L’Internationale

L’Internationale, former official socialist and communist song. It was the anthem of the First, Second, and Third Internationals and, from 1918 to 1944, the national anthem of the Soviet Union.

About 1871 a Parisian transport worker, Eugène Pottier, wrote the words (as a poem), which begin, “Debout, les damnés de la terre” (“Arise, the wretched of the earth”) and acclaim, “Nous n’étions rien—donc, soyons tout!” (“We were nothing—thus let us be everything!”); somewhat later a Lille industrial worker, Pierre Degeyter, wrote the music. Translated into Russian (in two successive versions), the Internationale was the Soviet national anthem until it was replaced on March 15, 1944, by The Hymn of the Soviet Union (Gimn Sovetskogo Soyuza), formerly referred to as the “Song of Stalin.”