Popular Culture
The entire poem was mentioned in the Canadian historical novel, Four Steps to Death, by John Wilson, in which Red Army soldiers sing it on the way from Moscow to Stalingrad (present-day Volgograd). In fact, the name of the novel is derived from a part of the last line of the poem, "And here there are four steps to death."
The song is part of the repertoire of the Alexandrov Ensemble.
Read more about this topic: Zemlyanka (song)
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“Our culture has become something that is completely and utterly in love with its parent. It’s become a notion of boredom that is bought and sold, where nothing will happen except that people will become more and more terrified of tomorrow, because the new continues to look old, and the old will always look cute.”
—Malcolm McLaren (b. 1946)