##What a long strange trip it's been... A 1980's Latvian song contest finalist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzwAKjlwZ7c had its tune taken, with the lyrics changed out for a [different story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH72xkE2p2c), becoming not only a [soviet hit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nli677FxnVw) when sung by Пугачева, but an [evergreeen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Z_F2q92-g), even in [translation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDpL2_Q5y30)*... ...among which, a persian translation performed (indoors, judging by the liberal amounts of greenscreen) by the Iranian singer Farzaneh ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePY6nxbXMAY ... then recently reprised in Tadjikistan by Фарангис: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzo2mfvzLLc (NSFW if you're in a country where you shouldn't be watching grown women without hats in the office...) * yes, it even appears to have [made it to Japan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AQ0GoYxlYQ) ---- [Women as protagonists](https://thoughtstreams.io/ncoghlan_dev/women-as-protagonists-novels/) are easy to find in the context of this stream. In the following scene, [Alisa Selezneva](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alisa_Selezneva) impresses her new class by having a conversation with their teacher, Alla Sergeevna, about London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EntQHrvkRA (TV show based on a sci-fi series started in the mid-1960's) The solist in the following song from "Hussar Ballad", Shura Azarov/Shurochka Azarova, is pretending to be a male cadet in order to fight the XIX french. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0WomaGB0-4 (movie based on the memoirs of a historical tomboy who served [in the cavalry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadezhda_Durova), published 1836) Finally, ["Miss Pavlichenko"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Pavlichenko) may have a written biography somewhere, but I learned about her from a recent movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuPX8mjeb-E (and, it being the XX, she didn't have to pretend to be male) ---- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ett4Uud8ehM a little ditty about driving to the next village over (itself, in material culture, reminiscent of life in pre-war alpine villages, except here the village dances were called "[balls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Bal_de_Sceaux)", not "discos") which has inspired a few pastiches, including the very professional (it turns out to be excerpts from a feature film) Armenian version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZLeehlIJjs as well as the amusingly amateur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2x7XFjLSzU (good thing for the US OSHA that it need not bear any responsibility for agricultural safety practices among kids in the neighborhood of Borodino) ---- ## «Салам Алейкум» или «Шолом Алэйхем»? Either way, we're covered, whether we want a clip with the jewish interpretation as set in last century's shtetls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrhdcOH5pn0#t=113 or we want a clip with the muslim interpretation as performed by this century's university students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXudf6I8-o8#t=90 ... and as the phrase is a greeting in both cultures, we can even compare it to the —very 1980's— atheist commie music video «Алло»: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o62VFQbmSFQ ---- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bRPTb3z2rU Is this "Ecstasy" or Ex-Stas-y? In either case (unless I've horribly misunderstood the plot) the moral from 7:40-9:30 would seem to be "not having any culture may be overlooked, but not having a current passport is simply an own goal"? Previous Leningrad cards: [A](https://thoughtstreams.io/Dave/о-русской-музыки-и-кино-6/11351/), [B](https://thoughtstreams.io/Dave/о-русской-музыки-и-кино/10382/), [C](https://thoughtstreams.io/Dave/о-русской-музыки-и-кино/10419/).