Any gamer should know this song, but I deem it likely that the official title "Korobejniki" or "Коробе́йники" as it goes by the official Russian spelling doesn't ring a bell. It was written by Nikolaj Nekrasov in 1861, but I guess you didn't know that either.

The song went to international fame as "The Tetris Song" since many versions of Tetris and its clones use an instrumental electronica version of this song as their title song.

Korobejniki refers to door-to-door merchants who sold books, fabric and everyday stuff. As far as my research indicated these were very common in the Russian streets until the Russian Revolution.

The composer of this song Nikolaj Nakrasov, or in Russian Николай Алексеевич Некрасов, was born in Nemirovo in Ukraine and died in St. Petersburg in Russia. He was writer and critic. He also wrote many poems. According to my sources, the "normal Russian village" was a recurring theme in his poems, and both the bright and the shadow side of these kind of villages. This taken into mind a song about Korobejniki suddenly doesn't seem so odd, eh?

The man on this photo is the creator of the original Tetris game. Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov or Алексей Леонидович Пажитнов as his name is spelled in Russian. Since 1991 he lives in the United States, but he was born in Moscow, Russia in 1956. The name Tetris came from "Tetra" which means 4 in ancient Greek, and all block combinations are sets of 4 blocks, the "is" suffix came from "Tennis" which was Pajtinov's favorite sport.

I do not know if the original Tetris had Korobejniki as its title song. Given his original version was released in 1984 this is far from certain, as music track in games were not that common in the time (the original was released on IBM computers, the predecessors of the Windows PC today, and all we had back then was a squeaker which was not very suitable for music, but some game DID have music back then). The game was very soon also available for NES, and I deem it more likely the song was chosen by Nintendo, and since the original author was Russian (and the NES version also being released prior to his move to the U.S.A.), the choice for a Russian folk song was only obvious. Many versions of Tetris I've played make cultural references to Russia.
(Later research indicated there was a Tetris version for Mac where the song was first featured, which led to Nintendo rearranging the song for the later NES version. This article was scheduled, remember).

The discussion that arises, when it comes to computer games destroying culture, if that is true in the case of Korobejniki. Some say "no" as thanks to Tetris the song itself has at least been preserved, even gained world fame that it otherwise may never have had, and the song itself is at least not forgotten. Some say "yes" as they think it's a disgrace that everybody calls it "The Tetris Song" now and do not know (and often do not care either) that the song is originally called Korobejniki and what the song is about. (If you wanna know on Wikipedia the original Russian lyrics with their English translation can be found).

I'll leave the choice up to you, was featuring the song in Tetris a destructive action towards a Russian folk song, or was a rather a blessing?

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