Serafim Tulikov - A Promising Composer

A Promising Composer

During the mid-1940s Serafim Tulikov composed a range of melodious lyrical-patriotic songs which became quite popular, for instance, "The Kursk Nightingale" ("Курский соловей"), with lyrics by Olga Fadeeva. The majority of these songs celebrated the return of peaceful life to war-torn Russia. Tulikov was also heavily influenced by the post-war trend in Soviet popular music towards increasingly archaic and folkloristic imagery and melodic formulas, for instance, in songs such as "They have come for a sojourn" ("Приезжали на побывку")(lyrics by Yakov Belinsky), "Moscow the Capital" ("Москва-столица"), and "Blossom, my Homeland!" ("Цвети, наш край")(lyrics by Sergei Vasiliev).

National fame came to Tulikov in 1947, when he composed "We Are for Peace" ("Мы - за мир!"), with lyrics by Alexander Zharov, a marching song meant to mobilize the masses all over the world on behalf of the USSR-led effort to prevent the escalation of international tensions during the early phase of the Cold War. The song's refrain - "We are for peace! And we will carry this song through all corners of the earth - let it resonate in the hearts of humanity!" - became legendary. In 1951, Tulikov composed "March of the Soviet Youth" ("Марш советской молодежи") (lyrics by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky) which received the First Prize at the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students held in East Berlin. This march continued and developed the pattern established by the composer in "We Are for Peace!"; unbridled optimism, mass-mobilizing appeal, and sunny imagery. The initial version of the "March of the Soviet Youth" contained the following words: "Our youth carry love for their Great Leader in their hearts! Stalin is leading us into the future! The path he has chosen for us is the right one!" After Nikita Khrushchev's "de-Stalinization" campaign in 1956, these words were duly replaced.

Throughout most the 1950s, Tulikov continued to compose for all sorts of official ideological occasions, including Communist Party of the Soviet Union congresses, youth festivals, and professional conventions. Tulikov's style of optimism found its expression in such songs as "This is Us, the Youth!" ("Это мы, молодежь")(lyrics by Lev Oshanin), written on the occasion of the 5th World Festival of Youth and Students held in Warsaw in 1955, "My Beloved Motherland" ("Родина любимая моя") (lyrics by Andrei Dostal), dedicated to the 40th Anniversary of the October Revolution in 1957. With time, Tulikov's style of mass-marching songs had undergone some substantial changes. In the beginning his marches were dynamic and energetic, strongly influenced by the mass songs of Isaak Dunayevsky, but by the late 1950s, Tulikov's marches became more solemn, more static and more hymnal, as in "My Beloved Motherland".

In his more lyrical songs of his early career, Tulikov developed his style of heartfelt and quiet melodies. Such songs include "My Love, my Life" ("Жизнь моя, любовь моя") (lyrics by Anton Prishelets), "I Love You, my Sea" ("Я люблю тебя, море") (lyrics by Anatoly Salnikov), "Next to the Moscow River" ("Над Москвою-рекой") (lyrics by Lev Kondyrev), and "Golden Altai" ("Алтай золотой") (lyrics by Tsezar Solodar). The composer also made his contribution to a sub-genre of the Soviet song, the army song. He authored a song dedicated to the Soviet Pacific Fleet, "Next to the Bleak Kuriles" ("Над серой Курильской грядою") (lyrics by Nikolai Bukin), a work which combined elements of heroic devotion to the Motherland with pensiveness and longing for the far-away family and its comforts.

In reflecting on the sources of inspiration for his songs, Serafim Tulikov later confessed that it came mostly from the reminiscences of his homeland, Kaluga, and most of the elements within the songs were present in Kaluga. In the early 1960s, Tulikov would write a song dedicated to Kaluga, properly entitled "The Town of My Youth" ("Город юности моей") (lyrics by Mikhail Pliatskovsky), a sweet and unassuming yet sincere and heartfelt song.

During Khrushchev's "Virgin Soils" campaign of bringing the vast steppes of Kazakhstan and South Siberia into agricultural use, Tulikov composed another well known song, "Komsomol's Instruction" ("Комсомольская путевка") (lyrics by Tsezar Solodar), which declared: "On the go! On the go! The Komsomol has issued an instruction! And the merry song is waiting for us at the threshold, calling us forward!"