The Snow is Melting in Rostov…

The Snow is Melting in Rostov…

As early as the fall of 1941 Ilya Frenkel wrote a poem in which he imagined the war being over

I’ll remember the infantry
And my company,
And you — for giving me a smoke,
Let’s smoke one, buddy,
Let’s have a smoke, my friend…

The poem ‘Let’s Have a Smoke’ was published on January 22 of 1942 in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper under the title ‘The Southern Front Song’. Music was composed later by Modest Tabachnikov. The song was premiered at the Officers’ House in the city of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky of the Rostov region where the Southern Front lay.

That fall of 1941 the snow on the Southern Front came very early. But suddenly a thaw had set in, the snow melted and all the roads got muddy. It was then that the Soviet Army decided to command a counter attack near Rostov-on-Don. On 27 November the Soviet forces pulled the Nazis out of the city, disturbing Hitler’s plans of getting round to the Caucuses oil. It was the first significant German withdrawal of the war.

Sources: «Советская музыка» (Soviet Music), «Военный альбом» (Military Álbum) websites, «Победа.екатеринбург.рф» website.