To Die or Bear the Burden of Death

歌詞

The balalaika rings silent from Minsk to Red Square The cortege a**embles to bury the bear Nadia Rostropovich looks on in despair With Irina, Catharina and Olga And quietly remembering her brother Ivan Shot in the back in Afghanistan The Stalinist purges, the snowy white grave That claimed Boris, Dimitri and Igor She remembered how proud she cheered with the crowd When Yuri Gagarin sailed over the clouds Nadia and Ivan shouted aloud We put the first man in space But that was before the feared KGB Put a question mark over her own loyalty To keep an eye on her comrades one two and three Irina, Catharina and Olga And poor uncle Vlad' whom the Doc declared mad For refusing to leave his beloved Leningrad She stood in the doorway tearful and sad When they frog-marched him of to the Gulag He took a last look at his own native hills Where grew the red dogwoods and wild daffodils The look on his face was haunting her still Comrade Nadia Rostropovich Sometimes alone she'd think of the West Ladies with opals adorning their breast Park Avenue poseurs who behave like the Tsar With silver coke spoons for their caviar She'd reflect back to when she'd just turned ten And faithfully subscribed to fair play for all men But seventy odd years of Bolshevik dreams Had worn down her pride and left her no means To cope with her own disillusions If Trotsky and Engels saw the Dachas and Zils The Politburo boys with their hands in the till The bear was long dead before he got ill Was it the cure or was it the fever? No more reds under beds to freak out the Feds A defunct Superpower in tatters and shreds The marks left by Karl leave them queuing for bread In the Caucasus, Baltic and Urals