In 1924, young composer Boris Fomin and poet Konstantin Podrevsky wrote a romance about a troika, bells, and lost youth. It was the NEP era: restaurant halls were once again filled with gypsy choirs, and the audience longed for the old Russia that was fading away. The song struck exactly this note. It was picked up by Tamara Tsereteli, and soon 'Along the Long Road' was known by all.
The success was short-lived. In the late 1920s, proletarian music critics declared war on 'gypsy music' as a petty-bourgeois relic. Fomin was vilified in the press, and his romances disappeared from the stage. Podrevsky died in 1930, never knowing the fate that awaited his text.

However, the song was preserved by emigration. In Parisian, Berlin, and Harbin cabarets, it was sung by Russian artists for Russian audiences, and the troika with bells became a symbol not just of youth, but of a lost homeland. For the exiles, it was a romance about a road that could no longer be traveled back.

Its second birth came unexpectedly. In 1962, American architect and musician Gene Raskin wrote English lyrics 'Those Were the Days' to Fomin's melody. In 1968, young Welsh singer Mary Hopkin recorded the song under the production of Paul McCartney, and it topped the British charts. Then versions appeared in French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Dalida sang it as 'Le temps des fleurs.'

Millions of people around the world hummed this melody, unaware of its author's name. Fomin died in 1948 in poverty and obscurity. His romance, pushed out of Soviet life, traveled the globe through émigré stages, yet another reminder that Russian culture of the 20th century survived largely thanks to those who carried it away.