Thread: Old soviet song

I'm having some problems translating this excerpt of an old soviet song, can somebody help me?

Врагов шли большие лавины,
Их не было сил удержать,
Как в земли вступили родной Украины
То стали людей убивать.

Maybe you'll understand it better if you rearrange the words a little bit:

Шли большие лавины врагов,
Не было сил удержать их,
Как вступили (they = the enemies) в земли родной (of [our] native) Украины,
То стали убивать людей.

Originally Posted by Jasper May

Maybe you'll understand it better if you rearrange the words a little bit:

Шли большие лавины врагов,
Не было сил удержать их,
Как вступили (they = the enemies) в земли родной (of [our] native) Украины,
То стали убивать людей.

It would be something like

"The enemy came like an avalanche
There was no forces to stop then
They invaded our Ukrainian soil
To kill people with steel"

It's that?

“стали” means “to start”

When they invaded our Ukrainian soil
They started to kill people

Not quite, but roughly, yes.

Шли большие лавины врагов,
---Шли applies to большие лавины ('large avalanches'), врагов (genitive plural of враг) defines those avalanches.

Не было сил удержать их,
---Correct! One mistake in your English: it should be 'there were no...'.

Как вступили в земли родной Украины,
As - they entered the land of (our) native Ukraine

То стали убивать людей.
То= here 'Then', стать can also mean 'to begin', убивать людей means, as you said, 'to kill people'. To kill people with steel would have been 'убивать людей сталью' (instrumental case).

Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot

Very enlightening