Duran Duran: Careless Memories Meaning
Song Released: 1981
Careless Memories Lyrics
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Most early Duran Duran songs relate to Soviet and Communist history. This song is a reference to Nikita Khrushchev's revisionist 1956 speech to the Communist Party Congress, in which he denounced Josef Stalin, stunning communists worldwide.
"Fear hangs a plane of gunsmoke" is an allusion to Khrushchev's fabricated accusations of a red terror under Stalin. "Our room" is "our PARTY room", where party policy was decided. "Signs of love" is an ironic reference to his accusation of torture of dissidents by the secret service, the then GPU (later KGB). The walls that are crashing are the Kremlin walls.
Throughout the song Khrushchev's speech becomes increasingly paranoid - he addresses Stalin directly, a dead man, and asks whether he's expected to "follow" him. He pleads that he just wants to forget the Stalin era and usher in a new phase of revisionism and coexistence with the West.
"Careless Memory" means just that - Khrushchev's careless falsification of Soviet history, and his betrayal of Marxist Leninist principles.
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