Unit 7 Tetris wade invented by a Russian!

• "Korobeiniki is a famous Russian folk song that tells of an incident between a peddler and a girl 'haggling' over a price, with the details only being said in metaphor.
  
• In western culture, the song is primarily known for being used as the "Type A" music in the Game Boy version of Tetris. However, Korobeiniki was written and published in 1861, a full 128 years before Tetris was released on the Game Boy.
  
• Tetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984 while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow. He derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix tetra- (all of the game's pieces, known as Tetrominoes, contain four segments) and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport.
  
• The song "Korobeiniki" is based on a poem with the same name by Nikolay Nekrasov, written and printed in the Sovremennik magazine in 1861. Due to its increasing tempo and the dance style associated with it, it quickly became a popular Russian folk song.
• Nekrasov's poem is a sad story about the love between a peasant girl, Katya, and a young peddler. They meet each other in a rye field at night where he has promised her a good deal on the goods he carries, before they are sold in the market during the day. Only the night knows what happens between them in the rye field, but she is not so simple and does not take any of the goods which he offers her. What is the point, she figures, to have all that without him—her first and only love? She takes only a small turquoise ring, as a memory, and he promises to marry her when he comes back from his commerce trip. He continues his journey and she waits for him with caution. His business goes very well and he makes a lot of money, but on the way back he is killed and robbed by a forest ranger who he asks for directions. So he never comes back to marry Katya. The song is only the very beginning of the original poem; it only recounts Katya's first meeting with the young peddler when their relation is getting off to a happy start.