Fly off the road, bird,
Beast, get out of the way!
You see a [dust] cloud is swirling,
Horses are rushing ahead!
And with a charge, with a turn,
Over chains of enemies thick
Stutters from the machine-gun
The machine-gunner is young.
Chorus:
Oh, Tachanka from Rostov,
Our pride and beauty,
Red Cavalry Tachanka,
All four wheels!
Oh, over the Volga and over the Don [rivers]
The golden steppes rushed [past]
Bronzed, dusty
The machine-gunner is young.
And rushing unrestrained
With the horses' ginger manes
Manes of wind, manes of smoke
Manes of storm and fire.
Chorus:
Oh, Tachanka of Kiev,
Our pride and beauty,
Tachanka of the Komsomol*
All four wheels!
On the ground the tanks rumble,
Airplanes loop and weave
About the Tachanka of Budennovsk
In the sky, the pilots sing.
And the enemy still is dreaming
The rain is leaden and heavy
Battle chariot,
The machine-gunner is young.
Chorus:
Oh, Tachanka of Poltava,
Our pride and beauty,
Machine-Gun [bearing] Tachanka
All four wheels!
*The Komsomol was the Soviet Communist youth organization. Members could be as old as 28, which is why they are mentioned in a military song.
Jewish Polyglot
Floppylou
Andrew from Russia
LT
Vera Alx
Sun, 21/06/2020 - 18:21
The Tachanka was a regular horse-drawn wagon which was outfitted with a machine gun for combat during the Communist Revolution. It could easily be transferred from civilian use to military use and was very powerful on the battlefield, making it useful to the Russian army.
By the way, if anyone notices a mistake, comment and I'll correct it.