I grew up with the Bikel/Gill album on the Elektra label, and I recall well Bikel's singing of what I always thought of as "the Troika song." Mind you, I don't have Russian. But Elektra was always good about attaching printed booklets, with English translations, to long-playing albums of songs in languages other than English. Pity I can't locate that translation now, which I believe was literal and not a singing/rhythmic/metrical version.

And to comment upon a question raised some ways back on this thread: Theodore Bikel certainly does iterate the chorus with "Dai dai dai dai" and so on, and a very macho-sounding business it is too, a long way from sweet-voiced Mary Hopkin.