Despite all the triumphalism that has been built around Victory Day in recent decades, there are things I continue to love. One of them is the wartime songs by Mark Bernes. One of my favorites is “Where Does the Homeland Begin,” which plays over the credits of the four-part film “The Shield and the Sword” about the Russian intelligence officer Alexander Belov / Johann Weiss.
Incidentally, the film itself is also one of my favorite war movies. Yes, in some ways it can be considered propaganda, and not all episodes made sense to me even as a child, but I still love it madly and rewatch it every few years. The book on which it is based, on the one hand, reveals the characters better, but on the other hand, it’s quite heavy and tedious. The film turned out much better. And it was the first film in which the very young Oleg Yankovsky starred, by the way.
In modern Russia, one of Mark Bernes’ songs, “Do the Russians Want War,” has been banned. This says much more about the memory of real history than all the showy veterans and parades.
And the song “Where Does the Homeland Begin” remains one of the best to this day and is constantly playing on my playlist.
Here is that song in the closing scenes of the first episode of the film:
