[bomp] Confessions of a Soviet moptop

["Kip Shepherd" <kipshepherd@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Confessions of a Soviet moptop

In the Soviet Union, the Beatles were proscribed. In the early days, 
infatuation with the Beatles implied an unconscious oppositional stance, 
more curious than serious, and not at all threatening to the foundations of 
a socialist society. For instance, during an astronomy lesson, my schoolmate 
had to give a talk about a planet. Having recited everything that he had 
copied from a journal, he made his own addition: "And now the latest 
discovery of four English astronomers - George Harrison, Ringo Starr (and 
the two others) - the orbit of such and such planet is approaching the 
Earth, and in the near future, there may well be a collision." The physics 
teacher barely knew more than we did about the planets. So she listened to 
this talk of "a possible collision" unsuspecting. She had not heard of these 
"astronomers". She hadn't even heard of the Beatles.

My classmates formulated their love for the Beatles in the following manner: 
"I would have learnt English in its entirety, exclusively from the things 
that Lennon spoke about." This was a paraphrase of the words of Mayakovsky 
inscribed on a stand in the literature classroom: "I would have learnt 
Russian in its entirety, exclusively from the things that Lenin spoke 
about." In the 1960s, you could not be imprisoned for changing the name of 
Lenin to that of Lennon, but trouble awaited anyone who blasphemed against 
the name of the immortal leader: problems dished out by the Komsomol 
(Communist Union of Youth) could wreck your career. And so, bit by bit, we 
Lennon fans became ensnared in doubting the values that the system was 
trying to inculcate.

To make the slogan about the English language come literally true would have 
been impossible, as we were learning in a class of 40 pupils and had just 
two hours of foreign language teaching per week. We wrote down the texts of 
the English songs using Russian letters. Many of us didn't understand their 
meanings, but sang them all the same.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1013952,00.html

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