kuda tsar' idet peshkom

[Robert A. Rothstein]

The Tom Lehrer version - in his song "Lobachevsky" - was

    [...]
    I am never forget the day my first book is published.
    Every chapter I stole from somewhere else.
    Index I copy from old Vladivostok telephone directory.
    This book was sensational!
    Pravda - well, Pravda - Pravda said: Ia idu kuda sam tsar' idet peshkom.
    It stinks.
    [...]

The entire text is published in his collection "Too Many Songs by Tom 
Lehrer." In a footnote he indicates that for the quote from "Pravda" 
(and another quote from "Izvestiia") "one should insert some phrase in 
Russian (if the audience does not speak Russian) or some Russian 
double-talk (if it does). The author's own choices varied from the 
merely inappropriate to the distinctly obscene." In the printed text he 
does not provide any suggestions for the two supposed quotations. The 
version that I quoted above is what I remember from his first record, 
which came out sometime in the 1950s, a version he presumably learned 
from some Russian emigre. I haven't listened to the record recently, but 
I'm fairly certain that he used "idet" rather than "khodit " since I 
remember the iambic rhythm.

Bob Rothstein

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