Iosif Kobzon, RIP

Mr. Russian Frank Sinatra, the Model Soviet Jew

EdgeOfTheSandbox
Sep 9, 2018 · 7 min read

One way yours truly amuses herself is by writing about subjects my readers don’t know or care about, and probably don’t need to know, and shouldn’t care.

Iosif Kobzon was ostensibly irrelevant to an average American. The Russian crooner briefly figured into the Western media in 2014, when he entertained the pro-Russian forces in Donbas region of Ukraine, an action that got him sanctioned by the EU (he was already under the US sanctions by then). I wrote about the incident on my old blog then, and I’m revisiting that post on the occasion of Mr. Kobzon’s recent death at the age of eighty.

***

Russians, always looking for some kind of analogy to the West, like to say that Kobzon was a Russian Frank Sinatra. It’s a comparison Kobzon himself has invited, Sinatra being his idol, but it’s a comparriosion unfair to Kobzon. Kobzon was, without a doubt, a fantastic vocalist, and his style has a mid-century vibe to it. It was a specifically Russian midcentury vibe, though. He couldn’t make it swing if his life depended on it. Unlike Sinatra, who pioneered microphone techniques, Kobzon was not an innovator. And while the American sang of personal subjects, be it women or gambling, his Soviet counterpart was heavy on patriotism.

The classic Kobzon fare bellow called Журавли (Cranes) was performed at the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the victory in Great Patriotic War, which is a huge deal in Russia. Vladimir Putin and guest of honor Xi JInping were in attendance. The song memorializes the fallen soldiers.

The gowns on the gals are strange

To be sure, Kobzon had a more lyrical side. There’s the 60’s cha-cha about falling in love with a girl next door, for instance. That number was in keeping with the 60’s youth culture in the Soviet Union that trended towards the fun, personal topics. In the best Communist tradition it’s innocent and folksy, albeit sung by a lad with a Jewfro, not exactly your boy next door.

When it became possible, Kobzon recorded Jewish folk songs, as well as early 20th century numbers. He had a fairly eclectic, open-minded taste, admiring genres like classical, the foreign pop, and the Russian underground. However, he remained best known for Soviet patriotic music, and he was perhaps the best representative of the performers of the genre.

Kobzon was born in 1937, in the midst of Stalin’s terror, and a few years prior to WW2, in a Jewish family in Ukraine. If his beloved mother was a judge, he, as we shall see later, was more of a mediator. Once the Nazis invaded the country in 1941, the young Kobzon narrowly cheated death when his family fled the Western Ukrainian town of Lviv.

Although as a young child he performed for Stalin — a rare, terrific honor — Kobzon didn’t chose a singing career until he was already in his twenties. he then received classical training in Moscow Gnesin school of music, and was quickly noticed by leading Soviet composers. I imagine he, in addition to possessing a rare talent, was easy to work with. The vocalist was a bit of a workaholic, touring and recording incessantly all his life.

The crooner joined the Communist party, becoming, like Sinatra, friendly with those in power. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Kobzon a Duma member, and a personal friend of Vladimir Putin. The Russian President delivered a eulogy at Kobzon’s funeral.

Kobzon’s audience was largely comprised of those whose youth fell on the 1930’s and 40’s, his parents’ generation. In the late Soviet days, younger people, especially in urban areas, craved Western music, or at least something resembling it. Kobzon’s performances, void of any hint of a cutting edge aesthetic, and in agreement with the party line, were featured on state television so often, they came to represent the creative slump of the Brezhnev era. Looking back at it, I can appreciate the technical mastery as well as the subject matter of at least some of his songs, and I can see what moved my grandparents. But I feel no nostalgia, and I prefer the real Sinatra.

Where Kobzon was most like the icon of American cool, was in his mafia connections, which is what got him banned from the US. The crooner himself vehemently denied any involvement in illegal activities. He admits h’d been friendly with the crime boss Vyacheslav Ivankov who was gunned down in 2009, but, as Kobzon explains:

I have many gay friends. But does that mean that I am gay? I know many artists who know the same group of people[.]

