Four Comrades (1936)
Description: This song is dedicated to the exploits of the ‘Papanintsy,’ the Soviet polar explorers who established scientific stations on polar ice floes that they reached by airplane.
Aviators March (1931)
Leonid Smetannikov. Music: Iulii Khait. Lyrics: Pavel German
Description: Originally written in 1921, this song gained great popularity among Komsomols in the 1930s, and became the official hymn of the Soviet Air Force.
The Polar Sea is Raging (1940)
Vladimir Bunchikov. Knushevitskii Orchestra. Music: E. Zharkovskii. Lyrics: Dzhek Altauzena
Description: One of the last songs written by the Irkutsk poet Dzhek (Iakov) Altauzen, who was crushed by a German tank in the early months of the coming war.
Under the Bridge (like Chkalov) (2000)
Aquarium.
Description: The heroic pilot proved an unlikely subject for a song by the rock group Aquarium, whose forte had been mocking and ignoring the false worlds of Soviet propaganda. In this song, though, they found a note of kinship with the pilot’s defiant flight under Troitsky Bridge in Leningrad.