It’s easy to drop into the idea that because a lot of music and songs were censored, restricted or forbidden in the USSR, those that were not were somehow inferior. Many were wonderful. Others enjoyed official approval and public popularity for a while, but later came under critical fire for a variety of reasons.
An example was the truly beautiful, touching, and haunting - Dark is the Night sung by Mark Bernes in the 1943 battlefield--romance movie Two Soldiers. Bernes’s character, a soldier in the Second World War (The Great Patriotic War as it was known in Russia) sings a poignant tribute to his wife at night in a dugout with an audience of his fellow soldiers.
The music was by Nikita Bogoslovskii with lyrics by V. Agatov
Understandably, the song became a symbol of the war years for millions of people in the Soviet Union. But in the post-war cultural purge, it was denounced by officials for its ‘escapism’ and ‘tavern melancholy’, with the composer, Bogoslovsky, accused of promoting sentimental tunes.
Needless to say, that didn’t stop the public from loving it. It appears on bone records in various versions, and underground singers adapted it with new lyrics.
Dark is the Night.
Bullets whistle across the steppe
Only the wind hums in the wires, the stars flicker dimly
In the dark night, my love, I know, you are not sleeping
And by the baby's crib, you sadly wipe away a tear
How I love the depth of your gentle eyes
How I want to press my lips to them
The dark night separates us, my love
And the anxious black steppe lies between us
I believe in you, in my love
This faith has kеpt me from a bullet on a dark night
I am happy, I am calm in the heat of battle
I know you will greet mе with love, no matter what happens to me
Death is not so terrible; we have met it more than once in the steppe
And though it is circling above me
You are waiting for me, and you don't sleep by the crib
And that's why I know - nothing will happen to me