"" (), also known by its official title of "State Anthem of Ukraine" (, ) or by its shortened form "" (, ), is the national anthem of Ukraine. It is one of the state symbols of the country. The lyrics constitute a slightly modified version of the first stanza of a patriotic poem written in 1862 by the poet Pavlo Chubynsky, a prominent ethnographer from Kyiv. In 1863, Mykhailo Verbytsky, a Ukrainian composer and Greek-Catholic priest, composed music to accompany Chubynsky's text. The first choral performance of the piece was at the Ukraine Theatre in Lviv, in 1864. In the first half of the 20th century, during unsuccessful attempts to gain independence and create a state from the territories of the Russian Empire, Poland, and Austria-Hungary, the song was the national anthem of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the West Ukrainian People's Republic, and Carpatho-Ukraine. A competition was held for a national anthem following Ukraine's secession from the Soviet Union, with one of the songs being "Za Ukrainu" () by the Ukrainian writer and actor Mykola Voronyi. "" was officially adopted by Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada (parliament) on 15 January 1992. The official lyrics were adopted on 6 March 2003 by the Law on the Anthem of Ukraine (). History Background The Ukrainian national anthem can be traced back to one of the parties of the Ukrainian ethnographer and poet Pavlo Chubynsky that occurred during the autumn of 1862. Scholars think that the Polish national song "Poland Is Not Yet Lost" (""), which dates back to 1797, and which later became the national anthem of Poland and the Polish Legions, also had an influence on Chubynsky's lyrics. "" was popular among the nations of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that were at that time fighting for their independence; the January Uprising started a few months after Chubynsky wrote his lyrics. According to a memoirist who was present, Chubynsky wrote the lyrics spontaneously while listening to Serbian students sing a hymn—possibly "Hey, Slavs", which is influenced by the Polish national anthem—during a gathering of Serbian and Ukrainian students in a Kyiv apartment. Chubynsky's words were rapidly taken up by the earliest Ukrainophiles. In 1862, the head gendarm Prince Vasily Dolgorukov exiled Chubynsky to Arkhangelsk Governorate for the "dangerous influence on the minds of commoners". The poem was first officially published in 1863, when it appeared in the fourth issue of the Lviv journal