Russian choir performs satirical song about nuking the US

St. Isaac’s Cathedral, which hosted the concert, said the song was not on the pre-approved program and was performed as an encore. (File/Shutterstock)

• The choir promptly turned off the option of comments on its social media page after it was inundated with indignant remarks
• The song, popular in the 1980s, jokes about Soviet troops being willing to fire a missile on the US “for three rubles”

MOSCOW: A choir in the Russian city of St. Petersburg has drawn criticism for performing a satirical song about firing a missile on the United States from a Soviet nuclear submarine.
The video of the Saturday performance by the St. Petersburg Concert Choir was published over the weekend but only gained attention on Tuesday. The choir promptly turned off the option of comments on its social media page after it was inundated with indignant remarks.
The song, popular in the 1980s, jokes about Soviet troops being willing to fire a missile on the US “for three rubles.”
The choir said in a statement Tuesday that it performs a variety of songs authentic to the time they were written, and that it refuses to “rewrite lyrics for the sake of political correctness.”
St. Isaac’s Cathedral, which hosted the concert, told The Associated Press that the song was not on the pre-approved program and was performed as an encore, and that the cathedral does not approve of it.
The cathedral’s spokesman said although the song is a satirical one “it would be better to refrain from performing it.”
The song, written by Andrei Kozlovsky in the 1980s as political satire of the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union, goes: “Forgive us, America, fair America, but 500 years ago they discovered you for nothing.”
The choir’s performance happened amid the highly charged rhetoric in Russia following the US decision to withdraw from a key security treaty with Russia.
In his news program on Sunday, Dmitry Kiselyov, an influential state media executive, pointed to potential targets of Russian nuclear retaliation. Kisyelov showed interactive maps that presented calculations of how soon Russian nuclear submarines will be able to strike targets on the east and west coasts of the United States.
Kiselyov’s comments, which were unusually bellicose even in the current anti-Western environment in Russia, were in reference to President Vladimir Putin’s state of the nation address last week, in which the Russian leader warned the United States against deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe.