On May 12 the First Prize of the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 was given to Ukraine’s representative, Crimean Tatar singer Jamala. Each participating country submitted to the Contest an original song to be performed on live television and radio, and then cast votes for the other countries’ songs to determine the most popular song in the competition.
The results of the competition were not known till the last moment, as they were estimated by combining points given to performers by two groups: audience and professional jury in every participating country. This year result was unexpected for most of Russian audiences and created real storm in Russian society.
The Eurovision Song Contest, popularly called Eurovision, is the longest-running annual international TV song competition, held primarily among the member countries of the European Broadcasting Union since 1956. It is also one of the most watched non-sporting events in the world, with audience having been estimated in recent years between 100 million and 600 million internationally. Recently Russians became the most emotional audience of Eurovision, since they see every international competition as a battlefield where Russians must prove their superiority.
During this year competition, which took place in Stockholm, it seemed that the most of audience sympathies belonged to the Russian singer Sergey Lazarev. Sergey Lazarev won the TV audience voting and Australia’s Dami Im won the jury vote. But calculation of votes of both groups combined moved Jamala to the first place, Dami Im to the second and Sergei Lazarev to the third.
Surprisingly Sergey Lazarev performed in English a song written by a non-Russian composer and lyricist. Singing in English is not the norm of the competition. Some performers sing in their native languages; nevertheless, representatives of both Russia and Ukraine had chosen this time to sing in English.
Performance of Sergey Lazarev.
Jamala also was singing in English, but her song, unlike Lazarev’s one, was written by herself, and it had a very personal content. It was called “1944”.
In 1944 the forcible deportation of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea was ordered by Joseph Stalin as a form of collective punishment for alleged collaboration with the Nazi occupation regime during 1942–1943. The entire ethnic Crimean Tatar population of more than 230,000 people were deported, mostly to the Uzbek Soviet Republic. More than 100,000 of the deportees died from starvation or disease as a direct result of deportation. After Stalin’s death the deportations were denounced by the Soviet government; nevertheless, the Crimean Tatars were denied the right of return up until late Perestroika times in the mid-1980s.
At the moment of annexation of Crimea by Russian Federation, Crimean Tatars constituted 245.000, approximately 12% of the population of Crimea.
As a result of the annexation, some Crimean Tatars fled to the Ukrainian Mainland. Their numbers have since grown to 50,000. They have been replaced by Russians fleeing in the opposite direction.
Jamala was among those Tatars who moved to Mainland Ukraine. Her parents are still residing in Crimea.
Even before the competition’s qualifying round Jamala told her fans what song she wants to perform and what prompted her to write “1944”. She said to the newspaper “Arguments of Week” (http://argumenti.ru/society/2016/05/448272):
“I wrote it last year, this is an iconic song for me. The song is inspired by the story of my great-grandmother; of the tragedy that happened to our family and to the all Crimean Tatar people in 1944. Great-grandfather was fighting for Russia at the front, so he was not able to protect his wife and his children. They were loaded into boxcars like cattle. The travel to Central Asia had taken few weeks. Those who could not stand these inhuman conditions who died of hunger and thirst were just thrown along the roadway from the train. My great-grandmother lost one of her daughters.”
Jamala stressed that this song is “very personal” for her and added: “It is very important to this story to be learned by as many people as possible in our country and beyond.”
Here are the lyrics of the song:
When strangers are coming…
They come to your house,
They kill you all
and say,
We’re not guilty
not guilty.
Where is your mind?
Humanity cries.
You think you are gods.
But everyone dies.
Don’t swallow my soul.
Our souls
Jamala performs at the Eurovision Song Contest.
The Jamala’s song created controversy even before the Eurovision Contest started. Perhaps no participant in the history of the Contest has been discussed so vividly by politicians of several countries. For example Vadim Dengin, the first deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma, expressed the hope that the administration of the competition would not allow Jamala to take part because of “politicization” of the song “1944”. The State Duma discussed the option for Russia to refuse to participate in the competition in the case if Jamala still goes there.
The results of the competition became the most discussed subject in Russia. State controlled TV in their new coverage presented organizers of Eurovision Contest as a bunch of crooked enemies of Russia. In their opinion nobody could doubt the obvious supremacy of Lazarev’s performance.
A correspondent of Radio Liberty asked several people in Moscow Red Square what do they think about the Eurovision controversy. Here is the video depicting their answers:
http://world.einnews.com/article/326364672/mFsbmr5eNadxXvXp
Russian Internet presented a lot of really extreme opinions. Here is a screenshot of a comment to the fact that Israeli professionals’ jury gave all their votes to Jamala. This screenshot was copied by many Russian websites:
Here is the translation of the screenshot:
“It is too early for kikes to rejoice. Time is coming when we, Russians, will make them a real Holocaust. We’ll be killing every Jewish bastard everywhere. And the fucking Israel will be set on fire and will be turned into ruins. It will happen very soon and it will be worse than Auschwitz.”
It’s interesting that Jamala’s victory was not a surprise for many professional music critics, including Russian ones. In particular, a prominent Russian music critic Arthur Gasparyan wrote long before the end of the competition: “I came to the conclusion that the best number in the Eurovision this year – the best song, best vocal performance and in general the best show is presented by Jamala.” Gasparyan has also pointed out that in his opinion none of the professional jury members would be able not to award Jamala first place.
The critic happened to be wrong. None of members of Russian jury had voted for Jamala. Russian TV audience though gave to the Tatar singer 10 out of 12 possible points. Of course the names of the members of the jury, unlike the names of the voted audience, are very well known to authorities and their voting could influence their professional future.
It raises a question: who was politically motivated: Eurovision organizers or members of the Russian official jury?
