Both «Hooray, we’re breaking through…» (in the original, «Ура! Мы ломим») and the description of Zhorik as terrible-faced, swift, and radiant — «the very image of God’s own thunderstorm» — are lifted almost word for word from Alexander Pushkin’s 1828 narrative poem «Poltava,» which describes Peter the Great riding out before the decisive 1709 battle against Charles XII of Sweden: «Он весь, как божия гроза…» («He is entirely like God’s own storm…»), and, of the Russian advance, «Ура! мы ломим; гнутся шведы» («Hooray! we press on; the Swedes give way»). The poem is a fixture of the Russian school curriculum, which is exactly why the narrator can drop half a line of it and expect the reader to fill in the rest — and why it’s a joke that instead of Peter’s real companions at Poltava, Prince Alexander Menshikov and Field Marshal Boris Sheremetev, Zhorik shows up trailing a wiry ex-convict named Chicha.