There's the communist propaganda version of green grow the rushes O... I prefer the version I remember to the one in the DT:

I'll sing you one O
Red fly the banners O
What is your one O
One is worker's unity and ever more shall be so!

13 for the holes in Trotsky's head
12 for the chimes of the Kremlin's clock
11 for the Moscow Dynamos
10 for the works of Lenin
9 for the nine days general strike
8 for the eight great Soviets
7 for the seven-day working week
6 for the Tolpudell martyrs
5 for the five-year Soviet plan
4 for the four years taken
3, three, bread peace and land
2 two the workers' hands, working for a living O!

Some older friends from Manchester tell me the song dates back from the 1920 & 1930s, and was written as propaganda rather than parody. Parody came later, maybe the last three verses (11-13) and (some of) the DT version. Here are some of the references: 13. Trotsky was assassinated with a pick-axe. Gruesome but it comes at the very end of the song. 11. Moscow's soccer team. For you American readers who don't know how many players there are in a game of soccer ;-) 5. After the 1917 revolution, the USSR was industrialised by a succession of 5 year plans. BTW, since 1945 France also has had 5 year plans (they aren't coercitive, they are used in allocate subsidies to industry). It sort of works. 4. Soviet industrialisation was fast indeed in the 1920s. Maybe soviet refusal to pay foreign debts contracted before the revolution had something to do with it. 3. Bread, peace, & land, Lenin's 1917 promises. And the three human rights in Soviet's eyes. It was a piece or Soviet ideology: the human rights of the U.N. 1947 declaration are irrealistic (work, education) or meaningless (name, nationality). The USSR didn't respect them, but respected (allegedly) the three basic, simple rights Lenin had promised.

Phew. hadn't realised there was so much to it. Anyone has an idea what the 9-day general strike or the 6 Tolpudell martyrs are?

Charles.