Audio: Anti-Americanism as Russian Doctrine

The paradox of Russia’s nationalism is that its patriotic zeal closely follows the American model. One of the biggest pop hits in Russia a few years ago was a song called “I Was Made in the USSR”, first performed in 2005 in the Kremlin, in front of Mr Putin. “Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova—it is my country…Kazakhstan and the Caucasus as well as the Baltics—it is my country…I was born in the Soviet Union; made in the USSR,” its lyrics go. As the audience rose to applaud, it was perhaps unaware that the tune was the same as Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”.

The article makes a number of good points, true but the above statement is typical Russian idiocy and gibberish. "Born in the USA" is not an example of "patriotic zeal" by America but is harshly critical of America (the antithesis of the Russian song), as it author so often is, so the linkage is simply demented, and I for one am hard-pressed to find any similarity between the two melodies. My blog has written about Oleg Gazmanov's song and translated the full lyrics here (a video of the performance is also available):

http://lrtranslations.blogspot.com/2007/02/made-in-ussr.html

As so often happens with Russians, while trying to clean their pistol they end up shooting themselves in the head.

As a commenter to the piece states:

"WE- Russians are the worst enemies of ourselves: angry, hostile, aggressive, malicious to everyone and what is worse -even to each other. We hate our neighbours, we don’t trust our relatives, we envy our siblings, we disrespect the order and hate rules."

http://www.economist.com/members/persona.cfm?econUId=3044053