Commemoration of May 8: Anna Marly, a Russian musician in the service of Free France

Called the troubadour of the Resistance, this Russian musician made the hearts of the French maquis vibrate with the Chant des partisans. The martial melody she composed has become the national anthem of the partisans. For a long time, it was believed that this air emanated from the fighters themselves, without suspecting that in fact it was created by a young Russian aristocrat. Her name was Anna Betulinskaya, when she arrived, at the age of four, in the suburbs of Paris, driven out with her family by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

Anna grows up among exiles. She became a composer, singer and in 1941, she moved to London. Anna Marly, who took a French name, joined General de Gaulle’s Free France. In 1941, she was a cantinière and singer at the theater of the armies. “She first composed the Song of the partisans in Russian, after having read in the newspapers the resistance of the Soviet partisans, behind the German front lines”, explains Lionel Dardenne, conservation assistant at the Museum of the Order of the Liberation. In June 2000, France paid tribute to the one who gave it one of its greatest anthems, then Anna Marly returned to live in her native Russia.