"The Carnival Is Over" is a Russian folk song from circa 1883, adapted with English-language lyrics, written by Tom Springfield, for the Australian folk pop group The Seekers in 1965. The song became The Seekers' signature recording, and the band have customarily closed their concerts with it ever since its success in late-1965. At its 1965 sales peak, The Seekers' single was selling 93,000 copies per day in the UK and is No.30 in the chart of the biggest-selling singles of all time in the United Kingdom, with sales of at least 1.41 million copies in the UK alone. The track spent three weeks at No.1 in the UK Singles Chart in November and December 1965.

The song also topped the Australian charts (for six weeks, from 4 December 1965), and reached No.1 in the Irish Charts for two weeks.

The main tune is taken from a Russian song about the Cossack ataman Stepan (also known as Stenka) Razin known as "Iz-za ostrova na strezhen" or "Volga, Volga mat' rodnaya" which became popular in Russia as early as the 1890s.

The original lyrics of the song, written in 1883 by the poet and Povolzhye region ethnographer Dmitry Sadovnikov to a folk melody, told about an episode of the 1670-1671 Russian Peasant Uprising in which Stepan Razin allegedly killed his captive, a beautiful Persian Princess, by throwing her into the water from his boat. According to the Dutch traveller Jean Jansen Struys (1630—1694), the murder was meant as a sacrifice with which Razin hoped to appease the much loved and feared Volga River. Sadovnikov in his text adds another motive: Razin's gesture is addressed to his disgruntled jealous comrades who accuse him of "mellowing down" after just one night spent with a woman.

The lyrics of the song were dramatized in the first Russian narrative film, Stenka Razin directed by Vladimir Romashkov in 1908. The song also gave the title to the famous 1938 Soviet musical comedy Volga-Volga. It was performed by the Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra (balalaikas and domras) during their 1967 tour of Australia. The tune is also used in a Dutch hymn "Vol Verwachting Blijf Ik Uitzien", and a Dutch nursery rhyme "Aan de Oever van de Rotte". It is played in a cafe scene in the 1988 film The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

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