Hey, Slavs

The story

"Hey, Slavs" is a patriotic song dedicated to the Slavs and widely regarded as the Pan-Slavic anthem. The Slovak Lutheran minister Samuel Tomášik wrote it in Prague on Sunday, 2 November 1834, at first in Czech and under the title "Hey, Slovaks". By his diary's account, he was dismayed to hear more German than Czech in the streets of Prague and feared for his own Slovakia; the old Polish song "Poland has not yet perished" came to mind, and he wrote three verses by candlelight in pencil, directing that they be sung to its melody, Dąbrowski's Mazurka of 1797. The composer of the version later used in Yugoslavia, slower and with a few changed notes, is not known; modern performances often use a Second World War arrangement by Oskar Danon.

Tomášik soon widened the words to all Slavs, and the song became a rallying song of Slav nationalism and Pan-Slavic feeling, above all in the West Slavic lands ruled by Austria. Printed in magazines and calendars and sung at political meetings, it became the unofficial anthem of the Pan-Slavic movement and the anthem of the Sokol ("falcon") gymnastics movement across Austria-Hungary. In 1905 a large crowd sang it at the unveiling of the monument to the Slovene poet France Prešeren in Ljubljana, and in the First World War Slavic soldiers on opposite sides of the front sometimes sang it to one another to show common feeling and avoid bloodshed. In Slovakia "Hey, Slovaks" has long been an unofficial anthem, above all in times of revolution, though "Nad Tatrou sa blýska" became the official Slovak anthem; the ruling party of the clerofascist Slovak Republic of 1939–45 used it, but that state had no official anthem.

In the South Slav lands it first appeared in the Illyrian movement, in Dragutin Rakovac's translation "Hey, Illyrians". After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the anti-royalist Partisans of Josip Broz Tito and the Communist Party avoided the royal anthem and sang "Hey, Slavs" instead, at both sessions of AVNOJ, their legislative body. It became the de facto anthem of the new Yugoslavia. No other anthem was ever agreed: a law of 1977 named it the temporary anthem, and on 25 November 1988 Amendment IX to the constitution made it the national anthem in law. It served Yugoslavia for 48 years, from 1943 to 1992.

After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 and 1992 it remained the anthem of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, formed by Serbia and Montenegro, and of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro from 2003, since the two could not agree on new symbols; many Serbs disliked it and booed it at football matches and other events. Slobodan Milošević had wished to make it Serbia's anthem, but the Socialist Party of Serbia chose "March on the Drina". The state union ended in 2006, and the last official performance was at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, where Serbia and Montenegro's team played though the country had dissolved days before. Organisers have since sometimes played it for Serbian teams in error, as in 2015 for the racing driver Dušan Borković. Bijelo Dugme recorded it in 1984 and Laibach in 2006.

What it says

A rallying song declaring that the Slavic peoples and their languages live on and will endure against foreign domination; proud and defiant.

The words