The Song of the Stormy Petrel

It is believed that originally the text was part of a larger piece, called "Spring Melodies" (Весенние мелодии) and subtitled "Fantasy" (Фантазия).

[2] In this "fantasy", the author overhears a conversation of birds outside his window on a late-winter day: a crow, a raven, and a bullfinch representing the monarchist establishment; sparrows, "lesser people"; and anti-establishment siskins (чижики).

As the birds discussing the approach of the spring, it is one of the siskins who sings to his comrades "the Song of the Stormy Petrel, which he had overheard somewhere", which appears as the "fantasy's" finale.

Глупый пингвин робко прячет тело жирное в утёсах... Только гордый Буревестник реет смело и свободно над седым от пены морем!

Буревестник с криком реет, чёрной молнии подобный, как стрела пронзает тучи, пену волн крылом срывает.

Это смелый Буревестник гордо реет между молний над ревущим гневно морем; то кричит пророк победы: — Пусть сильнее грянет буря!..

The popularity of the poem in Russia's revolutionary circles, and the later "canonization" of Gorky as a preeminent classic of the "proletarian literature" ensured the wide spreading of the image of the Burevestnik ("stormy petrel") in the Soviet propaganda imagery.

A variety of institutions, products, and publications would bear the name "Burevestnik", [11] including a national sports club, a series of hydrofoil boats,[12] an air base in the Kuril Islands, a labor-union resort on the Gorky Reservoir, a Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod express train, and even a brand of candy.

Maxim Gorky himself would be referred to with the epithet "the Stormy Petrel of the Revolution" (Буревестник Революции);[14][15] monuments, posters, postage stamps and commemorative coins depicting the writer would often be decorated with the image of a soaring aquatic bird.