"Those Were the Days" is a song credited to Gene Raskin, who put English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 lyrics to the Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" ("Дорогой длинною", lit. "By the long road"), written by Boris Fomin

Boris Fomin

Boris Ivanovitch Fomin born 1900 in Saint Petersburg and died in 1948 in Moscow) was a Russian composer of folk music. He was interred at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Moscow....

 (1900–1948) with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevskii. It deals with reminiscence

Reminiscence

Reminiscence is the act of recollecting past experiences or events; when a person shares their personal stories with others or allows other people to live vicariously through stories of family, friends, and acquaintances while gaining an authentic meaningful relationship with a person...

 upon youth

Youth

Youth is the time of life between childhood and adulthood . Definitions of the specific age range that constitutes youth vary. An individual's actual maturity may not correspond to their chronological age, as immature individuals could exist at all ages.-Usage:Around the world, the terms "youth",...

 and romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 idealism

Idealism

In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...

. The Georgian

Georgians

The Georgians are an ethnic group that have originated in Georgia, where they constitute a majority of the population. Large Georgian communities are also present throughout Russia, European Union, United States, and South America....

 Tamara Tsereteli (1900–1968) in 1925 and Alexander Vertinsky

Alexander Vertinsky

Alexander Nikolayevich Vertinsky was a Russian and Soviet artist, poet, singer, composer, cabaret artist and actor who exerted seminal influence on the Russian tradition of artistic singing.-Early years:...

 in 1926 made what were probably the earliest recordings of the song.