Vladimir Vysotsky

Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (25 January 1938 – 25 July 1980) was a Soviet singer, songwriter, poet, and actor whose impact on Soviet culture was profound and lasting. He was famous for his distinctive singing voice and lyrics that mixed social and political critique with humorous street slang. He also worked extensively in theater and film. Although official Soviet cultural institutions mostly ignored him, he was extremely popular while alive and later influenced many Russian musicians and actors.

Early life

Vysotsky was born in a Moscow maternity hospital on 25 January 1938. His father, Semyon Vladimirovich (Volfovich) Vysotsky, was a Jewish man from Kiev; his mother, Nina Maksimovna Vysotsky (née Seryogina), was Russian and worked as a German translator. The family lived in a communal flat on 1st Meshchanskaya Street.

His mother, a devoted theater fan, noticed his theatrical leanings early and encouraged them. Vysotsky later said that no one in his family worked in the arts, but his mother took him to the theater every Saturday from a very young age until he was about thirteen or fourteen, and that likely shaped him. His paternal grandmother, Dora Bronshteyn, also supported his interests. As a child, he would recite poems standing on a chair, tossing his hair back "like a real poet," and used expressions he could not have heard at home.

At age two, tired of guests asking him to recite, he sat under the New Year tree and sighed, "You freeloaders, let the child rest!" His humor was unusual and often puzzled people. At three, he mocked his father in the bathroom with improvised rhymes ("Take a look what's happening here! / Our goat's decided to shave!") or scared off unwanted visitors with street folk songs. He later wrote about these early years in his autobiographical song "Ballada detstva" ("Ballad of Childhood").

When World War II began, his father, a reserve officer, was called to serve in the Red Army and sent to the front in March 1941. Vladimir and his mother evacuated to the village of Vorontsovka in Orenburg Oblast, where he spent six days a week in kindergarten while his mother worked twelve-hour shifts at a chemical factory. They returned to their Moscow flat in 1943.

In September 1945, Vladimir started first grade at Moscow's 273rd Rostokino District School. His parents divorced in December 1946. From 1947 to 1949, he lived with his father (now an army Major) and his father's Armenian wife, Yevgenya Stepanovna Liholatova, whom the boy called "Aunt Zhenya," at a military base in Eberswalde, in the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. His father later recalled that they decided Vladimir would stay with him, and that Yevgenia became a second mother to the boy; they got along well.

Living conditions there were much better than in Moscow—the family had an entire floor of a two-story house, and Vladimir had his own room for the first time. In 1949, he and his stepmother moved back to Moscow, where he entered the fifth grade at School No. 128 and lived at 15 Bolshoy Karetny, in two rooms of a four-room communal flat. He remembered "Auntie Zhenya," then 28, as very kind and warm, a second mother to him.

In 1953, already deeply interested in theater and film, Vysotsky enrolled in drama courses led by Vladimir Bogomolov. That same year, his mother gave him his first guitar as a birthday present. His close friend Igor Kokhanovsky, later a well-known Soviet pop lyricist, taught him basic chords. In 1955, Vladimir moved into his mother's new home at 76, 1st Meshchanskaya Street, and graduated from school that June with five A's.

1955-1963: Beginnings in theatre, cinema, and music

In 1955, he enrolled at the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering but left after a year to pursue acting. In June 1956, he joined Boris Vershilov's class at the Moscow Art Theatre School. There he met third-year student Iza Zhukova, who became his wife four years later. They lived in a common room at the Meshchanskaya flat, separated by a folding screen.

At the MAT School, he met Bulat Okudzhava, already a popular underground bard, and was even more impressed by his Russian literature teacher, Andrey Sinyavsky, who hosted improvised disputes and concerts at his home. In 1958, Vysotsky got his first role at the Moscow Art Theatre, playing Porfiry Petrovich in Crime and Punishment. In 1959, he landed his first film role, as the student Petya in Female Age-Mates.

He graduated from the MAT School on 20 June 1960. He then joined the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre, led by Boris Ravenskikh, where he spent nearly three troubled years (with breaks). His time there was marked by disciplinary sanctions for "lack of discipline" and occasional drinking sprees, mostly due to a lack of serious roles and his inability to fulfill his artistic potential. In 1961 and 1962, he appeared in films.