Songs from the thief and prison worlds were often popular back in the Russian Empire. The genre was especially vividly represented in Odessa, a port city, to which thieves and swindlers from across the entire country flocked, where both small-time and organized crime was soaring. Lyrics, filled with slang, were often complemented by popular tango music or simple Jewish motifs and were performed in pubs.
Joseph Stalin didn’t appreciate the “romanticized” criminal life (by his decree, Marshal Georgy Zhukov was sent to Odessa after World War II to firmly combat crime). So, such songs fell out of favor in the USSR for a long time. But, gradually, the genre gained popularity again. Even the all-Union idol, actor and musician Vladimir Vysotsky performed criminal songs. In 1979, a now-iconic five-part mini series called ‘Mesto vstrechi izmenit nelzya’ (‘The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed’) came out, featuring the most famous criminal song of the 20th century – ‘Murka’.
During the 1990s, with crime running rampant, criminal songs were remembered once more. A large number of new hits also appeared. Some were written by those behind bars, while others were written on the request of those incarcerated. This genre was dubbed ‘Russian chanson’ in the press, however, it had practically nothing to do with French chanson. Below, We tell you how ‘Murka’ came about and highlight other hits that every Russian has heard.
1. ‘Murka’ (early 1920s)
This is, perhaps, the most famous song of the criminal world. The lyrics for it were created at the beginning of the 1920s by Odessa poet Yakov Yadov (Davydov) and complemented by an altered Jewish melody. The song became so popular that it spread to the public and spawned a multitude of versions – including the most famous one, the criminal one.
The story of the girl called Marusya, nicknamed ‘Murka’ (people often called their cats ‘Murka’, so the song goes: “Murka, you’re my kitty-cat”) is based on real events. She did some criminal activity in Odessa along with a gang of swindlers. Later, it turned out that ‘Murka’ was a deep-cover Cheka (Soviet secret-police) agent; she gave all the bandits up to the police, for which she was murdered. “For that, a bullet for you,” the song goes.
This song practically became the anthem of the criminal world; ‘Murka’ is often associated with the Moscow Criminal Investigations Department (‘MUR’). One of the most famous performances of this song was on the ‘The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed’ mini series, where it’s sung by an undercover ‘MUR’ agent in a gang.
2. ‘Taganka’ (early 1920s)
The name of this song refers to the Taganka Prison in Moscow. There are different theories about when this song was written – perhaps, even as far back as the tsarist times. In any case, it became a real hit, practically an anthem of prison life, in the 1920s. The song is performed from the perspective of a repeat offender, who gets locked up again.
The chorus “Taganka – nights filled with fire” refers to the fact that lights were not out in prisons, even at night. Among its famous performers was Vladimir Vysotsky; this song, this time performed by Mikhail Shufutinsky, gained popularity after perestroika.
3. ‘Vaninsky Port’ (late 1930s)
The exact authorship of this song is unknown, so it’s often dubbed the “people’s” song, allegedly composed by unnamed prisoners in the Kolyma camps. That’s where steamboats departed from the port of Vanino in the Pacific. Among more famous modern performers of this song are Yuri Shevchuk and Vyacheslav Butusov.
4. ‘Dolya Vorovskaya’ (1959-2013; ‘Thief’s Lot’)
A criminal writes a letter to his mother (a popular move), in which he curses his fate – from his young years, he’s only seen prison and its cells and bunks, but he dreams of freedom.
This song appeared for the first time in the Georgian language in the Soviet movie ‘An Accident at a Dam’ (originally ‘The Sentence’) in 1959. Later, this song was performed in Russian in a variety of different versions, including by Vladimir Vysotsky. It gained its all-Union fame in the 1970s, when it was performed by singer Boris Davidyan (‘Boka’).
In 2013, the currently most popular version of this song was released, performed by the band ‘Belomorkanal’.
