THE Olympic Games have almost arrived and Russian athletes will be hoping for gold medals.
However, should they get to stand on the podium they will not be able to sing along to the Russian national anthem.
The IOC has announced that the Olympic anthem will be played instead as all symbols of Russia are banned after the country was found guilty of doping.
What is the national anthem of Russia?
The national anthem of Russia is simply called the State Anthem of the Russian Federation.
Only the first verse and the chorus is sung during sporting events.
Lyrics are as follows:
Russia is our sacred state,
Russia is our beloved country.
A mighty will, great glory –
Your dignity for all time!
Be glorified, our free Fatherland,
The age-old union of fraternal peoples,
Ancestor-given wisdom of the people!
Be glorified, country! We are proud of you!
From the southern seas to the polar edge
Our forests and fields are spread out.
You are the only one in the world! You are the only one –
the native land so kept by God!
Chorus
A wide scope for dreams and for life
The coming years open to us.
We are given strength by our fidelity to the Fatherland.
So it was, so it is and it will always be so!
Does Russia have the same national anthem as the Soviet Union?
The national anthem of Russia has the same music as that of the Soviet Union.
However, the words have been completely changed from the anthem of the USSR.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia had a wordless anthem called The Patriotic Song.
But after the 1998 World Cup, which Russia failed to qualify for, the players said the song "failed to inspire a great patriotic effort".
After coming to power, Vladimir Putin also expressed his disappointment that Russian athletes had no song to sing when collecting their medals at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.
Later that year, he secured the necessary two-third majority to change the anthem.
Interestingly, the words for both the Soviet and Russian anthems were written by the same person.
In 1944, Sergiy Mikhalkov came up with the original lyrics to the Soviet anthem before submitting new lyrics in 1977 at the request of the Communist Party.
And in 2000 he wrote the words to the State Anthem of the Russian Federation.
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