How a hundred State Duma deputies “became friends” with a fake z-poet who passed off poems by German Nazis as patriotic
Andrey Zakharov | June 28, 2024The Z-public is constantly worried: they say, little attention is paid to poetry praising the heroes of the Northern Military District. They don't attract enough attention to it, which is why our people go to naked parties instead of weaving camouflage nets after work. Their poems do not inspire heroism.
Margarita Simonyan complained back in the fall of 2022.
“When we approached publishing houses with a proposal to publish that same collection of modern front-line poetry, “Poetry of the Russian Summer,” which we ourselves compiled, made illustrations and everything in general, they answered us: “Remove the letter Z from the cover. Not a single bookstore carries this letter.” will take it."
But, on the other hand, go to the VKontakte page of z-poet Gennady Rakitin ( copy ). Among his friends are almost a hundred State Duma deputies and about thirty senators. So, is the government interested in patriotic literature? So, is there a chance that people like Rakitin will finally replace our bookish enemies of the people and other travelers fellows?
The authors of the anti-war project “Gennady Rakitin”, of course, would like their poems to eventually reach stores, but they no longer have the strength to carry it on. Because Rakitin does not exist, and all his poems, which deputies and senators liked so much, are translations of poems by poets of Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
What does the poet “Rakitin” write about?
Let us take as an example of the work of “Gennady Rakitin” the poem “Leader”, dedicated to the President of Russia. On February 23 of this year, it was republished by the VKontakte public page “SVO. Quotes from Vladimir Putin. Russia" (112 thousand subscribers). The repost has more than 500 likes and 24 thousand views ( original post; saved copy ).
I won't quote it in full—it's pretty mediocre poetry. Here is the first stanza with an appeal to Putin.
You are like a gardener in your garden
He is reaping the fruits of hard work.
The people rejoice, the flags are high
They shot up. The time is coming quietly.
This is a literary translation of the poem “The Fuhrer” by Eberhard Möller, a convinced Nazi and anti-Semite who became a member of the NSDAP even before Hitler came to power.
But the poem “Before the Portrait”: on the “Rakitin” page and in reprints it, of course, was accompanied by a portrait of Vladimir Putin. . .
“Clever girl,” Galina Manaeva, an admirer of the work of “Gennady Rakitin” from Tyumen, a member of the Union of Journalists of the Russian Federation, wrote on VKontakte ( original post; copy ).
This “clever one” was Heribert Menzel - “The Homer of the Stormtroopers”, a stormtrooper himself and a member of the NSDAP since 1933. In the original poem, the author reflects while looking at a portrait of Adolf Hitler, and at the end he comprehends what “it means to be a son of Germany.”
You can compare the poems of “Rakitin” and the German original in this table . For those who are especially caustic, there are links to sources. . .
It is clear that it is not difficult to pass off one patriotic poem as another: in most cases it is quite simple poetry with long-known, many times used epithets and comparisons. The difference between the German original and the work of “Rakitin” is only in the details: Germany was replaced by Russia, and, for example, “Nameless Stormtrooper” became “Nameless Soldier of the Wagner PMC.”
“The ore does not flicker,
Flame in our hearts:
Nameless stormtrooper."
This is addressed to his assembled assault troops by Heinrich Anacker, a member of the NSDAP since 1924.
“The flame glows brighter inside,
My unknown brother from PMC."
And this is written by “Gennady Rakitin”.
The creative path of the z-poet “Rakitin” is short: he left in the history of literature only 18 poems (all adapted translations of German propaganda poems of the 1930s). But he gathered a quarter of the State Duma as his fans. . . .
https://telegra.ph/YA-postigayu-smysl--byt-Rossii-synom-kak-sotnya-deputatov-Gosdumy-podruzhilas-s-fejkovym-z-poehtom-kotoryj-vydaval-stihi-nacisto-06-28
So remind me again who the nazis are here? Perhaps the ones who embrace nazi poetry?
