To be fair, NVR may have sung the lines and sat in the Duma, but I think (я думаю?) the songwriter (IIM?) was probably more of a thinker than a sitter and knew exactly what they were doing.

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUCs_c643qU

(not sure if the russian fleet really kept the royal navy away during the US Civil War; my impression had been that the Confederacy had waited too long to revolt, and the second-cheapest supplier of cotton [egypt?] for british mills was not much more expensive than the CSA would've been in any case)