In Russian.
For freedom of the people of Finland
Vsevolod Rozdestvenski
The day when Soviet troops crossed the Finnish border
In gleam of bayonets and thunder of guns
came the harsh moment when we met, Suomi,
your war frenzy, the enemy face to face,
and the time when talking started only by lead.
Suomi, your salvation lives only within us,
only we bring liberation to the working people,
our breaths keep pace with Motherland
and we will never surrender it to the enemy.
The strongholds of Leningrad protect peace,
we don't let anyone to trample our garden,
and what was carried to the whole of world, to the ether by waves,
what Molotov said, it was said by the whole country!
Josif Koltunov
Finland, on the 30th of November, 1939
We arrived at that very moment
to the country that was waiting for us, —
to her roads and forests,
which stretched their hands towards us;
to her shining lakes;
to her rocky shores;
to her silent rugged hills,
with their tops gazing on us;
to the people of hers!
- How many years
they ever waited for us in a haze,
until the light came from the east
also into this northern country.
We arrived at that very moment
to the country that was waiting for us.
And I will remember for ever
the restless roar of streams,
the chains of hills and lines in woods,
to the country shut with bolts,
and the thunder of guns and smoke
over a silent young forest,
and then — the mine fields...
How the earth could have withstood this —
the eternal mother of toilers!
She would rise to curse,
she would throw gray boulders
onto the black hawks of war!
She would grab them, burn them with fire,
keep them from ever reaching daylight,
shut them in utter darkness,
and with thunder of our batteries
she would assault them
with all her unharnessed fury!
We arrived at that very moment
to the country that was waiting for us
and by passing a lonely guardpost,
that we approached from all sides,
to empty hamlets from where people
were evicted into the night by force, to walk
through icy water, insidiously,
by use of rifle, scourge and bayonet.
Still hot ashes fell there
onto a house burning in full flames.
One wished to weep at that moment,
to make tears to put down a scream.
And through thousands of marshes,
in pitch darkness following the track,
we went to far away region, forward,
into the forests of Suomi, into night, into the break of dawn.
Field army
Nikolai Volkov
December 1, 1939
An artillery volley clanged —
slanting flights of deaths.
To us the enemy only showed their backs,
dumping everything to hell.
And we followed its tracks
to northeast.
Like beans, it had sowed mines
along roadsides.
So we followed it without fighting
the whole night and again in the morning
When as black torches far away
stood the burning villages.
It had went to its fortification, to its house,
to its coffin in the middle of forests,
but we will break through, we go through,
sweeping everything to hell.
Aleksander Prokofiev
A march song
Let us sing, lads, how the death was seeking us,
and we went on forward,
how the rivers freezed and rocks shattered
on our victorious road.
Side by side along us stepped the bad weather,
Snowstorms, colds, snow...
So we, comrades, strike up a marching song
and with it we attack the enemy.
We clean the road there where no crow has cawed,
with the cold steel of bayonets,
so that the crooks would feel both cold and hot
in the squeeze of red regiments.
For the happiness of the country and in the name of the people
let us go there, where the snowstorm goes...
So we, comrades, strike up a marching song
and with it we attack the enemy.
As the colours, as the honour, the victory rushed
over all border lines.
Let us sing, lads, how the sky was darkened
by our rapid birds.
From the collection of poems "To the Glory of Motherland. Poems and songs of the Red Army and Navy" section "For the freedom of the people of Finland". State Publishing House "Artistic Literature", Leningrad, 1940. Translated by Pauli Kruhse from the Finnish translation by Lahja Huovila, 2010.
За свободу
финского народа (pdf, in Russian). Из коллекции Во славу
родины. Стихи
и песни о Красной
Армии и Военно-Морском
Флоте. 1940. Государственное
Издательство
"Художественная
Литература",
Ленинград.
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Finland in the Great Power politics, 1939-1940.
Finland in the Soviet Foreign policy, 1939-1940. Documents and other material of the People's Commissariat of the USSR for Foreign Affairs, and from other contemporary sources..