"Dark Is the Night" (Тёмная ночь, Tyomnaya noch) is the great song of the war years for millions of Soviet people. Composer Nikita Bogoslovsky and poet Vladimir Agatov wrote it for the 1943 film Two Soldiers (Два бойца), where Mark Bernes — playing a soldier who remembers his wife and baby at home — sings it to his fellow soldiers in the dugout while the bullets whistle across the steppe.
The story goes that the song was written in a single night during filming, when the director felt the film lacked the right emotional note. Leonid Utyosov recorded it first, without the film crew's permission; but it was Bernes's performance that made it immortal.
The authorities disapproved at first — too melancholy, too private, too "escapist" for a war song. The soldiers disagreed. It became the voice of homesickness and devotion in the darkest years of the war, and it has never stopped being sung.
The film
The scene from Two Soldiers (1943), Mark Bernes singing in the dugout at night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDGLFLKa5o4
A recording of the original performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLJ2_2BVNFk
A verse
Тёмная ночь, только пули свистят по степи, только ветер гудит в проводах, тускло звёзды мерцают. В тёмную ночь ты, любимая, знаю, не спишь, и у детской кроватки тайком ты слезу утираешь.
Dark is the night, only bullets whistle across the steppe, only the wind hums in the wires, dimly the stars flicker. In the dark night, my love, I know you do not sleep, and by the child's bed you secretly wipe away a tear.