Speaking of which, Kobzon’s second wife was the. Soviet diva Lyudmila Gurchenko (above) who, in the post-Soviet days, turned up as a darling of Russian gays

If the mafia myth makes Kobzon interesting, he has other things working for him in that department. He was, without a doubt, a brave man. The singer, as I mentioned, toured frequently, making many stops in Soviet and Russian war zones. He was the first Soviet celebrity to entertain soldiers performing nuclear clean up in Chernobyl. Perhaps the young men would have prefered to see a different entertainer, but Kobzon was the one who showed up.

Kobzon made a reputation for himself for standing up to anti-Semitism, which could have easily ended his career under the Soviet regime. As The New York Times explained:

One of the most prominent Jews to succeed in the Soviet Union, he refused to join a state-sponsored Anti-Zionist Committee in the early 1980’s. When a rabid Russian nationalist, Gen. Albert Makashov, stood in Parliament and denounced ”the Zhids,” a derogatory term for Jews, Mr. Kobzon walked out.

Iosif Kobzon (middle) at the Wailing Wall

The vocalist played a godfather to Moscow bohemia. In the country where blat, or patronage, were more important than money, with a few calls to friends in high places, the well-connected Kobzon gave a helping hand to fellow actors. In most cases it involved procuring apartments — not an easy task in the Soviet Union — but he took care of other needs as well. For instance, he helped to arrange the 1980 funeral of the enormously popular underground singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky.

Smooth operator if there ever was one, Kobzon never turned down a request to resolve a crisis. When in 2002 Chechen terrorists seized a Moscow theater, he, together with another politician, was able to negotiate release of a woman and three children. They were unable, unfortunately, to ensure the release of all hostages from jihady captivity. That speaks more to the futility of negotiating with Islamic terrorists than to Kobzon’s ability to resolve disputes.

Ready for something surreal?

That’s My Way, of course, translated into Russian as My Journey, rather than My Choice, and sung before the sprawling map of Russian Federation, and by the man who, in his childhood, performed for Joseph Stalin. Yes, he is accompanied by The Russian Army Choir, as Kobzon frequently was throughout his career.

I see it not as the Russian answer to Frank Sinatra but as the Russian answer to Sid Vicious. The latter also sang My Way, but the only adequate response to his squealing should have been to schedule an intervention.

With intervention come limitations to liberty. Big brothers, Red Army Chorus, the gulags, and the like. As John Adams famously said, our Constitution (and, more generally, a liberal form of government) is made only for moral and religious people.

It’s not that Kobzon didn’t do it his way. He didn’t have to stick up for Israel, or his artist friends, or the soldiers in Chernobyl, or come to the rescue of the hostages. If he parroted the party line, it’s probably because he believed it. He could have lived a happy satisfied life without going out of his way or taking the risks. His way was to use his God-given talent, and the benefits it afforded him, to better people’s lives, and he accomplished it within the social framework into which he was born.

But here lies the difference between a citizen and a subject (and perhaps the reason my readers should care about Kobzon). If citizen is free to make his decisions and chart his journey, a subject gets his way by cozying up to the regime. Kobzon turned political into personal; paying dues to the power, and distributing the favors he got in return. His fans know his history, and when he performs the American standard, they think “What an admirable gentleman!”

Sinatra was different. His song is relational. An American listens to it, and recognizes himself in it. It’s civic, not political, it doesn’t urge the listener to live his life in any specific way. The listener, like Sinatra, has his own destiny in his hands; he owes up to his mistakes, and takes pride in his accomplishments. In Bono’s famous words:

You know his story ’cause it’s your story
Frank walks like America — cock-sure

For comparison’s sake, Kobzon was interviewed in 2002 by the NYT which observed:

Yet the 64-year-old crooner with the obvious dark wig and heavily tinted eyebrows knows nothing if not his place. Circumspection is second nature to anyone who survived the Soviet system, let alone thrived […]

Cock-sure is to circumspect what a citizen is to a subject. Sinatra’s song was about a free citizen of a free republic, and Kobzon was certainly not that. What he personified is what it meant to be a Soviet Jew, and by Soviet I mean not just an accident of birth, but a commitment. Kobzon was loyal to the regime, yet by no means a traitor to the Jewish people. A survivor, successful against all odds, who used his talent and his influence, and took personal risks for the greater good. And that is how he should be remembered.

EdgeOfTheSandbox

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Not “cis”, a woman. Wife. Mother. Wrong kind of immigrant. Identify as an amateur wino.

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