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"Through Valleys and Over Hills" (Russian: По долинам и по взгорьям) or "Through Forests and Over Hills" (Serbo-Croatian: По шумама и горама, romanized: Po šumama i gorama), also known as the "Partisan's Song", is a popular Red Army song from the Russian Civil War.
Vladimir Gilyarovsky wrote the poem "From the Taiga, the Deep Taiga" in 1915 during World War I dedicated to the Siberian Riflemen, with text similar to the well-known version.[3] Gilyarovsky's poem was published that year in several corpuses of Great War's soldiers' songs,[4] and in the post-Soviet era it became known as the March of the Siberian Riflemen.[5]
After the end of the Russian Civil War, the song was popular within the Soviet Union. Later, during World War II, it resurged in popularity among anti-fascist partisan fighters, most prominently among Yugoslav and Soviet partisans.[citation needed]
The song entered the official canon of Soviet songs when the director of the Red Army choirAleksandr Aleksandrov, together with the poet Sergei Alymov [ru], introduced the song into the choir repertoire. The words of the song were attributed to Alymov. The author of the melody was named as Ilya Aturov, commander of a Red Army unit, from whom Aleksandrov heard the melody of the song. The Red Army choir rendition was distributed on phonograph records. In 1934, a letter from veterans of the Russian Civil War in the Far East was published in the Izvestia central newspaper, naming Pyotr Parfyonov [ru] as the original author. Later that year, Parfyonov recalled the story of the creation of the song in the Krasnoarmeyets–Krasnoflotets (lit.'Red Army man and Red Fleet man') magazine. In this article, Parfyonov wrote that he borrowed the melody from his earlier 1914 song Na Suchane (lit.'On the Suchan'), and penned the verses to Po dolinam i po vzgoriam after the Red takeover of Vladivostok in early 1920. However, he was arrested in 1935 and executed in 1937 as part of the Great Purge.[6] The song continued to be published attributed to Alymov and Aturov until the Supreme Court of the Russian SFSR confirmed Parfyonov's authorship in 1962.[7][3]
Decades after the end of the Russian Civil War, White émigré accounts were published that included the lyrics to a White variation of the song, the March of the Drozdovites, claimed to have been written by White colonel Pyotr Batorin in commemoration of the Jassy-Don March. These accounts claimed that the composer Dmitry Pokrass was ordered to write the tune of the march by Colonel Anton Turkul during the White occupation of Kharkov in 1919.[8]
Memorial plaque to Zora and her brother Mirko Kovačević, the author of this version of the song, who later died as one of the most experienced 1st Split Partisan Detachment members; Obilićevo, Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina (their hometown)
Hem omdim el mul gesher haNahar
she elav ei pa'am tza'ad
gdud shel elef partizanim
ve echad yakar la'ad
gdud shel elef partizanim
ve echad yakar la'ad
She stood in front of the river bridge,
Which he stepped on yesterday
A battalion of a thousand partisans
And one most precious of all.
A battalion of a thousand partisans
And one most precious of all.
His face froze in the river wind
But his heart is still burning,
A thousand girls he knew
And one more beautiful.
A thousand girls he knew
And one more beautiful.
The field across the river
Barren as if guilty,
A thousand tombstones stand there
And one of them without a name
A thousand tombstones stand there
And one of them without a name
Spring melting of ice in the river
And a variety of fascinating colours,
A thousand children sing it
And one little boy is silent.
A thousand children sing it
And one little boy is silent.
They stand in front of the river bridge
On which a battalion of a thousand partisans
A battalion of a thousand partisans
And one precious forever.
A battalion of a thousand partisans
And one precious forever.
^Strophes marked in italics were also sung during World War II, but usually do not appear in orchestral versions recorded later. The latter italic strophe (sixth from the top) was typically replaced by the fourth strophe instead.
^Alternatively in Serbo-Croatian: Neka znade / Нека знаде, lit. 'Let [them] know'
^Alternatively in Serbo-Croatian: da će kod nas slomit' vrat / да ће код нас сломит' врат, lit. 'That they will have their necks broken here'
^Vyzgo-Ivanova, I. M. (1987). Межнациональные связи в советской музыкальной культуре: сборник статей [International relations in Soviet musical culture: a collection of articles] (in Russian). Leningrad: Russian Conservatory. p. 49.
^ abMuravlyov, Anatoly (December 2007). "Судьба автора популярной песни" [The fate of the author of a popular song]. Sibirskiye Ogni (in Russian) (12).
