, sailing far

To that dear old home in the east,

They don’t know what an amnesty’s for,

They don’t need any lawyer to plead.

Now I’m living a life without care,

Twenty years flew straight past like a dream;

Here I sit like a lord in this bar,

And I’ve even got a few teeth!

Clouds roll by to the morning sun,

With no pension, no trouble or strife;

As for me, well, twice a month,

I collect what’s mine by right.

And on those two days, just like me,

Half this country sits in the bars!

And the clouds roll by to the east,

Rolling by in all of our hearts...

And those clouds roll by to the east,

Rolling by in all of our hearts...

Recordings

‘Goldminer’s Waltz’ is the third song down here, and ‘Clouds’ is here.

Home-movie of Galich singing, 1960s

Galich performing ‘In Memory of Pasternak’, 1970s