Background on song “Russians” by Sting
The Cold War and rock music – not a likely combination, right? But back in 1985, one musician at least thought it an
appropriate arena for song — a song with a message and point of view. British singer and songsmith Sting – formerly a
member of the rock group Police – had embarked on a new phase in his career. His debut solo album, The Dream of the
Blue Turtles, released in June 1985, included a song entitled “Russians,” which was also released as a single in November
that year.
Ronald Reagan was President of the United States at the time, and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the U.K. In
the Soviet Union, a succession of three leaders had occurred in the early- to mid-1980s: Yuri Andropov, Konstantin
Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev. The nuclear arsenals of the two “superpowers” – as the U.S. and the Soviet Union
were then called — were still aimed at each other.
Sting’s song was leveled at both sides, drawing on the Cold War’s nuclear rhetoric, which by the early- and mid-1980s
was running quite hot between the U.S. and Russia, with Europe caught in the middle. Sting set his lyrics to the dirge-like
Russian music of Sergei Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije Suite. His song covers some Cold War history, the bomb’s origins, and
the tough talk that began in the 1950s.
“Mr. Khrushchev Says…”
Nikita Khrushchev, 1950s.
Sting first points to the famous November 1956 line by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, who said, generally translated,
“we will bury you” meaning the capitalist West. Khrushchev was addressing Western ambassadors at a Polish embassy
reception in Moscow on November 18, 1956 when he made the remarks. Time magazine about a week later reported on
Khrushchev’s remarks, noting that he said, in part: “…Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury
you!” There were some differences over the exact translation of Khrushchev’s words, interpreted by some as “we will
dig you in,” or to mean “we will attend your funeral.”
Khrushchev on the
cover of Time magazine
early September 1961
when the Soviets
resumed
nuclear
Khrushchev himself, some years later in August
1963,
in remarks he made in Yugoslavia, offered further clarification: “I
testing.
once said, ‘We will bury you,’ and I got into
trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own
working class will bury you.” Khrushchev was here referring to the Marxist proletariat as “the undertaker of capitalism”
with communism the ultimate victor. In any case, “we will bury you” is what stuck and became a famous line from the
mid-1950s on. Everyone knew the threat and implication. Republican U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, when he ran for
president in 1964, used a clip of Khrushchev making the remark during his presidential campaign. Khrushchev came off
as a gruff and hostile leader in his speeches, prone to expressive outbursts. In an October 1960 speech at the United
Nations (photo above), he reportedly pounded his shoe on the rostrum for effect. His unpredictable and blunt style,
made him even more menacing in Western eyes. In any case, he was one of those Russian leaders who augured the Cold
War ideology deeply into the world’s psyche in those years, which is why, no doubt, Sting chose to use him in the song.
“Oppenheimer’s Deadly Toy…”
J. Robert Oppenheimer, Life
magazine cover, October 10,
1949.
Sting also touches on the origins of the bomb, with the line: “how can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly
toy.” Oppenheimer here is J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904- 1967), the American theoretical physicist and University of
California, Berkeley physics professor who is known as “The Father of the Atomic Bomb.” He was the scientific director
of the Manhattan Project: the World War II effort to develop the first nuclear weapons at the secret Los Alamos National
Laboratory in New Mexico. Much has been written about Oppenheimer’s changing views on the value of nuclear
weapons, first believing they would end all wars, then in later years trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
Oppenheimer explaining the
atomic bomb to U.S.
military leaders, 1946.
At the Trinity test in New Mexico, where the first bomb was tested in 1945, Oppenheimer is said to have uttered phrases
from the Bhaga- vad Gita, an important Sanskrit Hindu scripture, including: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to
burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one,” and, “Now I am become Death, the
destroyer of worlds.”
The bomb that Oppenheimer and his team developed was used on Japan during WWII, dropped on two cities in August
1945 – Hiroshima and Nagasaki — touching off for decades thereafter, an escalating nuclear arms contest between the
U.S. and the Soviet Union. The understanding that followed with the nuclear arms build-up in both the U.S. and Soviet
Union was that any nuclear exchange between the superpowers would result in all-out war and “Mutually Assured
Destruction” (MAD).
“Winnable War”
In 1981, as the Administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan assumed power in Washington, there began some tough
and loose talk about the use of nuclear weapons. Reagan himself remarked at one point, for example, “Yes, there could
be a limited nuclear war in Europe.” “The probability of nucle- ar war is 40 percent …and our strategy is winnable
nuclear war.”
