The World Made of Plastic Has Won
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The plastic world has won
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The replica was stronger than the real
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The last ship has grown cold
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The last torch has grown tired
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There's a lump of memories in my throat
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O-oh, my defense
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A sunbeam cast by an unseeing eye
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O-oh, my defense
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The mournful ball of this absurd world
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A sunbeam cast by this absurd world
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The plastic world has won
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The cardboard warning bell sings
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Who wants a slice of July sky?
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O-oh, my defense
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A sunbeam cast by an unseeing eye
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O-oh, my defense
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The mournful ball of this absurd world
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The mournful ball of this cheap world
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The plastic world has won
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The replica was stronger than the real
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The last ship has grown cold
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The last torch has grown tired
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There's a lump of memories in my throat
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O-oh, my defense
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The mournful ball of this absurd world
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O-oh, my defense
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A sunbeam cast by an unseeing eye
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O-oh, my defense
By the early 1990s, Yegor Letov (1964-2008), leader of the Siberian punk band Grazhdanskaia oborona (Civil Defense), was already an undisputed countercultural icon. His brand of punk is an unprecedented combination of raw and deafening sounds with uniquely dense and surreal lyrics. So complex was his artistry that, in 2014, it became the object of a monthly academic seminar at RGGU (Russian State University for the Humanities) that aimed to study his oeuvre as one of the peaks of contemporary Russian-language poetry.
In the 1980s and1990s, Letov, who had only recently emerged from the Soviet musical underground with its semi-official concerts and self-produced tapes (magnitizdat), already boasted millions of listeners. Young alternative kids (neformaly) throughout Russia and the former Soviet Union spoke to one another using quotes from Letov’s songs, which channeled the younger generations’ rage at the toxic positivity of late-Soviet and early post-Soviet official discourses. Because of his popularity with the youth demographic, Letov’s turn to nationalism, his public alliance with Limonov and Dugin, and his radical opposition to Yeltsin’s reforms in 1994, all sealed the right-wing political turn Russian counterculture experienced after the mid-1990s.
In 1994-95, during his Russkii proryv (Russian breakthrough) tour, Letov famously performed against the background of a gigantic NBP (National Bolshevik Party) flag. His statements and calls for revolutionary violence were even more radical and explicit than Limonov’s or Dugin’s. “My Defense” (Moia oborona, 1989), here performed in “City-Hero Leningrad” during this same tour, is one of Letov’s most famous songs. The lyrics, though cryptic, convey the subject’s deep disillusionment and the bittersweet feeling produced by seeking refuge in childhood memories and fantasies. These same lyrics, in particular the refrain starting with the words “the world made of plastic has won,” have entered the everyday vocabulary of generations of Letov’s fans to signify the post-Soviet triumph of Western-style, late-capitalist materialism.