It consists of settings for high voice and piano of six poems by the Russian poet Alexandr Pushkin (1799–1837), in their original language.
The cycle is dedicated to his Russian friends Galina Vishnevskaya ("Galya") (soprano) and her husband Mstislav Rostropovich ("Slava") (cellist, pianist and conductor).
He had wanted Vishnevskaya to sing the soprano part in the 1962 premiere of his War Requiem, but the authorities had refused her a visa to travel outside the Soviet Union.
The songs are:[1] Vishnevskaya has said that Britten "had succeeded in penetrating the very heart of the verse" – despite the fact that the composer had little Russian, and was working from a bilingual edition of Pushkin's poetry.
She recalled a memorable evening in autumn 1965 when the tenor Peter Pears and Britten tried out the songs at the Pushkin House: "The room was cloaked in semi-darkness – only two candles burned.