“The Komi-Permyak regiments went to the war…”, or two songs sung for Victory Day

Abstract

The mechanisms for remembering the war can be “built” into private and official cultural traditions. One such mechanism is the functioning of war songs. In our article, written as a kind of “micro-research”, we consider the case of performing two songs about the war on the eve of Victory Day. The commentary of the Komi-Permyak singer helps to identify and specificate the commemorative functions of the songs. It turns out that the texts of the songs actualize different forms of memory. The song “Two soldiers were coming home from German captivity” was passed to the performer from her mother and older relatives, who at the time of singing recalled their husbands who died in the lines. The performance situation brings this non-ritual song functionally closer to a funeral lamentation and predetermines its subsequent belonging to the sphere of family commemoration. The second text - “The Komi-Permyak regiments went to the war…” - is a remake of the popular Soviet “Cossack Song”. The performer dedicated the re-text to her compatriots - the Komi-Permyaks who participated in the Great Patriotic War. The song, reworked and sung for Victory Day, becomes an act of public commemoration, carried out as part of official festive events. Although “Two soldiers were coming home…” emerged during WWI, and the “Cossack Song” refers to the events of the Civil War, both of them are actualized in the context of the 9th of May and turn into a “statement” about the Great Patriotic War. Combining the memory of several wars (leading, among other things, to changes in the text) is a model that is typical not only for folklore works, but also for vernacular festive and ritual practices. The case described above allows us to see how war songs function in the folk culture of the Soviet and post-Soviet times.