How to write and deliver a Russian patriotic song.

First take a feminine noun, which in Russian means a noun that ends in an “a” sound. Luckily many of the nouns you will need are already feminine in form such as: “Strana”= country, “Moskva” = Moscow, “Stolitsa” = capital, “Rossiya” or ”ulitsa” = street, “zima” = winter. There are many more: running out of feminine nouns is not likely to prove a problem in your creative endeavors.

Next, add possessive pronouns. There are three forms of the first person singular possessive pronoun, or “my”: these are “Moy, Moyo” and, the one you will be using “Moya”. In Moscow Russian an unstressed ‘o’ becomes an ‘a’ sound so that the pronunciation you will be working with is closer to ‘maya’, like Mayan without the final ‘n’. Bear in mind that it is important to have no working class British people in the room at this point, as they have great difficulty in resisting the temptation to change “Moya” to “my arse” and “Moskva my arse” is simply disrespectful, however much it reflects the daily reality of traffic jams and dirty streets.

Then add them together, using whichever syntax sounds best: there is no difference in basic meaning between “Moya Moskva” or “Moskva moya”, but the difference in feeling when a husky voiced Russian man is emoting on a primetime TV show can be significant and the latter form carries more yearning and passion.

The next step is to just mix them up for a while with a few random sighs thrown in: ergo:

“Ahhhhhh, Moskva Moya, Stolitsa moyaaaaaah, ay ay ay strana moya, da Rossiya maya, Moya, moya, moya” And so on.

To avoid this drifting into meaningless blather too quickly you can add in other adjectives and, with Russian’s nature as a gendered language, these adjectives will all end in out handily rhyming “aya” sound. The first choice adjectives for this sort of nationalist chansonery are as follows.

“lubimaya” = favourite/beloved “Krasivaya” = Beautiful “belaya” =white, (to cover the snows or the fair hand of your “Devushka” gal) “Malenkaya” = small, (making things small is a handy Russian way to make them seem nicer). Spokoinaya” = peaceful, “Staraya” = old, “dorogaya” = dear and so on..

Then if you add in the oos and ahhs and the occasional “Ti” which is the informal/affectionate form of you, there is little else required.

Ah, Moskva, Moskva, ti lubimaya moya.

Moya strana, ahhhh moya malenkaya Rossia,

Krasivaya stolitsa, ti moya, krasivaya moya.

Da, dad a, strana, maya, belaya zima, ti spokoinaya.

And continue thus until the absurdity becomes overpowering, at which point you will need to add in a new noun or two.

Then, the lyric written, take a melody of numbskull simplicity, ideally following the chord sequence as a nervous dog follows its master, add one middle aged man who has some connection via marriage or an ancient  love affair to Alla Puchacheva and find a TV spot on the calendar devoted to some state celebration. It need not be something significant, even the day of the border guards tends to get a TV concert in its honour.

Then take your song and husky voiced soviet pop fossil, add flags and serve.