July 09, 2024

A Poetic Prank on Putinists


A Poetic Prank on Putinists
Not quite hand-written. The Russian Life files.

A VKontakte account that became popular in the summer of 2023 for publishing nationalistic poems under the alias "Gennady Rakitin" was revealed to have been a hoax, publishing translations of Nazi verses. Over 100 State Duma members were following this "poet," who wrote about Russia's war on Ukraine, fallen PMC soldiers, the Fatherland, and Vladimir Putin. 

One poem called "Leader," subtitled "For Russia. For Putin.," was actually a translation of the poem "Führer" by Nazi dramatist Eberhard Wolfgang Möller. The poem concludes: "Look: the trees are ablaze with dawn / The sun of your immortality rises!"

Poems such as this were entered in "Z poetry" competitions and were shared by larger pro-war accounts. "Gennady" revealed himself to be a prank on June 28 with a short, lewd verse of his own

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