and the rural clergy to ridicule using the traditional rural poetic form. Scholar Lynne Viola provides one such example of an anti-religious Soviet rhyme, rendered here in literal English translation: All the pious are on a spree, They see God is not at home. He got drunk on homebrewed liquor, And left to go abroad. Given the difficult economic circumstances of the Soviet peasantry in the late 1920s and 1930s, chastushki overwhelmingly took an anti-government form, with the singing of anti-Soviet couplets a common practice at peasant festivals of the period. Following the assassination of Communist Party leader Sergei Kirov late in 1934, chastushki sprung up relating the killing to a recent decision to terminate bread rationing, including this literal translation of one example provided by scholar Sheila Fitzpatrick: When Kirov was killed, They allowed free trade in bread. When Stalin is killed, They will disband all the collective farms. Examples Many folk chastushki are lewd or laden with vulgarities. The following are some relatively printable examples, with slightly loose English translations that attempt to give an approximate feeling of the chastushka's rhyme and meter, and the general meaning: Footnotes Further reading Emil Draitser, Making War, Not Love: Gender and Sexuality in Russian Humor. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. External links Texts of ditties in Russian, in: Russian public domain library. 20th-century music genres Russian folk songs Russian humour Stanzaic form Russian poetry Song forms