Yesterday I learned about another remarkable Russian woman from a documentary entitled Anna Marly, Russian Muse of the French Resistance shown at the first annual Russian Documentary Film Festival. Anna Marly (née Anna Yurievna Betulinskaya) wrote and performed the rousing anthem “Le Chant Des Partisans.” It became the theme song of the Resistance—during the occupation the French whistled the song to each other as a way of revealing one’s partisan loyalties.

Marly was born to aristocratic parents in 1917. Her mother, nanny, and sister escaped to Finland after the October Revolution and settled in France. She studied piano with Prokofiev but later chose the guitar to accompany her clear, defiant voice and became a nightclub singer in prewar Paris. Marly fled to England in advance of the German occupation of Paris. She recorded the song in London—it reached occupied France via the BBC’s wartime broadcasts. President Mitterand later award her a medal of honor. Though she lived only less than a year in her homeland, Marly remained passionately Russian throughout her life. She died in Alaska as a U.S. citizen in 2006.

Her song continues to cross borders and continues to embolden political rebels.Yves Montand revived the song in postwar France in 1955. Both Leonard Cohen (1969) and Joan Baez (1972) recorded the anthem. Recently the multiethnic French band Zebda (the Arab word for butter) formed an anti-racist, anti-fascist political party called Motivés based in Toulouse and a new version of “Le Chant des Partisans” became the movement’s theme song. In 2001 Motivés won four seats on Toulouse’s city council.