Death of the bear lyrics

The balalaika rings silent from Minsk to Red Square

The cortege assembles to bury the bear

Nadia Rostropovich looks on in despair

With Irina, Catharina and Olga

And quietly remembering her brother Ivan

Shot in the back in Afghanistan

The Stalinist purges, the snowy white grave

That claimed Boris, Dimitri and Igor

She remembered how proud she cheered with the crowd

When Yuri Gagarin sailed over the clouds

Nadia and Ivan shouted aloud

We put the first man in space

But that was before the feared KGB

Put a question mark over her own loyalty

To keep an eye on her comrades one two and three

Irina, Catharina and Olga

And poor uncle Vlad' whom the Doc declared mad

For refusing to leave his beloved Leningrad

She stood in the doorway tearful and sad

When they frog-marched him of to the Gulag

He took a last look at his own native hills

Where grew the red dogwoods and wild daffodils

The look on his face was haunting her still

Comrade Nadia Rostropovich

Sometimes alone she'd think of the West

Ladies with opals adorning their breast

Park Avenue poseurs who behave like the Tsar

With silver coke spoons for their caviar

She'd reflect back to when she'd just turned ten

And faithfully subscribed to fair play for all men

But seventy odd years of Bolshevik dreams

Had worn down her pride and left her no means

To cope with her own disillusions

If Trotsky and Engels saw the Dachas and Zils

The Politburo boys with their hands in the till

The bear was long dead before he got ill

Was it the cure or was it the fever?

No more reds under beds to freak out the Feds

A defunct Superpower in tatters and shreds

The marks left by Karl leave them queuing for bread

In the Caucasus, Baltic and Urals