On the Origins of the Russian Anonymous Spies’ March Version
Authors: Bogolubov Anatoli F. 
Published: January 2021

The purpose of the article is to try to clarify the genesis of the Russian anonymous version of The Spies’ March (hereinafter, the A-version), circulating along with its translations by Ada Onoshkovich-Yatsyna (hereinafter, AOY version) and Alla Sharapova, as well as textual variations on the theme of The Spies’ March by L. Kolosov and V. Kovenatsky. The textual problem is solved in close connection with the composition (consisting in comparing discourse schemes), translation, linguistic-statistical analysis of complete versions and fragments fr om them. It has been established that the A-version was not a remake of Kipling's original, but was based on Onoshkovich-Yatsyna’s translation. The purpose of the anonymous author-translator was to harmonize the content of The Spies’ March with its name, that is, to bring the theme of the glorification of real spies to the fore, to send them on a mission with a Proud flag in their hands, eliminating all semantic allusions to doctors (that is fighters against epidemics), which were implied by Kipling. Comparison of the A-version discursive scheme with that of AOY version shows that the uniqueness of its content and communicative attitude are achieved through a complex scheme of permutations, involving the new sequence of 33 lines out of 81 that constitute the poetic part of the AOY version. Herewith, all words (= text forms) of the A-version, with the exception of two, and those of the AOY version are identical. In other words, a cardinal semantic difference is created through manipulations, mainly at the discursive level, but not lexically. In parallel, the cardinal issue of the socio-cultural conditioning of this kind of reception is considered, the terminological signals of which in the article are refraction, adaptation, domestication and appropriation. Acting in the field of the receiving culture as a single complex of factors, they inevitably lead to the emergence of translation derivatives like a purely “spy” A-version of The Spies’ March, which break away from the original culture, from the literary environment, from the original text and are included in such a rearranged form in a new cultural mentality. It is even indicative that The Spies’ March for some mysterious reasons attracted the attention of a young Soviet woman-translator in 1922 and contrary to any “objective” logic: it did not enjoy increased attention in English-speaking countries and, as Thomas Pinney noted later, did not enter any of the authoritative anthologies of R. Kipling’s poetry. However, in Soviet Russia and later, his Spies’ March has given rise to a number of free, wild or professional variations all of which are meant eventually to bring tribute to this Rogue Bard (if not an Odd Duck) of the British culture sometimes accused of being more a writer of verses than a true Poet. The article is a direct continuation of the previous one, Bring us deliverance, spy, the title of which is a quote from The Spies’ March; reading them together provides a deeper understanding of the author’s intention. The paper includes three major parts: 1) Comparative textual analysis of the A-version with the complete AOYversion on which the first one is considered to be based since it “quotes” about 35 % of its lines, rearranging them in an extremely sophisticated way; 2) Comparative analysis of the versions’ language statistics including the number of words, number of characters with and without spaces, average word length, two indexes of text size conversion, namely, compression and expansion; 3) Discussion section which dwells on Kipling’s comparative place and reputation in the English and Russian (Soviet) culture. His artistic expression, in particular, his poetry has been and still is valued much more in this country than in England wh ere he is now considered, first of all, to be an “imperialist and racist”.