"The Partisan" is an anti-fascist anthem about the French Resistance in World War II. The song was composed in 1943 by Russian-born Anna Marly (1917–2006), with lyrics by French Resistance leader Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie (1900–1969), and originally titled "La Complainte du partisan" (English: "The lament of the partisan"). Marly performed it and other songs on the BBC's French service, through which she and her songs were an inspiration to the Resistance. A number of French artists have recorded and released versions of the song since, but it is better recognised globally in its significantly, both musically and in the meaning of its lyrics, different English adaptation by Hy Zaret (1907–2007), best known as the lyricist of "Unchained Melody".

Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) recorded his version, using Zaret's adaptation, and released it on his 1969 album Songs from a Room, and as a 7-inch single in Europe. Cohen's version re-popularised the song and is responsible for the common misconception that the song was written by Cohen. It has inspired many other artists to perform, record and release versions of the song, including American Joan Baez (born 1941), on her 1972 album Come from the Shadows, and with the title "Song of the French Partisan", Canadian Buffy Sainte-Marie (born c. 1941) and Israeli Esther Ofarim (born 1941).

Anna Marly was born in Petrograd on October 30, 1917, and after her father was murdered by the Bolsheviks, she escaped with her mother and sister to a Russian colony in Menton, south-eastern France. Her artistic talents were encouraged from an early age; she was taught guitar by Sergei Prokofiev, and by age sixteen, was dancing in the Ballets Russes in Paris. Becoming refugees upon the outbreak of World War II, her Dutch aristocrat husband and she travelled to London, arriving in 1941.

Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie was born in Paris on January 6, 1900, and after studying at the private high school Sainte-Geneviève in Versailles, he joined the École Navale (the French naval academy, in charge of the education of the officers of the French Navy) in 1919. Resigning the navy in 1931, d'Astier began a career in journalism, writing for Marianne and VU. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he was mobilised to work at the centre de renseignements maritimes de Lorient (English: maritime information center of Lorient) in north-western France, until the Fall of France in 1940. Refusing the armistice with Germany, he co-founded the Resistance movement La Dernière Colonne (English: the Last Column), publishing counter-propaganda against cooperation with Germany, and worked as an editor of the newspaper La Montagne. After the Last Column was decimated by arrests in 1941, he went into hiding under the pseudonym Bernard. By 1943, after meetings in London with Charles de Gaulle, and in Washington with the United States' President Roosevelt, to secure the formation and recognition of the Free French Forces, he again visited London as the Commissioner for Political Affairs of le Directoire des Mouvements unis de Résistance (English: the Directory of United Resistance Movements).

Jonathan H. King wrote, of d'Astier, in his article "Emmanuel d'Astier and the Nature of the French Resistance" for the Journal of Contemporary History:

Few men were at the centre of the Resistance, for the reason that its centre could rarely be defined and was rarely stable. Even fewer would have the necessary literary and verbal self-consciousness to achieve the goals [of subjectively documenting historical reality]. One who was at the centre and who did have this self-consciousness was Emmanuel d'Astier.

and that, in his efforts to organise the Resistance,

in his own words, d'Astier was seeking the strength of "popular forces, those forces which alone can change our dreams into reality, adventure into history, aesthetics into politics".