5. ‘Gop-Stop’ (late 1970s)
The author and performer of this song, Alexander Rosenbaum, had no prison experience. However, he grew up in Leningrad, where the legends and tales of ‘gopniks’, the street urchins and juvenile criminals from the ‘Gosudarstvennoye obshestvo prizora’ (GOP; shelters in the Russian Empire for beggars, cripples and orphans, supported by ‘zemstvo’ money from provincial orders of public charity), lived. Rosenbaum stylized the song as a criminal-style one and came up with a vivid narrative, describing how a ‘gop-stop’ is done and how the criminals punish a woman who betrayed them. In a way, it’s a reference to ‘Murka’. This cheerful song about murder turned out so believable and successful that the entire country still sings along to it.
6. ‘Ya Kuplyu Tebe Dom’ (late 1980s; ‘I’ll Buy You a House’)
The author of this song, Mikhail Tanich, spent several years in prison camps for spreading anti-Soviet propaganda; he was, however, released on amnesty after the death of Stalin. In 1990, he formed the band ‘Lesopoval’, the name of which refers to the activities of camp prisoners (‘lesopoval’ means “tree felling”). The song ‘Ya kuplyu tebe dom’ became one of the band’s main hits.
This song is performed from the perspective of a man (obviously in prison), who dreams of buying a house and bringing his beloved girl there when he’s free. The entire country knows the chorus – “A bely lebed na prudu” (“A white swan on the lake”) – but people often don’t realize what the context of the song is and what implications it has.
7. Vladimirsky central (1998; ‘Vladimir Central Prison’)
The author and performer of this song, Mikhail Krug, is now an iconic singer of Russian chanson. He himself never spent time in prison and, yet, he wrote one of the most famous and heartfelt prison ballads.
Vladimir Central Prison is a maximum-security prison in the city of Vladimir. It was built back at the end of the 18th century; it contained mostly political prisoners. The song tells the story of a prisoner who is sent to said prison from Tver (where Krug himself was from) and his heart aches for the spring blooming around him and for his beloved who’s not by his side.
With this lyrical ballad playing, people swayed in slow dances in all shady establishments and restaurants where bandits hung out at the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s. Krug himself was killed by unknown assailants in 2002.
8. ‘Hop, Musorok’ (2001; ‘Hey, Cop’)
Criminal songs became so popular in the 1990s that even pop-music bands started singing such stylized songs. The most famous of them was the all-female band ‘Vorovayki’ (‘Thievesses’), formed in 1999, which performed in the “criminal pop” genre, as they called it themselves.
Their real hit was the song ‘Hop, Musorok’, filled to the brim with prison slang and quite harsh language. ‘Musorok’ is a derogatory slang name for a policeman. This word came into use and is still popular; it derives from the acronym ‘MUS’ (‘Moscow Criminal Investigations Department’) – that’s what ‘MUR’ (mentioned in ‘Murka’) was called before the Bolshevik Revolution.
9. ‘Nakolochka’ (2002; ‘Tattoo’)
Tattooed churches on one’s chest signify one’s involvement in the criminal world and the amount of church domes could mean either the length of one’s sentence or the amount of times they were imprisoned. So, the topic of “domes” is very popular in a criminal song.
Famous Russian chanson performer Mikhail Shufutinsky in his ‘Nakolochka’ sings about how a girl demonstrates her playful tattoo, while his lyrical hero hides the church domes on his chest. For those who spent time in prison, a tattoo is a ‘nakolochka’. “How many domes did my heart count, that many years I paid for my debts.”
10. ‘Tolko dlya Tebya’ (2002; ‘Only for You’)
This song is performed from the perspective of a young man who has dedicated his entire life to his beloved – he got his first tattoo in her honor and discovered his criminal “talents”. The betrayal of his beloved, according to him, demands vengeance.
The most famous version of this song was performed by Mikhail Krug in a duo with Vika Tsyganova, another star of Russian chanson.
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