On the Internet you can find a statement that composer Vladimir Shainsky stole the music for a popular children's song, and its original was the Nazi anthem. We checked whether such posts are true.
As stated in publications, it was recently discovered that the melody of the children’s song “Chunga-Changa” from the cartoon “Katerok” (1970) completely coincides with the marching anthem of the 3rd SS Panzer Division “Totenkopf”. To prove this, readers are invited to listen to the second work. Since Vladimir Shainsky is officially considered the creator of the music for the song, it is assumed that he appropriated the melody. Some sources clarify that the Nazi anthem was written by Mikhail Mikhalkov, the brother of the co-author of the words of the USSR anthem, Sergei Mikhalkov, who at one time secretly served in the troops of the Third Reich.
This statement became especially popular in YouTube (one of the videos about alleged plagiarism was watched 358,000 times), this information was also actively shared in X, Facebook, "VKontakte", "Odnoklassniki", on some educational sites and music portals.
How told in an interview with Shainsky’s co-author, poet Yuri Entin, the composer composed the melody of the song “Chunga-Changa” very quickly, but it took two months to select the name of the island. For more than half a century, no noticeable doubts have arisen about Shainsky’s authorship - moreover, the composer himself in 2006 was going to sue the Italian group OZZ, which in its composition 01, in his opinion, copied the melody from a Soviet children's song.
At the same time, the division's anthem from viral publications is not similar in style to marching songs - at least in the chorus. It's not a military man you can hear there march, but some kind of circus, comic motive. Words became an even more expressive means of conveying the mood in this song. According to transcripts text posted on the Internet, the lyrical hero sings: “My rod is not old and not small,” “My rod, girl, come to me // Please sit down,” “Officers and soldiers drink schnapps and a lot of tomatoes.”
Marches and other music used by the SS Death's Head Division have been released on CD. In the collection you can find a dozen and a half compositions that were performed in this unit during the Second World War. Among them There is serious and relatively funny melody, but not a single vulgar song, even slightly compositionally reminiscent of a viral march.
Where did this strange composition - a twin of the Soviet hit - come from? It is no coincidence that claims that this is exactly what the march of the Third Reich Panzer Division sounded like appear on the Internet only at the turn of the 2000s and 2010s. In 2008 it was released comedy "Hitler is kaput!" starring Pavel Derevyanko and Anna Semenovich. Not all critics received it favorably—it unfolded in Russian society. controversy about how ethical it is for an entertainment film to touch on sensitive topics related to World War II (for example, the theme of concentration camps). In the first episode In the film, German soldiers lead partisan Rabinovich, performed by Mikhail Galustyan, to be shot to the music of that same supposed march of the “Totenkopf” division. And, unlike the case with the OZZ group, the filmmakers did not hide the real author: in the final credits it is directly stated that this is a parody arrangement by performer Sanchez of the song “Chunga-Changa” authored by Shainsky.
Thus, it was not Vladimir Shainsky who used the melody of a German march when creating a Soviet children's song, but, on the contrary, a comic marching song was written half a century after the end of World War II based on his hit.
As for the story of Mikhail Mikhalkov, which often accompanies allegations of plagiarism, it is much more complicated and is entirely based on his own evidence. In the 1990s, World War II veteran and writer Mikhalkov published book “In the labyrinths of mortal risk,” where he talked about his adventures in the German rear during the war. For a long time, his perfect knowledge of the German language allegedly helped him impersonate Nazi officers, learn valuable intelligence information, and even marry the daughter of a Swiss millionaire. In particular, Mikhalkov claimed, he killed the captain of the SS division “Totenkopf”, and then appropriated his uniform. Having unexpectedly become the commander of a tank company, the Soviet military man allegedly wrote a marching song for tank crews with the words “Where Hitler is, there is victory” - and the SS men famously sang it. After the war, Mikhalkov spent several years in a Soviet prison, where, however, he obtained information useful for the USSR authorities from communication with other prisoners. Autobiography and later interview Mikhalkov (he died in 2006) on this topic is full of fantastic details, and many of them do not fit with each other. It is not possible to verify the facts about Mikhalkov’s German adventures, including the story about the anthem, although, for example, in the photograph that is often accompanied publications about him, in fact the Sturmbannführer is depicted Helmut Schreiber. But it is obvious that after the parody song from the film “Hitler Kaput!” took on a life of its own on the Internet and began to acquire legends; they were intertwined with a story told by the brother of the co-author of the Soviet anthem.
Cover photo: still from the film “Katerok” from the Soyuzmultfilm studio
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