Soon after its publication, the poet Stepan Petrov, better known by the pen-name of Skitalets, provided the lyrics which contributed to its wider success. 'On the Hills of Manchuria' achieved colossal success and Knaube boasted of having published some 82 different editions of the piece. While the regiment was stationed in Samara in 1906, he made the acquaintance of Oskar Knaube (1866-1920), a local music shop owner, who helped the composer to publish his work and later acquired ownership of it. Shatrov served in the regiment as bandmaster and composed the tune on returning from the war. The original title of the waltz was 'The Mokshansky Regiment on the Hills of Manchuria' and referred to an incident during the Battle of Mukden, the disastrous final land battle of the Russo-Japanese War, when the Mokshansky Infantry Regiment was encircled by Japanese forces for 11 days, during which it sustained considerable casualties.
The original and orchestral arrangement is written in E-flat minor while the folk arrangement is in F minor. a waltz composed of mostly minor notes and sub-4th octave arrangements) composed in 1906 by Ilya Alekseevich Shatrov. 'On the hills of Manchuria' (Russian: На сопках Маньчжурии, Na sopkah Manchzhurii) is a haunting waltz (i.e.
