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n August 1989, the Scorpions performed at the Lenin Stadium in Moscow as part of the Music for Peace Festival. Weeks later, they wrote and composed The Wind of Change, one of the most successful ballads of all time, inspired by those two days of massive concerts. The first verses of the song refer to this when they say I follow the Moskva / Down to Gorky Park / Listening to the wind of change.
At that time, the world was on the verge of a sudden change. On November 9 of the same year, media pressure led West German television to broadcast a news report – previously transmitted incompletely by the regime's spokesman – announcing that the border between the two Germanys was immediately open to everyone. This caused an avalanche of citizens at the wall. People asked the guards to open the gates. Uncertainty grew and fueled the courage that allowed the absurdity dividing Berlin to be torn down sooner than expected. This closed a period marked by armed conflicts and authoritarian supremacy that had begun, in '36, with the uprising against republican Spain and the subsequent civil war.
"Catastrophe in Moscow! The giant Maksim Gorky has crashed! There were no survivors!" Later, De Saucin, in an interview, assured that she had heard all along that Toni – that's what she called her husband – had survived. And indeed he survived. The beloved passenger was Antoine de Saint-ExupéryA few days before the Francoist uprising, Maksim Gorky, the Soviet writer who gives his name to the park in the Scorpions' song, died. Gorky was also the name of the spectacular Russian aircraft (Tupolev ANT-20) that on May 18, 1935, was involved in a dramatic episode in the Moscow sky. The aircraft, during an exhibition flight, crashed after colliding with a smaller fighter plane and fell on the outskirts, a few meters from the station where, three days earlier, the first metro line had been inaugurated, which would become home to a large part of the population during the Nazi Luftwaffe bombings. That day, May 18, 1935, the crashed Tupolev was supposed to have a beloved passenger. When Consuelo de Saucin, the passenger's wife, learned of the accident, she was in a bar in Paris having a drink with friends. She heard the newspaper delivery man announcing a special edition: "Extra! Catastrophe in Moscow! The giant Maksim Gorky has crashed! There were no survivors!" Later, De Saucin, in an interview, assured that she had heard all along that Toni – that's what she called her husband – had survived. And indeed he survived. The beloved passenger was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and, this time, he had cheated death by moving his experiential flight with the crashed Tupolev forward by a few hours. Saint-Exupéry was in Moscow those days as a reporter for the newspaper Paris-Soir. That allowed him a more careful analysis of the different points of political tension of the moment.
Months later in the same year '35, the intrepid Saint-Exupéry was forced to make an emergency maneuver in the desert between Libya and Egypt. His commercial plane broke down in mid-flight, and the subsequent accident would be the prelude to the book he would write during his years of exile in the United States. The book was first published in 1943 in New York, now 75 years ago, and has ended up being the most translated in history –358 languages and dialects–. It is, of course, The Little Prince.
Saint-Exupéry was a tormented man who felt alone, as is evident at different moments in his work. He strived to recover the dignity of man, spiritual values, fraternity, and wanted to make people understand the need to abandon fruitless selfishness. He tried by all means, allegory after allegory, just like matryoshkas, the classic Russian wooden doll that is empty inside and hides a smaller doll, also empty, and which in turn hides another smaller and empty doll... Such was also the life of Saint-Exupéry; to be reborn after each accident and recover after each disappointment, until July 31, 1944, on a reconnaissance flight as a pilot for the Allied forces, his Lockheed P-38 Lightning plunged into the sea. In mid-2012, some manuscripts of The Little Prince that the author did not want to include in the definitive version of the book were located. Saint-Exupéry meticulously reviewed the words and refined them to their essence. And essential are, with each re-reading, the king's asteroid, the vain man's asteroid, the drunkard's, the businessman's and the lamplighter's, the geographer's, and Earth, where it seems that winds of change are blowing again. Hopefully, this will be the case and we can finally escape the eternal circle of matryoshkas.