1938–1980
○ Heart attack
The voice the state silenced, but a million tapes couldn't
28 July 1980, during the Moscow Olympics. Vysotsky's body lay in the Taganka Theatre foyer as over 100,000 people formed a line kilometers long. Police estimated 108,000. Not a single Hamlet ticket holder asked for a refund.
A Taganka Theatre actor and the Soviet Union's greatest bard, who wrote over 700 songs for the seven-string guitar, officially barred from airwaves yet ubiquitous on copied reel-to-reel tapes. His 1971 Hamlet, an intellectual rebel in a black sweater, became a generational emblem, while his songs borrowed the masks of criminals, frontoviki, and alcoholics to speak social taboos in raw street vernacular. He was that rarest phenomenon: adored by the masses and by Brezhnev, who listened to his songs by telephone from a hospital bed. When he died at 42 during the 1980 Moscow Olympics, over 100,000 mourners filled Taganka Square, proving the scale of the voice the state had tried to erase.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1955–56Enrolled then quit Moscow Civil Engineering Institute to pursue acting
- 1956–60Graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre School
- 1961First original song 'Tatuirovka,' launching the underworld-song cycle
- 1964Joined Taganka Theatre; debuted in Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan
- 1967Breakthrough stardom via the film Vertical; met Marina Vlady
- 1971Hamlet premiere at Taganka — a legendary production in Soviet theatre history
- 1979Gleb Zheglov in The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed — nationwide phenomenon
- 1980Died 25 July of myocardial infarction; 100,000-strong funeral
Taganka Theatre and the informal circulation of his songs
Vysotsky joined Yuri Lyubimov's Taganka Theatre company in 1964 and made his stage debut that September as the Second God in Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan. He did more than act: he wrote music and lyrics for productions and sang on stage. In January 1965 he took part in The Poet and the Theatre, receiving his first songwriting credit, and contributed music and lyrics to Ten Days That Shook the World that same month. On 17 May 1966 he played Galileo in Lyubimov's production of The Life of Galileo, his first leading role.
Outside the theatre, his songs spread through tape copying. In June 1963, while filming, he recorded his own songs on a reel-to-reel tape at Gorky Film Studio; copies quickly circulated, bringing his songs and name to notice in Moscow and elsewhere. The number of songs on this recording is not specified here. In October 1964 he recorded 48 songs he had written up to that point, in chronological order. Songs from the 1967 film Vertical were also widely known through amateur recordings before the film's release. Melodiya issued the film's music on vinyl in January 1968, and the initial pressing soon sold out. At the same time, in June 1968 the Soviet press attacked his songs as immoral and ideologically suspect, and two films featuring him were severely censored; one was shelved for almost twenty years. Informal copying thus coexisted with limited official releases. Vysotsky took the leading role in the Taganka premiere of Hamlet on 29 November 1971.