This Truckfighter person has to be the best of all the Sovietwave anthologists online. It’s the choice of songs and mixes and moods first and foremost, but the collection of accompanying images from Soviet and post-Soviet cities… Wow! Any Truckfighter offering is an experience. It’s like being 12 years old and getting a new issue of National Geographic. A travelogue. A fantasy.

I never would have imagined that I’d have come to appreciate and enjoy this music the way I do. Maybe it’s a question of coming to appreciate art for the sake of the art, and not for how I would appear to others partaking in something specific to a pose or a costume or an assumed identity. Letting go of how it might appear… that’s the door, isn’t it? The world opens when you rid yourself of that concern.

This is the vibe of the day though.

It is melancholic for sure. It’s not that there is a lack of joy in daily life. That would’t be further from the truth. There is joy, almost a defiant joy, despite all the reasons to be sad, or frightened. It all exists simultaneously but a person has to take the effort to draw the joy to the forefront. These efforts are revolutionary acts. Joy despite oppression and any hardship is what frightens the powerful class the most. It’s the thing that they’ve never been able to steal despite their very hardest efforts. They torture themselves with the strain of trying to steal this very last thing.

But make no mistake, this is a very serious world and it always has been. There will always be horror and grief to contend with. It’s part of living.

In any event, the comments sections on these Sovietwave anthologies can be interesting. This comment in particular is not to be missed. It’s from 1964 and is no less true, especially in consideration of our past administration here in America establishing a “Space Force” before there is even a viable way to mine the treasures of space. These are ridiculous men with ridiculous dreams and aspirations. They could even be called tragic were they not so horrible.

“Yes. I once thought of that. My family is waiting for me there. But even if I fled to the United States, I would once again find myself creating weapons of mass murder. In the end, it doesn’t matter where I go. I am still a weapons scientist. To be honest with you, I am tired. Every day, I help create things that should never be used – things that should never have existed in the first place. Every day, without sleep. Without a word of praise from others. And my creations do not even benefit mankind. They are merely the tools of politicians. All I wanted to do was build space rockets. But it was not to be. The space race between America and Russia became the prey of the politicians. The space race and the arms race are one and the same. Missiles, rockets… what’s the difference? Scientists are always being used. Please watch over my family.” (Nikolai Stepanovich Sokolov, Weapon Scientist, 1964)