Walking through my Russian hometown of the moment, I came across this ‘graffiti’ on a truck. Yeah, it’s kind of funny and that’s the reason why I decided to take a picture of it. It reminded me of those Soviet propaganda posters from WWII with the happy soldier tying his boots with the words «Дойдём до Берлина!» [We will reach Berlin!]. This made me curious to know if there was any propaganda made back then with the same words as on this truck in 2008? I googled the sentences above and guess what the first picture that came up was? A pic almost identical to mine above, only that it was taken in Moscow about two months ago, from a Russian blog. Is this a trend among Russian truck drivers? Is this a way of showing patriotic feelings to other drivers on the road? Or is it another symptom of the sentimentality felt by large parts of the Russian public towards everything Soviet lately?
At first I named this entry ‘Back To The Future’ [after the famous movie, that’s rather obvious – by the way, the same movie is in Russian called «Назад в будущее»] but then I realized that it would fit very badly in the context, and so I changed it to «Вперёд в прошлое». From here on I shall stick to these words when choosing titles for my entries: “Call things by their right names,” as Boris Pasternak wrote in «Доктор Живаго» (did anyone else watch the movie “Into The Wild” directed by Sean Penn? It doesn’t really have anything to do with Russia, yet it is still a great movie, but in the end of it *spoiler warning* the main hero reads Tolstoy’s “Family Happiness” and has an appifany about life, and then he dies holding Boris Pasternak’s Nobel Prize winning novel in his hand…)
3 Comments
That’s interesting graffiti, particularly since it’s been repeated.
Your mention of “back to the future” reminded me of a Russian movie that uses that same phrase in its English title. It’s a classic Soviet-era comedy directed by Leonid Gaidai: “Иван Васильевич меняет профессию.” The movie is now known in English as “Ivan Vasilievich — Back to the Future,” though the literal translation would be “Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession.”
The movie is quite funny and should be particularly interesting for Bulgakov fans because the script is largely based on a Bulgakov play, “Ivan Vasilievich.”
I wrote about the movie and play on my blog at:
http://lizoksbooks.blogspot.com/2007/11/mikhail-bulgakov-and-ivan-vasilyevich.html
I couldn’t help but wonder if the messages were really just sarcastic commentary left by passers-by regarding the filthy and grimey state of the vehicles, versus a more direct “Wash me!”, a note that’s been left on my car more than once.
If you watch Russian movies about WWII you will notice that quite often the same was written on tanks by soldgers. So, nowadays it gives some kind of humor to the look of the vehicle. Because “Танки грязи не боятся” [Tanks are not afraid of durt and mud - it's what we used to write on dirty cars when I was a kid.]