Vasily Lebedev-Kumach
Song about our motherland

O my homeland is a spacious country:
Streams and fields and forests full and fair.
I don’t know of any other country
Where a man can breathe a freer air!

All the way from Moscow to the border.
Southern peaks to northern oceans’ foam
Man can walk and feel that he’s the owner
Of this boundless motherland and home.
Here our life can flow as freely, broadly
As the Volga brimming and unchecked.
Here the young will always have a roadway
And the old will always have respect.

O my homeland is a spacious country:
Streams and fields and forests full and fair.
I don’t know of any other country
Where a man can breathe a freer air!

One can’t see the end of fields that are rich
Or recall all names of towns we’ve heard.
But one proud word that we say. «Tovarich».
Means much more than any other word.
With this word we arc at home all places
And this word wc always comprehend:
There are no more black or colored races,
For with it the whole world is your friend.

O my homeland is a spacious country:
Streams and fields and forests full and fair.
I don’t know of any other country
Where a man can breathe a freer air!

There is none unwelcome at our table;
He who merits it gets his reward.
We now write in golden strokes the stable
Law of Stalin in a calm accord.
These words have a greatness and a glory
Which the years cannot mar or molest:
Ever)' man has these rights in his story:
He may work, may study and may rest.

O my homeland is a spacious country:
Streams and fields and forests full and fair.
I don’t know of any other country
Where a man can breathe a freer air!

O, the spring wind blows across our homeland.
What a joy to be alive today!
And no one wherever he may roam can
Laugh and love in any better way.
But we’ll frown our eyebrows most severely
If a foe should want to cause our fall —
Like our bride, we love our homeland dearly;
Like our mother we’ll save her from all.

O my homeland is a spacious country:
Streams and fields and forests full and fair.
I don’t know of any other country
Where a man can breathe a freer air!

Translated by Vladimir Markov and Merrill Sparks