This song is simply haunting. The words come from a poem by the Avar (a people inhabiting Chechnya and Daghestan) poet Rasul Gamzatov, which was inspired by Sadako Sasaki, the little girl from Hiroshima, and her origami cranes. A decade or so later, Mark Bernes read a tranlsation and was struck by the words. Grebnyov retranslated the words to make them singable and Mark convinced Yan Frenkel to set it to music. Mark Bernes knew this would be his last song. He was dying of cancer. The song was first publicly performed for Victory Day in May of 69, which left everyone in a deep silence until one of the generals hugged Bernes and said that this song gave them back, as soldiers, the right to cry, and burst into tears.
In June he recorded it, and within a month, passed away. One of the last things he did was to ring Gamzatov and sing it for him.

http://uranium.cataclasm.org/~eugene/bernes.html

https://www.culture.ru/poems/42290/zhuravli

1. Mnye kazhyetsa poroyu, shto soldaty,
s krovavykh ne prishyedshiye polyey,
nye v zyemlyu nashu polyegli kogda-ta,
a prevratilis v byelykh zhuravlyey.

ani da sey pory s vremyon tyekh dalnikh

lyetyat i podayut nam galasa

nye potomu li tak chasto i pyechalno

my zamolkayem, glyadya v nyebesa?

2. Lyetit, lyetit po nyebu klin ustaly,
lyetit v tumanye na iskhodye dnya,
i v tom stroyu yest promyezhutok maly,
byt mozhyet, eto myesto dlya menya.

Nastanyet dyen, i s zhuravlinoy stayey

ya poplyvu v takoy zhe sizoy mglye,

iz-pod nyebes po-ptichyi oklikaya

vsyekh vas, kavo ostavil na zemlye.


3. Mnye kazhyetsa poroyu, shto soldaty,
s krovavykh ne prishyedshiye polyey,
nye v zyemlyu nashu polyegli kogda-ta,
a prevratilis v byelykh zhuravlyey.


1. It seems to me at times, that the soldiers,
who haven't come back from the bloody fields,
didn't lay down in our ground,
but turned into white cranes.

Since those times long, long gone

they fly, and cry out to us.

Is it not because of this that often and and in sorrow

we fall silent, gazing at the skies?

2. A weary wedge flies, flies across the skies,
flies in the mists as the day closes,
there is a small space in that formation,
perhaps, it is for me.

The day will come, and with the flock of cranes

I will swim through the same greyish gloom,

Out from under the heavens calling as a bird

To all of you, whom I've left on the ground.

3. It seems to me at times, that the soldiers,
who haven't come back from the bloody fields,
didn't lay down in our ground,
but turned into white cranes.