In November 1941, during the
Great Patriotic War, Junior Lieutenant and former journalist
Mark Lisyansky was returning from a hospital in
Yaroslavl to fight on the
Kalinin Front. He later participated in the
Battle of Moscow. Worried about the fate of Moscow, Lisyansky wrote a poem in a notebook he titled "My Moscow (My Dear Capital)". After stopping on
Pushkin Square, Lisyansky then sent his work to the literary journal
Novy Mir. The poem was originally set to be published in the December 1941 issue of the magazine; however, due to the editorial office moving to Kuybyshev, it got pushed back to February 1942. The text then consisted of two verses, but later two more verses were added with the help of
Sergey Agranyan. ==Lyrics==