"Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished" was written as a poem in 1862 by Pavlo Chubynsky, a nineteen-year-old student, a future lawyer and ethnographer, who was not a professional poet. One year later, Mykhailo Verbytsky composed a tune to accompany this daring poem. Back then, a repressive campaign against Ukrainian culture was in full swing, but a miracle happened and Ukraine's intelligentsia and peasantry recognized this song as an unofficial national anthem.
Pavlo Chubynsky was victimized, and persecuted for the rest of his life. Mykhailo Verbytsky escaped this destiny, for he was living away from Russia. Vladimir Putin created the Russian state anthem, "Russia is Our Great Country," in 2001 by issuing a presidential decree to make the 1943 Soviet anthem new Russia's musical symbol, but he ordered that the lyrics be changed.
The text was written by the famous Soviet poet Sergey Mikhalkov, awarded five prestigious prizes: four Stalin Prizes and one Lenin Prize. In the new Russia, Putin decorated Mikhalkov with the Order of Merit and the Golden Falcon Order, which were also presented to Gerhard Schroeder and Jacque Chirac.
The music was composed by Major General and Head of the Soviet Army Ensemble Aleksandr Aleksandrov, who was also later decorated with the Order of Lenin and awarded two state prizes.
The Frozen Song
It was 1869 and the chief of Russia's gendarmes was studying a police report on the conduct of the surveilled Chubynsky. Seven years had passed since the publication of his poem and the all-powerful prince sent Pavlo to Archangelsk province for "negatively influencing peasants' minds." Chubynsky's ethnographic works written in the north of Russia were profound. The chief decided to allow the promising researcher to return to St. Petersburg and then to Ukraine.
Awards and Denunciations
The chief of gendarmes was now thoughtfully reading a report compiled by a secret agent. The agent wrote that living in the south of Russia Chubynsky was successfully working as a scientist. He led ethnographic expeditions in Ukraine and was awarded golden medals by the Russian Geographic Society and the International Ethnographic Congress in Paris for his works. Unfortunately, he wrote, Mr. Chubynsky is simultaneously an active leader of Ukrainian separatists encroaching on Russia's territorial integrity. A new repression followed: Chubynsky, who was about to be recognized worldwide, was deprived of the right to be a scholar and sent to Petersburg to work in the Transport Ministry as a low-level official.
Biographer's Witness
These blows of destiny shook Chubynsky, his biographer wrote. In 1880, this strong and kind man, who was adored by children, was suddenly paralyzed. He lived disabled for four years until death put an end to his sufferings on January 26. Chubynsky had not even turned forty.
The Song and Its Immortality
It was the October of 1915. At the WWI Russian-Austrian front spontaneous fraternization was getting more common. Stepan Murinets, a Ukrainian officer of the Austrian army, saw some soldiers of his company hug their Russian counterparts. Suddenly, the Ukrainian anthem was performed in the crowd. The officer remembered that his country's great division made Ukrainians always sing anthems of other countries - Austria, Germany, Poland, Romania, or Russia. This was the first time he heard the Ukrainian anthem sound over the trenches. The Ukrainians wearing Russian greatcoats were singing it in unison, although the song was banned in Russia.
On August 30, 1919, Stepan Murinets, a colonel of the Ukrainian army, was leading his regiment of Sich marksmen to Kyiv. Commander-in-Chief Symon Petlyura inspected the parade that day. The orchestra performed the anthem loudly and fearlessly in Kyiv's Sophia Square.
A massive Bolshevik assault forced the ataman of the Ukrainian People's Republic and his troops to emigrate. Stepan was one of them and later wrote memoirs.
Mikhalkov and Stalin
It is 1943 and the thirty-year-old Sergey Mikhalkov has been moving to and fro in his huge apartment without any purpose since morning. He is expecting news from Stalin. Finally, the telephone rang. The poet was invited to the Kremlin. Incredibly anxious, he repolished his boots and stained the high heels. This was a good sign, for Stalin approved of his lyrics.
Today, Mikhalkov is 92, but he still remembers Stalin's flaccid palm and his phrase about "the measured words of the anthem."
Stalin and Mikhalkov both piously believed that the triumphant Soviet regime would never be defeated and were confident that the people would remember the immortal name of their leader in the filigree phrase of the anthem: "We were brought up by Stalin to be loyal to our people." Had there not been this line, Mr. Mikhalkov might have left the Kremlin in some other direction.
Mikhalkov: Evolving from Brezhnev to Putin
The epoch changed. Stalin's corpse was carried away from the Mausoleum of Lenin. His name was to disappear from the anthem. In 1977, Leonid Brezhnev asked "his friend" Sergey Mikhalkov to 'vivisect' the anthem. After the downfall of the Soviet Union, the Patriotic Song without words composed by Mikhail Glinka was Russia's new anthem for about ten years. Then Sergey Mikhalkov was invited to perform another poetic surgery. The original anthem started with the line: "The inviolable union of the free republics." Putin's edited version is geographically more modest: "Russia is our sacred state," but Russia still believes it managed to successfully preserve its great renown.
Little Stalingrad in Parliament
When the anthem was discussed in the Ukrainian parliament, deputies fought for each word and phrase like participants of the Stalingrad battle fighting for each house and street. Our left-wing parties thought that the poem written by Chubynsky was provocative to Russia, for he had predicted that our foes would soon vanish like dew in the sun. They also believed it would worsen Ukrainian-Russian relations because the poem was the national anthem of the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1917-1921. Russia never recognized that state and its governors, especially Symon Petlyura, were Russia's worst enemies. But Ukrainians proved to be wiser than their politicians and 87 percent of the population supported the anthem written by Pavlo Chubynsky and composed by Mykhailo Verbytsky.
The two anthems of the two brotherly peoples eventually appeared. Not only did President Putin revive the Stalin-era anthem but he also renewed the whole layer of symbols reminding all of the great and powerful Soviet Union with its frightening army.
In the background of Russia's muscular and victorious reality the national anthem of Ukraine is the song of hope.
It has lots of forward-looking signs: "One day we will rule our land."
And so they are standing face-to-face: Russia whose chin is turned up proudly and Ukraine with its head lowered.
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