'Тараканище'), is a popular Russian children's fairy tale poem written by poet Korney Chukovsky in 1921.

It tells the story of an overgrown cockroach who assumed power over mankind and animals by bullying and threatening them, only to fall prey to a sparrow in the end.

[7] This misconception was exacerbated by the famous "Stalin Epigram" by Osip Mandelstam, in which "giant moustaches of a cockroach are smiling" are given in Stalin's portrait, and some commenters think it was an intentional reference to Chukovsky's "Tarakanishche", given the widespread knowledge of Chukovsky's poem.

Although contemporaries recall "moustaches", a plausible guess is that Mandelstam feared to put this word in writing: since Chukovsky's poem ends in the execution of The Roach, the epigram would mean death sentence to the author.

Protests in Belarus broke out before and after the disputed 2020 Belarusian presidential election, and the moment calling for the so-called the Anti-Cockroach Revolution or the Slipper Revolution (the latter name is based on a popular cliche advice to whack a cockroach with a slipper), was initiated by businessman and blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky,[9] referring to Lukashenko's derogatory nickname "mousthachy cockroach" hinting at the poem.