You can love thieves' songs, you can wince with disgust at their mere mention, but it is impossible to pretend that you have never sung (or at least heard) “Murka”, “Wait, Steam Locomotive” or “Fried Chicken” in your life. These pearls of “grassroots folklore” are an integral part of our life and culture. And our history - after all, they reflected many historical and everyday realities of the period of revolution and Civil War, NEP and Stalinist repressions... Alexander Sidorov is a journalist, writer, poet, philologist, researcher of the penal subculture of Russia and the USSR. Author of many books and studies, including the two-volume “History of Professional Crime in Soviet Russia”, “Dictionary of Criminal and Camp Jargon (Southern Fenya)”, “Prison Tales”, etymological essays “Pearls of Tramp Speech”, etc.