Chizhik-Pyzhik

According to one urban legend, the rhyme refers to the students of the Imperial School of Jurisprudence, who frequented a pub belonging to the merchant Nefedov on the Fontanka Quay in Saint Petersburg.

[3] Several Russian classical composers, including Dmitri Shostakovich,[1] Sergei Prokofiev,[4] Isaak Dunayevsky[5] and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,[6] were inspired by "Chizhik-Pyzhik".

In 1994 in Saint Petersburg, one of the city's 1990s' yearly festivals of satire and humor Golden Ostap [ru] was held, bearing the name of a most popular main character of the 20 century Russian language Soviet humorous / satirical prose Ostap Bender, an ingenious conman mastermind from two filmed novels by Ilya Il'f and Evgeniy Petrov The 12 Chairs and The Little Golden Calf.

These over the years included the statue of Ostap Bender next to Arts Square, the memorial plaque to The Nose from Nicholai Gogol's eponymous story and the little siskin statue on the Fontanka, the latter suggested by a Saint Petersburg-born writer known since 1960s Andrei Bitov.

[7] These moves were supported by the municipal authorities of Saint Petersburg, and a bronze statue of Chizhik-Pyzhik[8] was installed just opposite the former School of Jurisprudence.