Poems Where Hitler's Name Was Replaced with Putin's

In a year when 'Gennady Rakitin' published poems praising Vladimir Putin, the 'superpower' status of Russia, and describing the war against Ukraine, he became very popular among Kremlin supporters and even received literary awards. It has recently been revealed that this account is a satirical anti-war project by Kremlin opponents. Who is 'Gennady Rakitin'? The account named 'Gennady Rakitin', supposedly belonging to a 49-year-old teacher, a graduate of the Moscow University Faculty of Literature and an amateur poet supporting the Kremlin, was opened last summer on the Russian social network VKontakte. It is said that the only two existing photos of him were created with artificial intelligence, depicting him as an 'intellectual Russian in a village on the outskirts of Moscow'. This account has published a total of 18 poems mainly about the war, accompanied by photos of Vladimir Putin and images containing the letter Z (which has become a symbol of Russia's extensive military invasion of Ukraine). At the height of 'Gennady Rakitin's' fame, over two thousand people followed the account, including 97 State Duma representatives and 28 Russian senators, Vladimir Putin's cultural advisor, and several war reporters. Nikita Mikhalkov, a famous pro-Kremlin director, shared these poems on his account with over 100,000 followers. Last month, at the 18th 'National Patriotic Literature Competition', Gennady Rakitin was awarded an honorary diploma as 'the best poet about the defenders of Russia'. The magazine 'Moscow' had selected one of his poems as a nominee for the literary competition 'Patriotic White Poetry'. What is 'Putinism' and does it help Putin remain in power? In recent days, Andrei Zakharov, a Russian journalist residing in Germany, acknowledged in interviews with various anti-Kremlin media that 'Gennady Rakitin' is a collective project of 'several Russian citizens opposed to the war', whose names will not be disclosed for their safety. He added that these 'friends' worked on this project in their spare time but were tired of the 'toxic and suffocating propaganda atmosphere'. According to him, 'Gennady Rakitin' has often been invited as a special guest to government events, and 'we couldn't keep finding excuses for his absence'. The 17 poems published on the 'Gennady Rakitin' account belong to poets from the 1930s and 1940s who supported the Nazi regime, translated 'almost word for word' from German to Russian, with only the name 'Germany' replaced by 'Russia'. The original German texts of these poems have now also been published. The poem 'Leader', praising Vladimir Putin, which is one of the most popular poems of 'Gennady Rakitin', is a translation of the poem 'Führer' by Eberhard Müller, a staunch follower of Adolf Hitler. The last poem on the 'Rakitin' account mocks the Z poems and ultimately says 'no' to war. An anti-war demonstration in Germany occurred a few weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. According to Andrei Zakharov, this initiative arose after they realized, by studying poems collected and published by Margarita Simonyan, editor of RT and a key Kremlin propagandist last spring, that these poems 'have no difference from the poems of the Nazi era'. The goal was to show the readers of the Z poems that what Kremlin political propaganda calls 'a holy war to cleanse Ukraine of Nazism' is a massive forgery and distortion. They believe 'the Kremlin's ideology is no different from the ideology of Nazi Germany, and its supporters, under the slogan of fighting Nazism, are just like the Nazis'. In a year of 'Gennady Rakitin's' activity, no one among his supporters in Russia realized that this account was fake. The initiators have called this project 'an action in the fight against war' and say they are currently working on another project with the same goal.