"And I've Been Knocking Most of the Day..."

[psalm_onethirtyone]

I feel utterly stupid saying this, but I honestly have no idea what the lyrics of Elton John's Nikita are about.

Here they are. Someone please explain?

Comments

[mmebahorel.livejournal.com]

I've studied some Soviet history. Don't know what they actually teach about the Cold War in school these days.

But we'll go bit by bit:

Hey Nikita is it cold
In your little corner of the world

Nikita Khrushchev was first secretary of the communist party of the Soviet Union from 1953 (when Stalin died and there was great rejoicing) to 1964, when the hardliners revolted and installed Leonid Brezhnev as first secretary. The position of first secretary really means "head of the USSR" - there was nothing higher until Gorbachev created the presidency in 1990.

You could roll around the globe
And never find a warmer soul to know

Through the 1950s, the USSR was expanding its influence in much of the third world. These lines seem to refer to the expansionist tendencies that were never fully realised.

Oh I saw you by the wall
Ten of your tin soldiers in a row
With eyes that looked like ice on fire
The human heart a captive in the snow

Definitely the Berlin Wall. Which was not guarded by the Germans but by the Russians.

Oh Nikita You will never know anything about my home

Elton John is in the free West. Although Khrushchev is best known in the US among a certain generation for visiting Disneyland and having fun on Space Mountain. And for banging his shoe on the podium when addressing the UN general assembly.

I'll never know how good it feels to hold you
Nikita I need you so

This is where it gets confusing. Really really slashy lines.

Oh Nikita is the other side of any given line in time
Counting ten tin soldiers in a row

What is interesting is that despite all the things that happened when he was in power, Khrushchev is viewed rather favourably in the US. Much moreso than his successor, Leonid Brezhnev, though we were at peace with Brezhnev much more than we were with Khrushchev. Khrushchev was generally friendlier as a person and thus made a better impression. In these lines, it's not just the reiteration of the Berlin wall, it's also a reminder of the other battlefields. The other side of any given border in a conflict is both human and tin: the personalised "Nikita" contrasted with the "tin soldiers".

Oh no, Nikita you'll never know

Do you ever dream of me
Do you ever see the letters that I write

This again is getting weird.

When you look up through the wire
Nikita do you count the stars at night

Possibly a reference to the gulag rumour which is completely untrue but more likely simply a reference to the highly militarised border and general lack of freedoms in the USSR. I assume barbed wire representing repression, and the question is do you continue to dream in a place where dreams are not allowed.

And if there comes a time
Guns and gates no longer hold you in
And if you're free to make a choice
Just look towards the west and find a friend

Khrushchev was the first advocate of peaceful coexistence with the west. This from a man who controlled the Soviet Union through the U2 crisis, attempted revolution in Hungary, the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that's just off the top of my head. Of course the song was written before the USSR even began to collapse: the copyright date of 1985 shows it predates Gorbachev and belongs to the musical chairs period between Brezhnev's death and Gorbachev's eventual appointment as first secretary. Also it's after Khrushchev's death. It's a vague potentiality far in the future.

If it were someone other than Elton John, I'd say there's a certain sense of the westernising aspect that has been common to Russian discourse since Peter the Great went to Europe and came back full of praise for the Western way of living and thinking. But there's the old dialectic in the "you'll never know anything about my home", the slavophile idea that Russia is its own entity and is entirely different to the West.

Yet I can't parse the bits that can only be slashy if the rest of my analysis is indeed correct. I'm rambling for me, really, trying to figure out exactly where I'm going wrong.

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

*stands in complete awe of your knowledge on the subject* O_O

Okay. I'm pretty well convinced, although the slashy bits are creating quite a problem. Although Elton John also wrote All the Girls Love Alice, so it's not as though I trust him not to write slashy songs.

*strikes pose* And no matter what, it's still a spiffy, prettiful song.