This song was written in 1938 and dedicated to fighters in that era's war on terrorism. The music is by N. Rechmensky, the words by G. Rublev, and the translation is mine. You can find the original at http://www.youtube.com/...
So that furnaces yield more steel,
So that grapes will be juicy,
So that our children sleep peacefully,
These people never sleep.
They are not talkative but modest;
We may not know many of their names;
But not for nothing do the best Chekists
Wear military medals.
Our eyes are on the whole people;
No enemy will penetrate our borders;
And if any do, they will be caught
In a mailed fist!
So that our songs never fall silent,
So that we never know the sadness of loss,
So that our children sleep peacefully,
These people never sleep.
Our days are clear and cloudless;
We will never let an enemy darken them;
And like our sharp-eyed Chekists
We will always be on guard.
Our eyes are on the whole people;
No enemy will penetrate our borders;
And if any do, they will be caught
In a mailed fist!
The phrase "mailed fist" (ежовая рукавица) refers to Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Ежов), People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. He is pictured at 0:52 in the video. He presided over perhaps the greatest orgy of official repression in history, the great purge of 1936-38 remembered as the Yezhovshchina. One of his victims, his predecessor G.G. Yagoda, appears at 0:24, and Yezhov's successor, L.P. Beria, can be seen at 1:30.
Could any terrorist have spilled the blood of so many innocent men and women as did these people?
Their organization still exists today, by the way; its Web site can be found at http://www.fsb.ru, and includes biographies of all these men, along with a lengthy defense of L.P.Beria, who was arrested and excuted by Stalin's successors in 1953.