I do not own the copyright to this music or video. I have subtitled it in colloquial American English for the benefit of those who are learning the Russian or English languages.

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Today's output from Translation Station.

I translated this remarkable music video, Kukushka - "Cuckoo" - as performed by Polina Gagarina.
The original lyrics were written by the Soviet artist Viktor Tsoi, who is often thought of as the "John Lennon of Russia." It is a war protest song.

Video is from the 2015 Russian film "Battle for Sevastopol," a biographical movie about the life of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the female sniper who killed 309 Nazis in World War Two. She was known in the west as "Lady Death" and popularized by the Woodie Guthrie song "Fell By Your Gun." Pavlichenko was a close friend of the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt whom she met when she visited the United States with a Soviet delegation which had come to beg America to join the Allied effort.

In Russian folklore, it is believed that the cuckoo bird is counting off the years of your life, thus "kukushka" is tied closely with fate.

Battle for Sevastopol with English subtitles: [ Ссылка ]

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