"Zhuravli", first performed in 1969, is one of the most famous Russian songs about World War II.
Inspiration
The Dagestani poet Rasul Gamzatov, when visiting Hiroshima, was impressed by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and its monument to Sadako Sasaki, a girl who contracted leukemia as a result of the radioactive contamination of the city. Following Japanese traditions, she constructed one thousand paper cranes, hoping that this might save her life. The memory of paper cranes folded by this girl—a girl who to this day serves as one symbol of the innocent victims of war—haunted Gamzatov for months and inspired him to write a poem starting with the now famous lines:
"I sometimes feel that the soldiers Who have not returned from the bloody fields Never lied down to earth But turned into white cranes..."
The poem's publication in the journal Novy Mir caught the attention of the famous actor and crooner Mark Bernes who revised the lyrics and asked Yan Frenkel to compose the music. When Frenkel first played his new song, Bernes cried because he felt that this song was about his own fate: "There is a small empty spot in the crane flock. Maybe it is reserved for me. One day I will join them, and from the skies I will call on all of you whom I had left on earth." The song was recorded from the first attempt on 9 July 1969. Bernes died on 16 August 1969, about five weeks after recording the song, and the recording was played at his funeral. Later on, "Zhuravli" would most often be performed by Joseph Kobzon. According to Frenkel, "Cranes" was Bernes' last record, his "true swan song."
Legacy
"Cranes" became a symbol of the fallen soldiers of World War II. So much so that a range of World War II memorials in the former Soviet Union feature the image of flying cranes and, in several instances, even verses of the song, e.g., the Cranes Memorial of St. Petersburg. Today, "Cranes" is still one of the most popular war songs in Russia. Since 1986, every 22 October, the Russian republic of Dagestan, the birthplace of the poet Rasul Gamzatov, holds "The White Cranes' Festival." In 1995, fifty years after the defeat of the Nazis, Russia released a stamp in memory of the fallen of World War II. The stamp depicts flying cranes against the background of the Kremlin's War Memorial to the Unknown Soldier. In 2005, a Russian Veterans Memorial with an image of three white cranes and four lines of the poem Cranes in Russian and English was erected in Plummer Park, West Hollywood, Los Angeles County, California, United States. The cost of the 9-tonne monument was largely covered by the Los Angeles Association of Veterans of World War II, a group of Russian-speaking veterans. Local ceremonies to commemorate the end of the WWII are regularly held on the Victory Day in May.
Covers and use in other media
in 1977 the very famous greek poet, Giannis Ritsos, translated this poem in Greek and included it in his poetic collection "11 Russian folk songs". The Greek version of the poem is sung by Margarita Zorbala and it is called "Άσπροι Γερανοί"
