Russian Civil War era locomotive (Э-2432, built in 1915)

The Echelon Song (Russian: Эшелонная [Песня]), also known as Song for Voroshilov (Песня о Ворошилове) or Battle of the Red Guards (Боевая красногвардейская), is a Russian song written in 1933 by A. V. Alexandrov (music) and Osip Kolychev (lyrics), dedicated to Kliment Voroshilov. It is one of a number of popular Soviet songs which reminiscence about the Russian Civil War era. This particular song is about the "railway warfare" (in Russian called эшелонная война "echelon warfare"[1]) during the Battle for Tsaritsyn of 1918 (between 1925 and 1961, Tsaritsyn was known as Stalingrad and since 1962 as Volgograd), where (according to official Soviet historiography) Voroshilov and Joseph Stalin became friends. The music of the song is composed so as to recall a steam locomotive, beginning in an accelerando and crescendo, and ending in a decrescendo.

The song has been used for the closing credits of the 2016 film Hail, Caesar!

References

  1. ^ "a special kind of warfare along railway lines used at the beginning of the Russian Civil War. [...] 'Echelon warfare' was used from December 1917 until Summer 1918 during the liquidation of the main counter-revolutionary pockets along the Don, in Belarus and in the Ukraine." (особый вид боевых действий вдоль ж.-д. магистралей, применявшийся в начале Гражданской войны в России. [...] «Э. в.» велась с декабря 1917 до лета 1918 во время ликвидации основных очагов внутренней контрреволюции на Дону, в Белоруссии и на Украине.) Эшелонная война in: Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Moscow, 1969—1978.

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