Cleaning up Baikal Music
Baikal has long stirred the Russian imagination as a place of exile and longing. Both songs on this page began as literary compositions before being absorbed into the folk tradition — testament to how thoroughly Siberia's vastness and its prison culture shaped Russian song. Prisoners wandering the steppe and fugitives crossing the sacred sea became emblems of endurance that outlasted the circumstances that produced them.
Through the Wild Steppes of the Baikal (1930)
Performer: Konstantin Sokol'skii. Russian folk music; Lyrics: Ivan Kondratiev
Glorious Sea, Sacred Baikal (1944)
Performer: Maksim Mikhailov. Russian folk song. Lyrics by Dmitrii Davydov