Egor Letov is a true genius of the perestroika of a bygone era. Despite the “endurance” of the lyrics of his songs, they remain relevant in our time. A very vivid example to substantiate this judgment is the composition “The State”, which is the “atom” of the album “Everything goes according to plan”.
This song reveals to the listener the absurdity and cruelty of being. From the first lines Letov speaks of the inaccessibility and illusory nature of freedom. It is limited by a “rusty bunker” and the door is “boarded up with a cross”. These comparisons are confirmed by domestic realities: we always fight with someone, even when the enemy does not storm our cities. The authorities need this atmosphere of a non-passing war, otherwise people will wonder why they live so poorly. To shift the focus from foreign policy tied to theft and blat, the government is actively developing a new conflict in order to savor it on television. This is a rusty bunker - a symbol of eternal siege, the game of which has long been outdated, so it appeared rust. The door boarded up with a cross from there is a symbol ... you yourself know why, because you live in a country where the rights of unbelievers are guaranteed less than others. Abstracting from the obvious meaning, which is better not to mention, we recall the most ancient version: the cross is a symbol of martyrdom. Every inhabitant of this bunker is a martyr by default.
The fundamental role in the text is played by the phrase: "Sweet gingerbread has dried up for a long time." She refers us to the old Russian proverb about "carrot and stick". He withered, therefore, remained to whip. This phenomenon reflects the essence of our state, both Soviet and present. Citizens are forced to live under oppression in eternal fear, hopelessness and silence.
A distinctive feature of the songs of the HROB is the personification of power exclusively through the military. People for her are just consumables, biomass, cannon fodder, which is fully confirmed by numerous historical facts:
The boot of my people
The foreman slows down shit ...
The lyrical hero has to live in the shadow of the basement, watching the horror of the ongoing chaos and arbitrariness. He builds around himself a kind of saving dystopia, urging the people to "kill the state within themselves." It is all-consuming like that of Hobbes or Machiavelli, so you should not go at it with a pitchfork and axes. The main thing is to destroy within oneself the servility to the authorities, the hypocritical compromise with them. Do not follow his lead, hating the illusory enemy and fighting with the mills, but seek your own path, if possible ignoring what is happening outside the truly free inner world.
The garbage can is a symbol of punk culture. In the text, this is a symbol of those who are objectionable, a place where the "scum of society" and, along with them, protest youth fall.
The hero of Letov realizes his powerlessness in front of the terrible, enormous and disfigured mechanism of the State. He is just a speck of dust, a silent shadow against him:
Doomed in advance to complete failure ...
But not everything is so deplorable. The lyrical hero tells us that only together can we resist this deceitful and rotten mechanism that destroys the country and society. His calls were then heard, the people "killed the state in themselves."
“A complete pit of enemies of the people” is the opposition the regime is cracking down on. The lyrical hero carefully covers them with a “dry leaf”, because nobody keeps counts of the mass graves, and they are buried in haste. For example, many residential buildings in the vicinity of the Gulag stand on the bones, and their inhabitants, raising dry leaves, more than once found nameless remains.
In the finale of the song, Letov militarily and persistently calls upon people who have not yet accepted the spiritual, moral, purifying revolution to still go after him and “kill the state within himself”.