-Richard Pipes,
Reagan advisor,1982 And Secretary of State Alexander Haig in 1981 also said: ”We have contingency plans to fire a
[nuclear] warning shot at the Soviet Union, warning of U.S. intentions to begin a nuclear war.” By late 1981, as reported
by the New York Times, President Reagan approved a National Security Decision Document committing the United
States to fight and win a global nuclear war. And some of Reagan’s top advisors at the time were quite clear on their
positions. “There is no alternative to war with the Soviet Union if the Russians do not abandon communism,” said
Richard Pipes, a top Reagan adviser in 1981. And Pipes again in 1982: “The probability of nuclear war is 40 percent…and
our strategy is winnable nuclear war.” This, no doubt, is what Sting is singing about in the next verse of his song:
“There is no historical precedent,
To put the words in the mouth of the president
There’s no such thing as a winnable war
It’s a lie that we don’t believe anymore…”
“We Will Protect You…”
Ronald Reagan and his ‘Star
Wars’ defense initiative on Time’s
cover, April 4, 1983.
Next came Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as “Star Wars,” a take-off on the popular 1977
film of that name by George Lucas. Reagan gave his “Star Wars” speech on March 23, 1983, proposing a space-based
defense system equipped with high-powered lasers that would shoot down incoming Soviet missiles.
Only a few weeks earlier, on March 8, 1983, Reagan had given his “Evil Empire” speech, in which he pointedly meant the
Soviet Union. In an earlier speech to the British House of Commons on June 8, 1982, although he did not use the exact
phrase “evil empire,” Reagan had sounded similar anti-Soviet themes, outlining the evils of totalitarianism.
All of this rhetoric was needed, in part, to justify the new nuclear defense hardware Reagan was proposing. But the “Star
Wars” plan brought protests from Congress, Europe, and elsewhere, and was also charged with violating other
international measures to prohibit the militarization of space. Still, the Reagan Administration charged ahead with
money and planning as the U.S. Defense Department began to work on the new program. But Sting, in his song, wasn’t
buying the idea of protection.
“…The Same Biology”
In his song, Sting’s plea is for common sense. “We share the same biology, regardless of ideology,” he says in one of the
lines, asking more or less, why do we want to kill one another; what’s the sense in that? His hope: “that the Russians
love their children too.” In a later interview in 1994, Sting gave some of the background on this song and how it came
about:
“Russians” is a song that’s easy to mock, a very earnest song, but at the time it was written – at the height of the
Reagan-Rambo paranoia years, when Russians were thought of as grey sub-human automatons only good enough to
blow up – it seemed important. I was living in New York at the time, and a friend of mine had a gizmo that could pull the
signal from the Russian satellite. We’d go drinking and then watch Russian morning shows in the middle of the night. It
was apparent from watching these lovingly made kids shows that Russians weren’t quite the automatons that we’d been
told they were. The song was also precipitated by my son asking me if there was a bomb that existed that could blow up
the world, and I had to tell him, ‘Actually, yeah, there is.’ So he was introduced to that horror, the horror we’ve all lived
with for most of our lives. It’s very cheeky to have stolen a bit of Prokofiev and stuck it in a pop song, but in that context
it was right. (See more Sting comments on this song at his website).
U.K. rock star, Sting.
In the mid-1980s, with the escalating nuclear rhetoric, the outlook did not seem bright. And Sting’s song found its
listeners. Around the world, the song rose on the pop charts. In France, the song did especially well, peaking at No. 2 for
three weeks and remaining in the top 50 for 19 weeks. In France the single also reached “gold” sales status, selling more
than 500,000 copies. The single also hit No. 8 on the Dutch charts; No. 11 on the Irish charts; No. 16 on the Swedish
charts; No. 13 on the Swiss charts; No. 12 on the U.K. singles chart; and No. 16 the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
In his music, Sting has not been reticent about raising political matters, or incorporating current events into his songs,
which he would continue to do throughout his career. In fact, on The Dream of the Blue Turtles album, in addition to
“Russians,” there are two other “social concerns” songs – “Children’s Crusade,” about heroin addition, and “We Work
the Black Seam,” about the 1984 U.K. coal miners’ strike and nuclear power plants.
Postscript
In 1987, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, in historic meetings, agreed to reduce nuclear arsenals as intermediateand shorter-range nuclear missiles were later eliminated. In early November 1989, the Berlin Wall began to come down,
and by December 31, 1991 the Soviet Union formally dissolved, ending the Cold War. The worry about nuclear weapons,
however, did not dissipate, especially for those stockpiled in the Soviet Union during the Cold War that could now find
their way to terrorists or rogue nations.
Date Posted: 30 April 2009
Last Update: 30 April 2009
Comments to: jdoyle@pophistorydig.com
Article Citation:
Jack Doyle, “Sting: ‘Russians’, 1985,”
PopHistoryDig.com, April 30, 2009.