How Roger Doucet wrote the Soviet National Anthem

One of my fave blogs these days is Greatest Hockey Legends. Every day they post a great piece about some nugget of hockey history -- both on-ice and off-ice. Recently they posted this piece about Roger Doucet, the legendary anthem singer of the Montreal Canadiens.

In the summer of 1976 Doucet was asked to sing the national anthems at the new Canada Cup tournament. He was familiar with the American and of course Canadian anthems, but needed to learn the songs of the four European countries.

He contacted the Department of External Affairs and they easily got him the lyrics for Sweden, Finland and Czechoslovakia, but there was a problem with the Soviet Union anthem - there were no words!

It seems the original words in The Hymn Of The Soviet Union were quietly dropped after 1956 because of all the references to dictator Josef Stalin. Doucet was advised to "hum the anthem very loudly."

That didn't sit too well with the proud singer. Somehow he unearthed a copy of the Stalinist lyrics. Since he could not spead or read Russian, he handed it to the Russian department at the University of Montreal, and asked them to "fix them up."

Before the Soviet Union-Czechslovakia game at the Canada Cup, Doucet showed Soviet team officials the rewritten lyrics. They had no objections, and Doucet sang the all new Hymn of the Soviet Union. With the game being broadcasted back home, the Russian fans must have been shocked to hear the new anthem.

In 1977 the Soviet Parliament adopted the new lyrics.

Read the entire article...