Demyan Bedny
Send Off: A Red Army Song

When my mother dear sent me
    Off to the army,
Then my kinfolk also came,
    Came a-running:

"Where are you going to, my lad?
    Where you going?
Vanya, Vanya, please don't go
    Into the army!

"The Red Army has enough
    Bayonets.
The Bolsheviks will get along
    Fine if you're gone.

"Are you going because you have to
    Or 'cause you want to?
Vanya boy, you'll be wasted
    For nothing.

"Your dear mother has gone gray
    Pining away for you.
In the fields and your but there's
    Much to tend to.

"Nowadays things are going
    Mighty fine!
Look at all the land they've heaped
    On us all of a sudden!

"Nowadays there's not a trace
    Of the old hard times.
You'd be smarter off to marry
    With Arina.

"Live with your young wife, and seek
    No idleness!"
Here I parted with my mother,
    Bowed before her.

I bowed low before my kin
    At the threshold:
"Not a whimper from you, please,
    For love of god.

"If we all were scatterbrained
    And gaped like you,
What would happen to Moscow
    And our Russia?

"Things would go back to the old ways,
    Like those bad times.
They would take back what we have:
    Land and freedom;

"The lords would settle on the land
    As cruel masters.
In this nasty cabal's grip
    We'd be howling.

"I'm not going to a dance
    Or a feast,
This is what I leave for you,
    My old mother:

"I am marching off now with
    The Red Army,
Our deadly battle will be with
    Gentry rabble.

"We will give a talking to
    Priests and kulaks:
Our bayonets'll pierce the guts of
    Those bloodsuckers!

"Won't surrender? So you'll die,
    Go to hell then!
Paradise is sweeter when
    It's won in battle, —

"It's not the paradise of drunks
    Or bloodsuckers, —
But Russia, where our freedom reigns,
    A Soviet land!"

Translated by unknown author