Zhuravli

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Zhuravli (English: The Cranes) is one of the most famous Russian songs to come out of World War II.

The Dagestani poet Rasul Gamzatov, when visiting Hiroshima, was impressed by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and the monument to Sadako Sasaki. The memory of paper cranes made by the girl haunted him for months and inspired him to write a poem starting with the now famous lines: "It seems to me sometimes that our soldiers That were not to return from fields of gore Did not lie down into their beds of honour But turned into a bevy of white cranes..." (This explanation seems to be a claim not supported by any evidence, though.)

The poem's publication in the journal Novy Mir caught the attention of Mark Bernes who revised the lyrics and asked Yan Frenkel to compose the music. Bernes's new song premiered in 1969 and has since become one of the best known Russian-language songs all over the world.

In the aftermath, white cranes have become associated with dead soldiers, so much so that a range of WWII memorials in the former Soviet Union feature the image of flying cranes and, in several instances, even the lines from the song.