Mark Ross,

Yes, you're absolutely right. As for accuracy, first time I was really surprised about how precisely songs fix certain historic circumstances including exact dates, names etc.

People use to memorize specific details and fix by songs. This is my area of interest to unveil such details that are known from songs and are unknown to official history.

By this request, I tried to make some comparative analisys of Russian and American 'historic' songs. See what it turn out.

By the way, I have translated some Siberian prisoners' songs into English. Would appreciate if someone have a look at the texts and just let me know is it understandable or not. You may find the texts here: http://russianfolkhistory.org/Arestantskie_Pesni_v_Sibiri/en/

Regards