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and he could not pass as a Red Army officer as he was wearing civilian clothes. Thus, Chuikov shoved him into a closet just before the delegate entered the room. While he remained there for most of the conference, he eventually lapsed into unconsciousness from a lack of air, collapsing out of the closet and into the room just as the delegates were preparing to leave, embarrassing
Chuikov and astonishing the Germans.
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to negotiate their surrender following Hitler's suicide, Chuikov had several uniformed war correspondents pretend to be members of his general staff in order to appear more professional and intimidating at the negotiations. But
Blanter was also meeting with Chuikov at the time the delegation arrived
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Blanter wrote several other highly popular wartime songs. His 1945 song, "The Enemy Burned Down His Home", about a soldier who returns from the front to find his entire family dead, became controversial when the authorities deemed it too pessimistic and banned its performance; it was performed for
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Blanter's first songs were composed in the 1920s. At the time, he wrote light dance and jazz music, including "John Gray" (1923), a foxtrot that became a major hit. In the 1930s, as Soviet culture grew more ideologically strict, Blanter shifted toward writing Soviet propaganda songs. He emerged as
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Blanter's postwar songs include "The
Migratory Birds Are Flying" (1949), a patriotic Soviet song in which the narrator watches migratory birds fly away and asserts that he can think of no better place to be than the Motherland, and "Dark-Eyed Cossack Girl"
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Other notable
Blanter songs from that period include "Youth" (1937), a cheerful marching song asserting that "right now, everyone is young in our young, beautiful country"; "Stalin Is Our Battle-Glory" (1937), a widely performed hymn to
412:, Blanter plays a small role and is portrayed by Boris Schwarzmann. In the film, he is stuffed into the closet of Vasily Chuikov's office, who is in a rush to meet the Nazi general, Hans Krebs.
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published a request for thousands of Soviet girls to go to work in the far east of the county, to help construct military defences. Blanter was commissioned to write the highly-popular operetta
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28 January] 1903 – 27 September 1990) was a Soviet composer, and one of the most prominent composers of popular songs and film music in the
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Blanter accompanied the Red Army to Berlin in early 1945. He was commissioned by Stalin to compose a symphony about the capture of Berlin. However, when
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Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle: The
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as well as taken up by operatic companies throughout the country.
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to celebrate the initiative: the premiere took place at
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as an inspiration to defend one's land from the enemy.
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282:Hans Krebs
109:Occupation
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382:Petrograd
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257:In 1937,
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409:Downfall
397:Red Army
372:Ayn Rand
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197:Kursk
548:ISBN
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