Modest Mussorgsky completed his song, Hopak (also known as Gopak) on August 31, 1866. The lyrics are based on a text entitled "The Haidamaks" by Taras Schevchenko, originally in Ukrainian; Mussorgsky used a translation into Russian by Lvov Mey. Three days later Mussorgsky composed the song Lovely Savishna, and dedicated Hopak to Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and Savishna to Cesar Cui. Both songs were heard in the St. Petersburg-based salons of the "mighty handful" held in the fall of 1866, and both were published in early 1867, although Savishna was banned by the Russian censor.

These songs were Mussorgsky's earliest acknowledged efforts in the realist style he was espousing at the time—a warts-and-all exploration of the Russian soul as seen through its folk culture. In Hopak, the narrator is an aged male lute player who sings a woman's song; some writers have suggested that the singer is perhaps an old man dressed up as a woman. "She" opens with a nursery-rhyme-like phrase that is chanted over a pulsating dance rhythm. The pace slows down at the words "vyso chok da chok," and then the singer describes the ironies of marriage in short, declamatory phrases, ending with the exclamation "vot tak" ("that's what!"). After the singer demands that her husband "give up your evil ways and rock that cradle," Mussorgsky adds an interesting and rather dissonant "rocking" accompaniment figure. The singer launches into a sad, nostalgic section that recalls distant memories of the romance and fun she had known in youth. With the repeated syllable "hoy, hoy, hoy, hoy," the song returns to the nursery-rhyme pattern and dancing music of the opening briefly before concluding.

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov later recast Hopak as a solo song with orchestra. The 1866 song Hopak is not to be confused with the famous instrumental Gopak, written in 1874 to conclude the first act of Mussorgsky's unfinished opera Sorochintsy Fair; this latter "Hopak" was itself later arranged by Lyadov and Rachmaninov.

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