A Run For It (Побег на рывок)

"A Run For It", Vladimir Vysotsky, USSR, 1977

This is perhaps Vysotsky's greatest song: the 6-minute long story of a failed jailbreak. "A Run For It" delivers unrivaled storytelling, symbolism, imagery, immersion, and artistic value.

Throughout the song, certain themes are repeated. One is the theme of religious imagery - the shooters "bless with the sign of the lead" (shoot prisoners down) in a perversion of the sign of the cross. The narrator's partner is killed "in a cross". Another theme is the hounds that chase after the narrator, lick his partner's brains up, and tear off half of a runaway's face. All the while, Vysotsky builds a details setting and story.

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A quick summary of the song is as follows: the narrator of the song recounts a failed, "arrogant, stupid, in broad daylight" attempt to escape from some prison. He and a partner run through the snow as the guards quickly pull themselves together and begin shooting, as well as deploying the hounds. The effort is quickly shown to be a losing one, and there's a sense of hopelessness to the attempt: "above, from the towers, all is predetermined". The narrator describes the scene of the prisoners dying to the gunshots in an almost poetic manner.

The narrator calls out to his partner, asking him his name and what he's in for, but the partner is shot down. The narrator, too preoccupied with the run, doesn't notice this, and asks why he's fallen behind: the partner, of course, is "on his side, and he's spread his brains flat".

The narrator is weakened: he's pierced by the cold and perhaps hit with a rifle - he gets down and holds onto the rocks, as the hounds have begun to close in: "when the dogs are close, don't run!". The hounds lick the brains of his dead partner and scatter off.

The narrator gets up, and the guards are already there waiting for him - his escape has failed. They kick a corpse (his partner's corpse?) and express frustration: they get half a ruble for a capture, but nothing for a kill. The living prisoners and the guards return to the prison.

The narrator is rude to the guards and is beat mercilessly by the whole platoon as a result. He expresses how they frighten him with death in vain, as both life and death have him being beat: he fades back and forth between the two worlds.

There is an additional stanza that is not sung in this version of the song:

"And in that period - silence and snow
Even hares, even little bears, even moose...
And again I see myself escaping,
I see an untruth: as if it succeeded"

Afterwards, he swallows his pride and goes to "lick his wounds" in "so-lick-tary", but is unable to do so, and is left with scars.

The final parts are a bit abstract and I'm not quite sure how they fit into the story, or even what they necessarily mean: along the river, a hunter (or catcher) sends his hound after a runaway, whose fairy tale ends as he has half his face taken off. Some versions of the song end here, others (like this version) provide one final verse: everything is taken into the tubes, the faucets are covered up - at night they (who "they" is is unclear - the faucets? the prisoners?) only howl and whine. We are left with these final two powerful lines, both wrapping up the story of the narrator recounting the failed escape and giving us a message to remember:

"What's needed? One needs to rub salt in the wounds
To remember better - let them hurt!"

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"'...Why do I write so much about prisons and prisoners?'
Well, you asked the question wrongly: I wrote, we'll say. I continue to write and I can't say that I've completely dropped this subject. But I can say quite simply: since we're children of the war years, we grew up mostly in courtyards, then of course this subject could not pass us by. In this period there was longing, probably, - there was such а heap of variety (pop) songs that got stuck in everyone's heads, that there needed to be something else - a human intonation. Why did I write this? It can't be said, that this is about prisoners, prisoners, and so on. Probably, this was for me in that period the most understandable form of suffering - this kind: a person, who's been deprived of freedom (note: "deprivation of freedom" is the Russian term for "imprisonment"), deprived of his close ones and friends. Here, perhaps, because of this I wrote so much about this. I don't regret this because all these songs helped me in the search for a form, in the development of simplicity, a normal human conversational tone - in the search for her, at least. Is it not worth it? Do you think that it's not worth it at all to write about this?..."

[j.sandnikmutmann]

For the line “Крестом - в затылок, пояс, два плеча» would the use of “в“ here be in the accusative? as in, for instance, “они стреляли его в тело...в голову....и.т.д“