Poet Vlad Malenko told the story of the song, which was watched by 35 million people

— Vlad, I know that the clip version of the text has an original version, more voluminous and, in a sense, deeper. How much does the original version (not millions, but tens of thousands know it) differ from the “released” one?

— I’ll start by thanking MK for its attention to this topic. In reality, reviews fall like thick snow on your head. The first text appeared six years ago in the form of a “poetic poster” for a street performance. I read, and people around, in the manner of the Taganka Theater, lit lanterns at every name or name of the city. There were no difficulties, it just clicked, as they say, right away. Especially when I decided not to read it “dry”, but took the music of the anthem of the festival of young poetry “Filatov Fest”, where years earlier I myself had placed it. The original text was broader and included more names. However, it is available in video form. Honestly speaking, with so many themes and works, with such success of, say, my fables, with which people have been entering theater institutes for decades, with so many musicals, zongs, poems for performances, children’s items, lyrics – the same “Mayaki” will never were something special for me. Well,

high quality poster. I am a person of Taganka origin, Taganka, in principle, did a lot of performances and posters. “Ten Days That Shook the World” for example. So it’s just one of the genres.

— How did Chicherina, the number one performer of Zadonbass songs, find you, and Leps too?

– Nobody was looking for anyone. Yulia and I have been friends and interacted since about 2012. We also have several joint songs in our arsenal. For example, the well-rotated “Roll Call”. As for “Russian Lighthouses,” as I understand it, these lines already worked as a “folk poem.” Chicherina and Leps at one point called me: “Let’s do it in the logic of the song! Come up with a chorus! Change the line a little towards the musical movement! I agreed to work with it. What an interesting experience!

And then we decided to “figure it out” for three: Leps, Chicherina and Malenko. And Alexey Golubev and his team made a video. — Previously, with YouTube (the site violates the law of the Russian Federation) it was simpler: everyone saw the viewing figures. But having learned about 35 million, I ask, like the bandit from “Red Heat”: “What is your evidence?”

– Well, I don’t play sports here. This is the total count across different platforms. In Telegram, for example, no one has yet had higher numbers. However, you understand that I am an expert not in numbers, but in words. The results there are really good. You need to ask the experts.

— From the beginning of the SVO, there was a feeling that someone should express in some text – simple, clearly articulated and somewhere “screaming” – the “national idea.” Is the fact that the Zetas criticize the result of the fact that none of them could do this? In general, why is everyone scolding?

– Oh, these little words for me: “Z-poets”, “Z-people”… Let them scold, dear ones, let them swarm, warm themselves. As the proverb goes: “A fly sitting on a horse’s butt thinks it is the rider.”

It seems to me that there are several reasons for the indiscriminate abuse.

The first is, of course, the work of “opponents” on the other side. There are serious forces involved there—talented “workers.” But this only confirms the success of Mayakov.

As for swearing from one’s own people, or from “one’s own” in quotation marks, this is even cooler. People want to express themselves. Some people have complexes. Someone drank vodka and splashes out emotions. Someone did not bother to know the work of a contemporary in its volume. Leps pissed someone off: they say, chanson… Well, dears: what kind of chanson is that? “Russian Lighthouses” is a bright poster simplification for the “young people”, who, by the way, take it cool. So I will answer all of them, as Sergei Mikhalkov once answered Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who criticized the lines of the second edition of the anthem: “Guys! Go and learn the text!”

— What meaning should be put into the “poster” genre? Will the Slavists, who were so scolded by the living classic of Russian poetry Evgeniy Rein, be accepted for their “tricks”?

— To answer, I need to share creative secrets that lie in the plane of my personal “creative plowing.” The fact is that after the subtlest lyrical approaches, when the author “sheds himself in tears of fiction,” he suddenly takes a step to the side, inventing new genres. Here’s a look at the video poem “The Knife” with the brilliant Borislav Strulev. What kind of genre is this, gentlemen of the Slavists?

And then the poem “Moscow” appears, then the fable “The Tsar and Pushkin” or “Hedgehog Skinheads” performed, say, including Shevchuk. And then “Rzhev” – a poem that is read in schools on all lines, and before that there were “White Flags”, which Yegor Letov loved so much, and after that the zong poems for “Zoyka’s Apartment” by Kirill Serebrennikov.

Well, which of your fellow poets will like all this? It’s quite funny for me to even click someone on the nose because of my enthusiasm and understanding of where someone is in relation to this boiling and such a magnetic pan with the “chicken of glory”… Alexander Blok described everything in his wonderful program poem “Poets”. We need to learn it by heart and read it to all “Z” and non-Z writers. And I love Uncle Zhenya Rein dearly. Bow to him!

– But still – about the “poster” genre. Are there any examples in Russian literature?

– Yes, there are plenty of them! Odes of Lomonosov, Gabriel Derzhavin! Poems by Alexander Pushkin:

…Full, fuller! and, with my heart on fire,

Again, drink to the bottom, drink to the drop!

But for whom? oh others, guess…

Hurray, our king! So! Let’s drink to the king.

He is a human! they are ruled by the moment.

He is a slave to rumors, doubts and passions;

Let us forgive him his wrongful persecution:

He took Paris, he founded the Lyceum…

Let’s remember here a good half of Mayakovsky’s poems or his wonderful poem “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”, numerous advertising verses. I also really love Brecht’s zongs translated by the same Boris Slutsky. And here’s Vladimir Vysotsky at the end (of his latest creations, by the way, for the film by Gennady Poloka):

We are building a school to gnaw at science boldly,

We will destroy everything from the inside and revive it,

We will whiten the grayness and scrape it to shine,

Let’s cover up all the shadow with light!

So grow a school for us, builder,

For our children’s souls, a greenhouse,

Where they study – everyone, where the teacher –

I am still a student in some ways!

— From the “Ukrainian side” there were also “hard” alterations. One formerly very good Russian-speaking poet from Kyiv, who is now literally obsessed with hatred of Russian culture, wrote his own version. There, “Homeland of Lighthouses” was replaced with “Homeland of Maniacs/Cranks.” Tyutchev warned that “it is not possible for us to predict / How our word will respond.” Was it possible to calculate how “lighthouses” would be rhymed in parodies, photoshoots and memes?

– Well done Kiev scribbler, “working out” the agenda. God bless him, poor fellow. Gogol will break his glass at night.

There are a lot of perverts in general. For a hundred and fifty years they have been swearing at Eugene Onegin and giggling at all the classics.

I am used to bringing my ship to the dock and periodically cleaning the sides from shellfish and sticking, and then putting it out into the ocean again, hoping that the piercing light of Russian lighthouses will always help in a storm.

And I didn’t even have such thoughts about the consonance between “lighthouses” and “eccentrics”. Honestly. I didn’t calculate it, and I haven’t heard of people changing it like that around. It seems to me that this is not witty even in the context of the great ones.