Revisiting 19th-Century Yiddish Protest Folk Songs of Russia

Long before some commercially-motivated professional songwriters, professional entertainers and corporate media conglomerate record companies started to make a lot of money by marketing vinyl records of pop topical protest songs in late 1950's and 1960's, some non-commercially-motivated folks in Eastern Europe and Russia were--either individually or collectively--writing and singing topical protest folk songs in the Yiddish language. As Ruth Rubin recalled in her 1963 book, Voices of a People: The Story of Yiddish Folksong:

"The second half of the nineteenth century saw the development of capitalism in Russia. With the rapid growth of industry in such large Jewish centers as Lodz, Warsaw, Bialystok,Vilna, Pinsk, and Odessa, new songs were created by the former workshop hands now turned factory workers...

"As they described the horrible working conditions which prevailed, some of the songs took on a tone of protest and even a call to workingmen to rally in their own interests...

"These were songs which summoned the people to meetings and kept time with marching feet during demonstrations...

"...Workers were compelled to meet and deliberate in secret, and there were songs which described such clandestine gatherings...

"...Didactic folk songs dealing with political matters were common...These agitational folk songs seek to teach...certain principles...

"...The political songs which were current during the Russo-Japanese war, mainly in the cities and large towns,...tied in with the songs of the Russian Revolution of 1905...

"...Workingmen and women marched together, fought together, and died together on the barricades of the 1905 Revolution, singing...The 1905 Revolution was crushed. Songs of imprisonment now increased in number...

"The topical songs of the end-of-the-century period enjoyed the widest dissemination among the people...

"...Before the 1905 Russian Revolution, social...protest was already part of anonymous folk songs current among working men and women..." 

Yiddish lyrics that are translated into English in Ruth Rubin's 1963 book indicated that the following protest sentiments were expressed in these non-commercially-motivated Yiddish topical protest folk songs:

1. "...Want, misery, all your life
Dying prematurely;
Oh, how long will you be patient,
Poor workingmen!"

2.  "When poverty ruled my blood...
The capitalists sucked my blood..."

3.  "Cease your slumbering, sisters and brothers,
Awake! Unite!
Quickly, quickly, without any noise,
See to it that all men are equal..."

4. "In the far-off land Siberia
...I was exiled there, for shouting
The one word--freedom.
With the knout they beat me,
To make me stop saying:
Greetings to freedom!
Down with Nicholas!"

5.  "A dark cloud in the sky
Has spread all over Russia
There's shouting and a noise,
That Russia must be set free.

"All the streets are seething
There's a great cry in the air
Of thousands of working masses;
Down with Czar Nicholas!"

6.  "...Come bravely to free yourselves...
...Everyone, quickly, to the barricade,
Brother, quickly, come out with arms,
Don't stand there, unite, comrades..."

and 7.  "We sit in jail fainting
With hunger and cold...
All for freedom,
We are tortured,
Punished and deprived,
We're fighting for freedom,
We must defeat
The Czarist might..."

The late 19th-century Yiddish topical protest folk song "Der Arbeiter/The Working Man" by David Edelshtat also contained the following lyrics:

"Workingmen, how long will you remain isolated from your brothers
Arise and put an end to the overseer."

And the following last words that were uttered by a Vilna shoemaker named Hirsh Lekert, prior to being hanged by Czarist government authorities on May 29, 1902, provided some of the lyrics for the Yiddish topical protest folk songs about the hanging that were written--either individually or collectively--by non-commercially-motivated writers in the first years of the 20th-century:

"Oh, I am now about to be hung
And can do nothing more about it--
I beg of you, my beloved brothers,
Take vengeance of the tyrant nation.

"Oh, the rope that is put around my neck,
Does not frighten me--
I beg of you, my beloved brother,
To sing a song about me."