He is remembered in the Soviet Union as the Russian Nightingale[2] and in the West as one of the definitive singers of Kalinka.

[2] During World War II he served in the subdivision of zenith troops and gained the Army Olympiad Prize.

[clarification needed][5] He fought in Czechoslovakia and served as a Lance Corporal in the first Red Orders of Suvorov and Kutuzov division of the Carpathian Military District of the 4th Ukrainian Front under the command of General-Colonel Andrei Yeremenko.

[4] Under conductor Boris Alexandrov he recorded many songs, and performed all over the world: e.g. Europe, USA, Canada and Japan.

The Ensemble performed music by Soviet composers, and Russian and Ukrainian folk songs.

[2] 1980: He appears to have been associated in some way with Roskontsert (or Roskontserta), the big-band variety orchestra headed by the Russian jazz musician Oleg Lundstrem.

[14] This animated cartoon dramatizes via opera a Russian nursery rhyme about a hunter shooting a rabbit ("Pif-paf!")

As soon as he arrived home on Kalininsky Prospekt (now Novy Arbat) in Moscow, he died straight away of a heart attack.

He was buried in Moscow, not far from his fellow soloist Alexei Sergeev, in a section of Novodevichy Cemetery (Russian: Новоде́вичье кла́дбище) affiliated branch located in Kuntsevo District.

The origin of this kind of tenor-bravado introduction to a song is in Arab music, and can still be heard in Flamenco cante jondo.

"Kalinka" is a trivial song about a fruit tree, but it lends itself perfectly to this kind of operatic showing-off.

Belyaev himself was already the recipient of popular acclaim after the 1956 London tour, and he had already been called "Mr Kalinka": the obvious natural successor to Nikitin.

So in this performance, as the screenshot clearly shows, he is an immensely confident man with a great musical future before him.

In fact it was very possibly the Cold War which kept him tied to the Ensemble and away from the operatic career which he clearly deserved.

This ca.1960 video is filmed outdoors, and shows the soldiers laughing, joshing each other, and dancing comically at the end.

This is acting of course, and a striking contrast to the severe picture of Soviet life which was being presented at that time in the West.

In the last moments of the "Kalinka" performance, Belyaev, like the other soldierly soloists not allowed to gesticulate while singing, cannot help himself and performs a brief Russian dance movement with his arms, showing us something we did not know before: that his background was in Russian dance culture as well as in music.

[23] This superb lyric tenor[4] did not get the worldwide acclaim that he deserved during his lifetime; possibly because his prime occurred in the middle of the Cold War.

However, it happens that he sang one of the definitive recorded versions of "Kalinka", and perhaps due to that, he is now becoming widely recognised and appreciated on websites such as YouTube.

It was attended by his great-niece Ekaterina Belaeva, fellow Communist Party members, people from his hometown Klintsy, and his old musical colleagues from the Alexandrov Ensemble.

[27] In alphabetical order of titles, with links to auto-lyrics: "Accidental Waltz": Probably a love song (lyrics unavailable).

[31] "Donetski Night": refers to the horror of the Battle of Stalingrad, and optimism about a woman (lyrics unavailable).

It is possible to interpret their next battle in relation to the afterlife, so the audience has the option to infer that they have died.

It may refer to Ogonyok, (Russian: Огонёк), which means "little flame", as a symbol of love (lyrics unavailable).

A good example of this is the "Bryansky Partisan Song" with its Eastern Orthodox Church music tonality and harmony, which has the effect of somehow making the Ensemble sound like a choir of thousands, evoking perhaps the size of the USSR, the history which created its peoples, and pride in the Soviet partisans.

Belyaev sings the secondary harmony in a duet with Alexei T. Sergeev and the choir here, but his enthusiastic voice adds a piquant excitement to the sheer power of the arrangement.

So here is one possible answer to the question of why Belyaev stayed with the Ensemble instead of looking for easy fame on the opera circuit.

(a): from Japanese "Red Army" webpage,[36] for images of past album sleeves containing tracks by Belyaev.

Annual 1971) broadcast in the USSR on All-Union Radio, to celebrate Belyaev's home town Klintsy.

(composer Tarateño Rojas; translator unknown, Russian & Spanish)[136] To You I Swear the Fatherland (undated): no data His 78s, LPs, CDs and DVDs are listed on the Alexandrov Ensemble discography page.