The auditions of the various anthems went on for a long time. Finally the leader and teacher announced that five anthems were in the finals. They were the ones written by Alexandrov, the Georgian composer Iona Tuskiya, Khachaturian, me, and Khachaturian and myself jointly. Now a more important round came up, held at the Bolshoi Theatre. Each anthem was performed three times – without orchestra, orchestra without chorus, and chorus and orchestra. That way they could see how it would sound under different circumstances. They should have tried it underwater, but no one thought of it. The performances, as I recall, weren’t bad. Good enough for export. The chorus was the Red Army Chorus. The orchestra was the Bolshoi’s. Too bad you couldn’t dance the anthem, because then the Bolshoi Ballet would have done it. And they would have done a good job, since the orchestration was precise and parade-like, accessible to ballet folk.