The Russian Defense Ministry has announced the formation of the “front-line creative brigade” to be sent to war
In mass culture, films such as Good Morning Vietnam have well illustrated how important music has been in armed conflicts. Listening to James Brown or Wilson Pickett instead of military marches changes the mood of those on the front lines quite a bit, right or wrong whether it’s the war they’re fighting. In this sense the Russian marketing is poor in technology but rich in ideas.
In these hours, the Russian Defense Ministry said it will deploy musicians and singers on the front lines of the war in Ukraine to boost troop morale. This was also stated by Tass, the country’s official press agency. A “creative brigade of frontline musicians” is expected to take shape this week and will also include circus performers. You may not see Jimi Hendrix-esque electric guitars with distortion boxes, but the government has launched a major campaign urging Russians to donate musical instruments to troops in order to boost morale. Moscow is even hiring “professional artists who have voluntarily entered military service.”
The aim is to keep “high morale, political and psychological (among) the participants in the special military operation”. Russian broadcaster RBC news reported that the brigade of musicians would include candidates mobilized under the recruitment campaign of Russian President Vladimir Putin for this specific objective.
Battlefields have always gone hand in hand with music, used as a means to motivate.
“Indeed,” he explains Music and War by Catherine Bateson, one of the few essays on the subject, “it is impossible not to remember military tunes when one thinks of warfare throughout history.” “Drums, fifes and trumpets punctuated parades, mobilisations, battle and naval tactics, advances, retreats, bivouacs and camp life”.
A choice in line with Russian strategic culture and tradition, characterized by few means, but a great deal of creativity. It is a widespread sharing in the national culture, an aspect also scientifically proven in Western medical therapies, that music and music therapy are able to profoundly change not only the mood and emotions of the listeners but the physical and mental state of those affected from a serious trauma, from common and even degenerative diseases, physical, psychological and psychiatric pathologies.
The effectiveness of music therapy is linked to the fact that music is so multifaceted that in our brain there is not a single area responsible for its perception. For this reason, the Russian government has decided to use this means of propaganda as well to influence its soldiers.
Not by chance iridology, discipline that uses the observation of the eye as a diagnostic tool has become an all-round scientific discipline during the Cold War thanks to the Russians of the Soviet Union. Even in that case: few means but a lot of creativity. As the US managed to create ever more powerful technologies, Soviet scientists amassed data on millions of people subjected to the regime. Thus, protected by military secrecy, they demonstrated that there was a precise correlation between organs, body parts and well-defined areas of the iris, mapping the diseases of the entire population.
According to British intelligence, the reason for the musicians’ deployment is due to low troop morale and motivational difficultiesaccentuated by “Very high number of victims, poor leadership on battlefields, wage problemsthe lack of equipment and ammunition and the lack of clarity about the objectives of the war”. But the information provided by the British is not verifiable. These days Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is reported to have visited frontline troops in Ukraine, he said Moscow: In a Telegram message, the Defense Ministry explained that Minister Shoigu had recently flown over the war zones, but this news too cannot be verified.
The war, between attacks and intense fighting, has become tougher every day and the electricity blackout has also reduced the possibility of heating up. Moscow launched 76 missiles on Friday, hitting 9 power stations, plunging much of Ukraine into darkness. Kiev said it intercepted 60 of them.
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