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Under the rule of Brezhnev and Kosygin, a grim new strain has entered into the Russian ballad. Some recent songs describe the insane asylums where more and more dissenters, whose "crimes" do not qualify for prosecution under Soviet law, are imprisoned with genuinely sick people. For example, Vladimir Vysotsky, a popular balladeer, has composed a song called The Psychiatric Lyric. He sings of the silent, incurable lunatics who stare at the terrified political prisoner as he lies in the ward. "They are madmen of all kinds, quiet ones, dirty ones—starved and beaten as part of their cure. If only Dostoevsky, in his House of the Dead, could describe them as they stand, beating their heads against the wall." The song ends:
If only Gogol could learn of our life of grief.
Even Gogol would gaze on it
In utter disbelief.