Unbreakable Union Of Freeborn Republics!

[poliphilo]

cmcmck was saying Stalin could have chosen to be a professional opera singer (and wouldn't that have altered the course of history!) and so I was scouring the Net to see if there was any record of his singing voice- but there isn't. One thing led to another and now I have the state anthem of the Soviet Union (as sung by the Red Army Choir) going round and round in my head. It's really rather uplifting.

Comments

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

That particular devil certainly did have all the best tunes. The anthem of the USSR is brilliant. I first heard it when we went to see the Red Army Choir on their tour of the UK, probably around 1985. I have a CD with the anthems of all 15 republics; some of the others are pretty good too. (Khachaturian - of subsequent Onedin Line fame - wrote the Armenian anthem; the Estonian one is also quite calm and lyrical. Mostly they conjure up the poster art of Uncle Joe greeting the grateful children, and rosy-cheeked women gathering the plentiful harvests from the collective farms. Ahem.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Listening to the Red Army Choir made me feel quite teary about the good old days- the endless fields of wheat and sunflowers, the happy labourers, the chugging of the tractors...