С чего начинается Родина? [S chego zachinaetsya Rodina?] [English translation]

This track is about the beginnings of Motherland1.

***

I guess it all starts with the cash to be paid for your birth,

With dilapidated highways and with police checkpoints,

With puppet cartoons and crime news footage,

With fear of being bombed or taken hostage,

With phony diplomas and fake certifications,

With bypassed inspections and with bought elections,

With the first vodka bottle at the school library,

With a dumb pop band instead of a canary.

If you prosper, don’t forget to be grateful,

Or she will come for you at night, checking.

The smell of Motherland lingers inside the railway carriage,

She is in minimum income and on the general’s shoulders.

Motherland starts with the cigarettes sold singly,

With groceries, government and with village-pop singles,

With cheap port wine and sunflower seeds;

Me and Motherland are thick as thieves.

She catches up with me in the hospital queue,

She tells me that a police record on me is due.

Take off outer clothing, remove footwear,

And clap your hands with Bábkina Nadézhda2.

Motherland sends me conscription summons,

Motherland welcomes me with slot machines’ crowds.

A white birch tree is standing and swaying;

There Motherland began and she’ll never be ending.

She teaches to be proud of Pushkin and Dostoevsky,

Of Sergei Yesenin and Aleksander Nevsky.

But it doesn’t matter what had happened in the past:

Today only you do for your country and no questions asked!

She issues a command through the radio speakers:

“Intercept this guy, check if he's registered!”

You are free: if you’re disgruntled, you can beat feet.

That’s how Motherland ends for a lot of peeps.

Approaching retirement? Don’t forget to order a coffin.

There is no place for seniors, don't bother to ask prophets.

When I was reading “The Little Golden Calf”3, I never laughed.

I always was routing for Bender to escape from the guards.

But the book’s ending always goes bad,

The folks are leaving, that’s the beginning of the end…

A white birch tree is silently standing;

There are laughs on TV, but my soul is yearning…

1. The title refers to the very famous Soviet song, which made its first appearance in the 1968 spy movie The Shield and the Sword. It was also included in the ABC book and even was performed by Vladimir Putin, among others.2. Nadezhda Babkina is a famous Soviet singer. By reversing her first and last names, Oblomov makes a wordplay of her name, it now becomes "Grandma's Hopes"3. The Little Golden Calf is a Soviet satirical novel, published in 1931. Its main character is a con man, trying to leave the country with an acquired fortune.