Georgi Vinogradov, tenor soloist, with the Red Army Ensemble, performing the Russian folk song 'The Bending Branch', recorded in the USSR and issued in the USA on the two sides of a ten-inch Stinson 78-RPM disc during the 1940s.
The song tells of a failed love affair and its unhappy consequences for the suitor.
I once challenged a relative, born in Russia, holder of an earned PhD from a US university, fluent in both Russian and English-- she was among the first broadcasters of Russian-language programs on the Voice of America-- to name a happy Russian song. State-commissioned 'everything-is-wonderful-in-the-dictatorship-of-the-proletariat' songs were excluded. She suggested a few, but each time she recited the lyrics she was compelled to withdraw the song. Finally she laughed and said she was unable to think at the moment of a Russian song that is happy all the way through. It is she who gave me the recording of this superlative performance.

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