The U.S. national anthem is not plagiarized from a Russian folk song

A Facebook post spreads falsehoods claiming the U.S. national anthem is plagiarized from the Russian folk song “Hasbulat molodoy.” However, the melody of the U.S. national anthem is sampled from the British song “To Anacreon in Heaven” from the 18th century, while the mentioned Russian song is called “Hasbulat udaloy.” It is in fact not a folk song, but a piece by the poet Alexander Ammosov and the composer Olga Agreneva-Slavjanskaja from the 19th century  

A Facebook post says the following: 

PLAGIARISM OF THE CENTURY. 

THE U.S. NATIONAL ANTHEM, A RUSSIAN FOLK SONG “HASBULAT MOLODOY.” 

This claim is present among other posts, with links here, here, and here, so this review applies to them as well. The claim in all of these forementioned posts is untrue, which has also been confirmed by the Russian weekly newspapers “Kultura,” “Argumenty i Fakty,” as well as the daily newspaper “Kommersant.”  

The melody of the U.S. national anthem is sampled from the British song “To Anacreon in Heaven” by the composer John Stafford Smith (1750-1836) and the lyricist Ralph Tomlinson (1744-1778), which was most likely written in the 1770s of the 18th century.  

The song was the “anthem” of the so-called “Anacreontic Society,” a London gentleman’s club named after an ancient Greek court poet, whose work contained lyrical and hedonistic content and talked about beautiful women, love, wine, fun etc. In those gentlemen’s clubs, men of the upper class gathered to entertain themselves by playing cards, billiards, with alcohol, food, live music, etc.  

The melody became popular among Americans, who added their own lyrics, but with patriotic content, such as for example, the song “Adams and Liberty” which dates from the end of the 18th century. In 1814, the poet Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) wrote the poem “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which was then combined with the forementioned melody and was later performed at parades, holidays and the like. On the 3rd of March 1931 it was declared the official anthem of the United States by a resolution of its Congress.  

As for the Russian song mentioned in the post, it is not a folk song, but an original song, and it appeared much later than the British one. Furthermore, it is not titled “Hasbulat molodoy” but “Hasbulat udaloy.” It was first a poem titled “Elegi” written by the poet Alexander Ammosov (1823-1866). 

He participated in the enslavement of the Caucasus by the Russian Empire, hence the name of the main character in the poem, Hasbulat, which is common in Chechnya, Dagestan and the surrounding areas. Ammosov was wounded there, so he wrote for the military newspaper “Ruskky Invalid,” in which the poem was published on the 16th of November 1858. Olga Agreneva-Slavjanskaja (1847-1920) later composed music for those verses.  

Since she was a folklorist, some believe that a Russian folk melody was used for “Hasbulat udaloy,” however, that claim is not well founded. Some Russian media outlets, which we have already mentioned, state the melody was sampled from the British one, with which the story began, and this information can be found in the e-library of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  

It stands to reason that the U.S. national anthem is indeed sampled from somewhere, but not from that Russian song, which is most likely sampled itself. It is worth noting that similar instances of foreign melodies being sampled for use in national anthems have occurred worldwide, and Russia has engaged in this extensively.  

Such was the case for the Russian national anthem introduced in 1816, known as “The Prayer of the Russians” or “Prayer of the Russian people,” which was a copy of the British national anthem “God Save the King.” The verse was translated to “Bozhe, tsarya khrani” [God Save the Tsar]. Under that title, which was practically the same as that of the British national anthem, in 1833 a new Russian national anthem was introduced, only this one sounded more Russian than the previous one.  

After the February Revolution, Russia adopted the French national anthem “La Marseillase,” [The Marseillaise] reworked in Russian as “Rabochaya Marselyeza” [The Workers’ Marseillaise].” After the October Revolution, the national anthem of Soviet Russia became “L’Internationale,” [The Internationale], another French revolutionary song. The melody of the current national anthem of Russia, on the other hand, is taken from that of the former Soviet Union. 

Taking into account everything stated so far, we assess the post as untrue.  

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