What in the World do the lyrics of “The Russians” mean?
By Remy
The song ‘The Russians’ was written and sung by Sting in 1985. At the time Sting was concerned about the very long Cold War between Russia and America. Eventually they took it way too far, Sting had had enough. So he wrote this song trying to hopefully stop it.
The opening line ‘In Europe and America there’s a growing feeling of hysteria’ means in Europe and America they were panicking over a thing that shouldn’t have happened. What they were panicking about was, America was sending threats to Russia, and the government was persuading everyone not to panic and saying things like ‘don’t worry they don’t actually mean it, but to repay them back we will bury them with bombs.’ Sting thought it was a dumb, ignorant and stupid thing to do in response. Those last couple of lines describe ‘conditioned to respond to all the threats in the rhetorical speeches of the soviets, Mr Khrushchev said we will bury you, I don’t subscribe to this point of view it would be such an ignorant thing to do.’
In verse 2, “how can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?” refers to how the American Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer called himself ‘Death, the destroyer of worlds’.
“There is no monopoly of common sense on either side of the political fence” - these lines refer to the Russian and American political parties and military having no common sense at all.
When Sting says “believe me when I say to you I hope the Russians love their children too” or “what may save us, me and you, is that the Russians love their children too” means that a realisation that they love their children will stop them from fighting because a war would kill everyone including their children.
In verse 3, the opening line “There is no precedent to put the words in the mouth of the president” means you can’t make the president say what you want him to say and that it has never happened before so we have no reason to make us think you could do it now.
The lines “there is no such thing as a winnable war, it’s a lie we don’t believe any more” simply means no one wins in war, everyone loses in some way.
Again, in politics “Mr Reagan said we will protect you, I don’t subscribe to this point of view” there is no reason not to be scared and it is impossible for the president of the USA to protect everyone.
Last but not least, the songs most known lines, “We share the same biology, regardless of ideology” is about the fact that we are all the same, we are all human, apart from what we believe in.
In conclusion, I chose this cool song because it shows how meaningless, stupid, ridiculous and sad war is. But sadly all we can do is hope there won’t be another cold war like this. It seems we have the technology to make nuclear bombs that could blow up the whole world so let’s hope that no one like Oppenheimer get their hands on the technology.
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