VF: To Alexey’s LATH quote: the soldier in fact directly quotes
not the folk saying yabloko ot yabloni nedaleko
padaet ("like
mother, like child") -- but a much more vile Russian Civil War folk song, or
chastushka (ditty), known as Yablochko [little
apple].
See also my
post of August 9, 2013, "Yablochko in LATH". It is a character in Pushkin's BG
who quotes the saying yabloko ot yabloni (I suspect Victor
didn't read my post attentively:)