This has been bugging me for a while.  It is a choral song, with a
somewhat forbidding mood.  It may be a Soviet war/patriotic song. 
This is all I know.  The MIDI file at
http://spatter.tripod.com/song.mid will give the first few notes that
remember. (Interpret the notes as "words" by a large choir).

Hello bh2002-ga

This is the opening movement from one of my favourite pieces: Carmina
Burana by Carl Orff. This section is entitled O Fortuna (Oh Fate).

You can listen to it in realplayer or mp3 format at:
http://www.albany.edu/music/chorale/listen.htm

The original words are in medieval Latin (although some of the other
sections have words in Middle High German).  If you would like to see
the original words of O Fortuna with a translation into English, go to
http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/orff-cb/carmlyr.html

The same site has some interesting information about the work in a FAQ
at http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/orff-cb/carmina.html

The words come from a 12th century German collection of about 250
poems, some in Latin and some in German.  They were written by the
"goliards", who were vagabond minstrels, including some defrocked
monks.

Carl Orff was born in Munich on the 10th July, 1895 and died on March
29, 1982 at the age of 87.  Apparently, finding the poems changed his
life, because previously he had been known more as a teacher, but
Carmina Burana made him famous as a composer.

It was first performed as a theatre piece with movement at the
Frankfurt Opera in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in June 1937.

Carmina Burana has sometimes been cited as being Hitler's favourite
piece of music.  However, it appears that the truth was more
complicated, and that Carl Orff trod a complicated path in the days of
the Hitler era.  Some information about this can be found in a book
review at: http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~german/articles/dennis1.html

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Clarification of Answer by tehuti-ga on 10 Nov 2002 14:00 PST

Ooops, forgot search strategy.

I knew the piece was O Fortuna, because I have performed it, so my
only strategy on Google was to search for "O Fortuna" alone and with
"mp3" as an additional search term.

Excellent answer, exactly what I was looking for, plus some other info.