When Russians Sing, 'Kill the Yankees,' What Do They Mean?
By Andrew Higgins
Moscow -- After a concert in the basement of a museum dedicated to a dead Russian poet, a group of earnest young music fans parse the lyrics of their favorite song, which rails against U.S. power and Russian poverty.
"It reflects our true reality, the burning issues of the day," says Konstantin Kudryachev, the event's organizer and an aficionado of Russia's underground music scene. "This is music for the intellect."
But this brain food is served very raw.
It's called "Kill the Yankees" and exercises the mind with verses like this:
"Burn the shop with the American s---! Advertise the hard-currency store with a brick. Blow up with a grenade their pretty Chevrolet. Scrawl the word p--- on their sales logo! Kill the Yankees! Kill the Yankees and all who love the Yankees!
The song hasn't made pop-music charts -- some radio stations have banned it -- but it has struck a chord among an eclectic bunch of devotees: bookish but bitter students, rebels in leather, and shaggy-haired dropouts. United by their youth, they are a new market for anti-Americanism.
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