"Two Little Pieces of Sausage" and the Band Kombinatsiya

«Two Little Pieces of Sausage» is a song released by the group Kombinatsiya in 1992, which became the band’s first major hit after the departure of its star, Alyona Apina. The track was performed as a duet by Tatyana Ivanova and Svetlana Kashina, who took the departed Apina’s place.

The music was written by composer and Kombinatsiya co-founder Vitaly Okorokov. He had two potential hits in reserve: «Ksyusha» and «Two Little Pieces of Sausage.» He gave the first song to his childhood friend Alyona Apina for her solo career, and kept the second for the remaining lineup of Kombinatsiya.

The song became a kind of musical pamphlet on the theme of «hungry perestroika.» In 1991, people spent hours in line for bread, milk, meat, or just about anything they could get their hands on. Shelves in most grocery stores stood empty, and the country faced an acute food shortage.

Sausage, always in demand, became a rare commodity too. Its disappearance ran parallel to the decline in people’s incomes – sausage was no longer bought by the loaf, but by the gram. That exact reality is what gave rise to the catchy, if not exactly grammatical, chorus about «two little pieces of sausage.»

According to Okorokov, in the original lyrics the two little pieces of sausage lay on the song’s hero’s back, giving the track an erotic undertone reminiscent of the film «9½ Weeks.» The songwriters quickly realized «something wasn’t right» and reworked the line into something more mundane: «Two little pieces of sausage were lying on your table.»

The song was originally written about doktorskaya sausage, but no suitable rhyme could be found for it, so servelat ended up in the verse instead. For the intro, Okorokov came up with a «Jewish» melody, bringing in a cellist from the Bolshoi Theatre to play it, and also quoted the musical theme from Federico Fellini’s film «La Strada.»

«And that’s when we realized – something wasn’t right. The song was taking us somewhere we didn’t want to go. ‘9½ Weeks.’ So we decided to keep it down to earth instead: ‘Two little pieces of sausage were lying on your table.’»

Tatyana Ivanova didn’t care for the new song’s original lyrics, especially the mangled Russian grammar. She tried several times to rewrite the «two little pieces» chorus, but nothing worked. In the end, the singer limited herself to reworking what she called the «nonsense» in the verses.

Svetlana Kashina had similarly negative impressions of the lyrics – so both vocalists initially refused to record the song. However, producer Alexander Shishinin, by the artists’ own account, tricked them into the studio after a stop at the buffet and more than a liter of cognac split three ways, assuring them the song would be recorded strictly for him and would never reach the public.

The song was released in 1992 and topped the monthly chart on the «Zvukovaya Dorozhka MK» hit parade. By the end of the year it had landed simultaneously in the Top 20 best tracks and the Top 5 worst, sharing that second list with «Lyokha,» a hit by the now-solo Alyona Apina.

In 1993, «Two Little Pieces of Sausage» lent its name to a Kombinatsiya album of the same title. Although the band’s popularity began to slide after the album’s release, entire stadiums would chant demands for the group to play «the sausage song,» and the track itself almost instantly passed into folk-song status.

The Soviet and Russian all-female pop group Kombinatsiya was founded in 1988 in Saratov by former OBKhSS (economic-crimes police) officer Alexander Shishinin and composer Vitaly Okorokov. The band was known for its sharply topical songs, nearly every one of which reflected some phenomenon of the society emerging at the turn of the 1980s into the 1990s.

The original lineup and early hits

The original lineup included Alyona Apina (a conservatory student), Tatyana Ivanova (a schoolgirl Shishinin spotted on a street in Saratov), keyboardist Svetlana Kostyko, and guitarist Tatyana Dolganova. The band’s first hit, «Russian Girls» (1989), brought it fame across the whole USSR.

The move to Moscow and peak popularity

After relocating to Moscow in 1989, the band launched into a grueling touring schedule, playing as many as 60 shows a month. Their third album, «Moskovskaya Propiska» («Moscow Residence Permit,» 1991), with the hits «American Boy» and «Bukhgalter» («The Accountant»), shot to the top of the charts and was the last album recorded by the original lineup.

In 1991 Alyona Apina unexpectedly left the group to launch a solo career. Svetlana Kashina, from Nizhny Tagil, took her place in January 1992, and it was with her that the «Two Little Pieces of Sausage» album was recorded.

On March 5, 1993, the band’s producer, Alexander Shishinin, was murdered – stabbed in a stairwell on Metallurgov Street. Hours before his death he had reported repeated telephone threats to law enforcement. An anonymous caller had pressured him to sign a contract with the firm «LIS’S,» but Shishinin had chosen to keep working independently.

After Shishinin’s death, Alexander Tolmatsky, who worked for Sergei Lisovsky, took over as producer. Disagreements with him led Svetlana Kashina to leave the group in 1994, and the band’s popularity began a rapid decline.

Kombinatsiya’s songs traditionally reflected what was happening in Soviet and Russian society at the turn of the 1980s into the 1990s. The band touched on subjects such as:

«Two Little Pieces of Sausage» remains one of the most recognizable songs of the 1990s. In 2020, music critic Sergei Sosedov observed that the track belongs among the songs of its era that have stood the test of time, alongside hits like Mirage’s «Muzyka Nas Svyazala» or Ivanushki International’s «Tuchi.»

As a period piece, the song plays twice in Andrei Konchalovsky’s rock opera «Crime and Punishment» (2016), which relocates the action of Dostoevsky’s classic novel to the final decade of the twentieth century.

Tatyana Ivanova, the only member who has remained continuously with Kombinatsiya, still performs the song at concerts today, though she admits she’s not fond of it:

«It’s my pain, the sorrow of my entire life! Every concert I try not to sing it. From the very first day I saw this ‘masterpiece,’ I’ve felt sick!»

And yet, even 30 years on, the sausage song remains a staple of the band’s performances – a living testament to a difficult era when two little pieces of sausage really could be the object of an ordinary person’s dreams.