Cranes (1969 song)

The memory of paper cranes folded by this girl—a girl who to this day serves as one symbol of the innocent victims of war—haunted Gamzatov for months and inspired him to write a poem starting with the now famous lines: "I sometimes feel that the soldiersWho have not returned from the bloody fieldsNever lay down to earth But turned into white cranes..."The poem was originally written in Gamzatov's native Avar language, with many versions surrounding the initial wording.

Sometimes I feel that all those fallen soldiers, Who never left the bloody battle zones, Have not been buried to decay and molder, But turned into white cranes that softly groan.

Sometimes I feel that all those fallen soldiers, Who never left the bloody battle zones, Have not been buried to decay and molder, But turned into white cranes that softly groan…

The poem's publication in the journal Novy Mir caught the attention of the famous actor and crooner Mark Bernes who revised the lyrics and asked Yan Frenkel to compose the music.

[1] Since 1986, every 22 October, the Russian republic of Dagestan, the birthplace of the poet Rasul Gamzatov, holds "The White Cranes' Festival."

In 1995, fifty years after the defeat of the Nazis, Russia released a stamp in memory of the fallen of World War II.