Belarus
"My bielarusy" (We the Belarusians)

Words by: Mikhas Klimkovich and Uladzimir Karyzna
Music by: Nester Sakalouski
Adopted: 1955 (music), 2002 (lyrics)

This is another of my favourite national anthems, as are most of the former Soviet states' anthems. Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Belarus kept the anthem it used as a soviet socialist republic since 1955, without the words. (Many SSR's have used an wordless, or instrumental, version of the SSR hymn very soon after achieving independence.) On July 2, 2002, President Lukashenko set a decree that the Belarus hymn will have lyrics, and ones were adopted in a contest. Many of the lyrics were similar to the Belarussian SSR anthem lyrics.

Special thanks to: Antoine Vélu and Zach Harden for providing some of this information, to Jaroslaw Wojcik for the sheet music, and Pavel Zinovatny for the lyrics in Latin script.

See also: Belarus (1918-1920), Belarus (1955-1991).