Quote Originally Posted by Crocodile View Post
That song was rather popular in the SU back then. I wonder, were there any WWII soviet songs borrowed (or just popular) that way in the US?
Well, the melody of "Катюша" has been popularized as a sort of "Russian cue/theme" in Hollywood movies and TV (you know the scene is taking place in Russia because a balalaika version of "Катюша" or "Эй ухнем" is on the soundtrack, and St. Basil's is visible from the person's window...)

Also, of course, "Дорогой длинною" became a GIGANTIC hit under the title "Those Were the Days, My Friend" -- but the Russian original is from the 1920s and the English version from the late 1960s. So, it doesn't fit the criterion of a "WW2 Soviet song."

And the song "Bei Mir Bistu Shein" has a rather complicated history. It was composed in NYC by a Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant (whose family emigrated before the Soviet Revolution), and was originally a very slow (and excessively sentimental!) ballad for the Yiddish theater. In the late 1930s, a jazzy, fast-tempo English translation (with only the title in Yiddish) became a huge mainstream hit for the Andrews Sisters and others. And in the early 1940s it reached the USSR and inspired several parody versions, "Старушка не спеша" being the most famous. Thus, during WW2/ВОВ, both Americans and Soviets would have been enjoying the same melody -- but with totally dissimilar lyrics!

However, I don't know if "Katiusha" or any other Soviet WW2 songs ever became a "popular radio hit" in the U.S., even during the peak years of American/Soviet cooperation during WW2.