We Are Marching in Wide Fields

"We Are Marching in Wide Fields"^[a] was the march of the Russian Liberation Army (RLA), which fought in World War II on the side of Nazi Germany. The text was written in June 1943 by Anatoly Flaume (under the pseudonym A. Florov), Mikhail Davydov wrote the music. The song was recorded in Berlin in the propaganda department of the "Vineta" of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.^[1]

Flaume, an ethnic Latvian whose family emigrated from Russia to Latvia after the Russian Civil War, studied at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Latvia, was a member of the student society "Ruthenia". He based the march of the RLA on his poem "The One Who Is Faithful to Our Motto",^[2] published in Riga in 1939 in the poetry collection "The Songbook of Ruthenia".^[3] According to historian Boris Ravdin, the song is poetically and meaningfully superior to the earlier marches of collaborators.^[4] The Germans distributed the text of the march on leaflets and posters.^[1] The "Songbook of a Volunteer", published in 1943 in Narva, contains the march's sheet music.^[5] The song was first performed on June 22, 1943, on Pskov radio during a parade in which the first Guards Brigade of the Russian Liberation Army took part.^[6] The leader of the People's Labor Union Rostislav Polchaninov, who visited occupied Pskov in 1943, recalled that after the arrival of General Andrey Vlasov in the city, the local radio station played the march of the RLA daily.^[7]