The song is now not so much popular as earlier, because it is strongly associated with the Soviet power itself. The fist human cosmonaut of the Earth, Yuri Gagarin, left his autograph on the score, belonging now to the relatives of Hight. The first Soviet cosmonauts were also officially greeted with the aviamarch during the corresponding festivities in Moscow. The founding farther of the Soviet cosmonautics, Eduard Tsiolkovsky, liked the song and mentioned it in his radio address delivered from the city of Kaluga to the participants of the 1 of May (The International Day Of The Workers Solidarity) demonstration on the Red Square of Moscow. The song as also connected with the birth of the Soviet cosmonautics. With the march the famous Soviet pilot Valery Chkalov was greeted in the USA where he landed in 1937, carrying out his prominent long-distance flight. It sounded in the Republican Spain which the Soviet aviation provided a support. The song gained popularity very much because of its performances by the brass orchestras, and the military ones among them.Įventually in 1933 it became the official hymn of the Soviet Air Force.

However, a strong criticism took place also, led by the Russian Association of the Proletarian Musicians which claimed that the march was in fact a 'veiled foxtrot', having nothing in common with a true revolutionary song creativity. Since the 1930's, and during the whole Stalin period, the song was well-known to an overwhelming majority of the Russian people. The song was extremely popular among the parachute sportsmen also.

In 1925 the participants of the first Soviet long-distance flight Moscow-Peking sang the song, as the Soviet newspapers reported.

The melody sounds in the famous Nazi period film 'Triumph des Willens' of 1935. However, after the defeat of the communistic movement in Germany, the Nazis took over the melody for their own needs and invented a new text known as 'Herbei Zum Kampf'. In 1930 the melody sounded at the 1 of May demonstration in Berlin, where a Soviet workers delegation greeted Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German communists. In the early 1920s the German communists received the song from their Soviet comrades with a German text, but the same one as the Russian, just properly translated.

Ussr anthem lyrics translated