The Words Of Anne Marley. How a Russian girl became the author of the anthem of the Resistance
She was foreign “Miss Russia”, lived in four countries and wrote the Song of the partisans, became the anthem of the French Resistance.
“You made his talent a weapon for France,” admired by Anna Marly, born Batalinsky, the legendary French President Charles de Gaulle. This weapon — song, an immigrant from Russia wrote, after hearing about the heavy fighting on the way home and that was the call sign for the French partisans.
Pre-war life
Anna Batalinskaya was born in Petrograd fatal to Russia in the autumn of 1917. A year later, her father, Yuri Andreevich Belinskogo, shot by the KGB, and her mother was forced to flee the country with a year-old Anya and her sister. The family settled in the South of France in Menton, where at that time gathered a large Russian colony. Four of us lived in one room. Anna’s mother, who owned five languages, gave private lessons. A nanny who arrived with the hostess from Russia, worked part time cleaning houses. So rested.
Despite the hardships and separation from home Anna grew up in a wonderful atmosphere. On the Riviera has gathered the cream of Russian emigration. The girl she was in the house of the composer Sergei Prokofiev, played with his sons and listened spellbound to his music. And he noted that Anya musically gifted child and even gave her lessons in composition and harmony. Together with her sister Marina she attended school “aleksandrino” in nice, which was organized for Russian children-orphans, Grand Duke Andrey Vladimirovich and his wife Matilda Kseshinskaya.
When Anna turned 18, she and her family moved to suburb of Paris. In the book “the Road home” (Moscow ;”Russian way, 2004, compiler A. Khairetdinova) she recalls: “Sister has joined the Bureau as a Secretary, and I dance in the Studio Kschessinska (about us wrote N. A. Teffi: “the two sisters beat one on a typewriter, the other in the ballet Studio”). Again settled in the Russian colony, this time in MEUDON. Here often live Russian… Meet at the market — home care, cooking, money most. We need to make ends meet….
For Christmas a nanny gives me a guitar, and a Cossack Alekseev shows Gypsy spirit. Learn “black Eyes”, “Two guitars”.
In the Russian Conservatory Xenia F. Daragan, student Lily Lehman, is my voice… And although I have danced in the Russian ballet of Paris, and then Alicia Vronskaya in the program “Eight sculptural beauties”, all the music prevailed…”.
Anna began singing at a fashionable cabaret Sherazade own songs to his own accompaniment, took part in a beauty contest “Miss Russia”, and the jury, composed of Serge Lifar, Nadezhda Teffi, Konstantin Korovin, called her the most beautiful foreign Russia. At 22, she joined the French society of poets and composers. At the same time for performances of Anna took the alias Marley, selecting at random from the phone book. She began to see the singers wanted to work with her, but the war began.
Call for guerrillas
In February 1941, along with her first husband, a Dutch diplomat Anna Marley was in London. Through Spain and Portugal, they fled from the Nazi regime. In the British capital Anna joined the Free French of de Gaulle, worked in the canteen for firefighters. London that time of the bombings, the destroyed room, dead people. In the soul of the poet are born other songs… the military. In 1942, she joined a traveling theater Army. Once, speaking with a concert at the naval base, backstage saw the front page of the British newspaper, which told of heavy fighting near Smolensk, the life and exploits of the guerrillas.
My Russian blood zabushevalo. I picked up a guitar and began to sing: “From the forest to the forest road goes along a cliff…”Anna Marly
Words came to the performer themselves. The new song was greeted with applause. Anna Marley began to sing it at the concerts it was played on the radio, where it was christened “March of guerrillas”. Some time later Anne met two French journalist Joseph Kessel and the future well-known writer Maurice Druon. On hearing “March”, they decided to write to him in French text. Thus appeared the “song of the partisans” became the anthem of the Resistance in France.
In 1944, Anna was invited to work on a French radio station in London. She whistled the tune of his song, whistling successfully passed through the German jamming. This whistle was the call sign for which makisara (French partisans) were calculated friends. After the victory of Anna Marly returned to France.
Here it was a resounding success. Her song, a song of fortitude, courage and victory, sounded everywhere.
Photos on magazine covers, performing at official and diplomatic receptions, meetings with members of the Resistance… Later from the hands of General de Gaulle, she received the Legion of honor. But the wave of fame Troubadour of the Resistance, as it was called then, left the country in order to spread the image of the free French around the world. Touring Europe, Africa, America. In Rio de Janeiro, she met her second husband, Yury Smirnov, who moved there from the USSR during the war.
On the trip home in Russia then could only dream of. Hampered by the stigma of the immigrant. Anna recalled: “In 1945, after a speech in honor of the Victory in the Royal Lodge, where we, the artists came to greet generals of the allies, Russian (can not remember his name, but known, of course, once he came to Berlin) I did not shake hands. What blinkers! Thank God it’s over!”.
For the first time in Russia, in Leningrad, she came only in 1973 in order to meet the mother of her husband.
Most of my life Anna Marley has lived in the United States. But spiritually, she was always close to his distant home, considered himself a Russian, spoke with journalists and writers from Russia, gave an interview to the Russian media. Last years Anna spent in Alaska. There, closest to Russia, the U.S., and she was buried.
Song of the partisans
From forest to forest
The road goes
Along the cliff,
And there’s a high
About a month floats
Hastily.
We’ll go there
No crow will fly,
Beast is not included.
No one, no power
We will not win,
Will not take away.
The people’s Avengers,
We will take back
The evil force.
Let the wind of freedom
Will fall asleep
And our grave…
We go
And destroy to the end
The enemy’s network.
Let them know how much
For the truth we lay,
Our children!..