The author forms up an evolutionary semiotic succession of the hymn and concludes that the national hymn is a hybrid literary genre which is embodied in various discourse species and that it possesses identifying, unifying, axiological, “optimistic”, ideological, laudatory, expressive, magical and performative functions. The article analyzes national hymns of ex-republics of the Soviet Union and proves that despite being simultaneously acknowledged as official state symbols these hymns differ in their genre origin, themes and semantic features.