In 1927, the British government reacted sharply to Soviet support for the Kuomintang (People's Party) in China. Later it turned out that this political force was not at all another world communist movement, and there was especially nothing to argue about, at least with the British, but the reason for the conflict nevertheless arose. The harsh words contained in a note signed by Austin Chamberlain, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the British Empire , outraged the Soviet leadership. Her tone was really harsh, and although the British did not have real possibilities for intervention, the Soviet people did not become silent.
Nothing brings together so much as a common external enemy. Everyone rallied under the slogan “Our answer to Chamberlain”: shepherds from sky-high pastures, and Uzbek cotton growers, and steel makers, and builders of the Dnieper hydroelectric station, in general, all working people of the world's first proletarian state. Every sheep grown, cooked a pood of cast iron, a loaf baked at a bakery or a nut screwed in a steam locomotive was not just a production achievement. This was our answer to Chamberlain, an arrogant arrogant lord in a tuxedo and with a monocle, arrogantly looking at the working people of Soviet Russia and, obviously, despising the English proletarians.
Apparently, the British minister himself did not suspect the abnormal popularity of his own name on one sixth of the land. It was full of matchboxes, posters, leaflets and other products of the Soviet propaganda propaganda, and the caricature of Joseph Austin scaredly shied from powerful fists, cookies, air squadrons, steam locomotives, Red Army bayonets, sheaves of wheat and fat herds of cows. That was our answer to Chamberlain, and if he knew that his ill-fated note would cause such a massive enthusiasm, he would surely refuse the very thought of it.
A politician died in 1937, and his name would have long been forgotten in our country, like other sunlit luminaries of the British royal political firmament. Today, few people remember Baldwin, Lloyd George or Macmillan, but our answer to Chamberlain was remembered, and, apparently, this expression was included in the number of winged phrases of the Russian language forever. This means a decisive rebuff, sometimes ironically, and sometimes seriously.
Many have already forgotten, while others never knew about political conflicts in the second half of the twenties. Today, few will appreciate the underlying humor contained in the workers ’response to the British lord, as well as in the hundreds of warnings made by the Chinese government in the fifties to the United States, each of which was“ last and serious ”. But there is a rock band called "Response to Chamberlain." The songs of this collective have nothing to do with the politics of the first post-revolutionary decade, but they are quite interesting in all other respects, comparing favorably with pop-music that has got its teeth on edge. “Bullets”, “Aty-bats”, “In Heaven”, “Tramp - Thunder”, “Anyway” - these and other compositions are worth listening to for lovers of landscape rock. “Answer to Chamberlain” - a group from Bryansk. She is already a good one and a half decades, today she is becoming popular throughout the post-Soviet space. Well, the answer was a little late, but still, in a good hour!