Notes

Introduction

1. So far as he is aware, the present writer developed the term guitar poetry during the course of work on this book; it had no existing equivalent among the Russian terms used to refer to the genre or its practitioners.

2. Yury Mal’tsev, “Menestreli,” in Vol’naya russkaya literatura, 1955–1975 (Frankfurt/M, 1976), pp. 302–25; Grigory Svirsky, “Magnitofonnaya revolyutsiya,” in Na lobnom meste: Literatura nravstvennogo soprotivleniya (1946–1976 gg.) (London, 1979), pp. 463–89.

3. The most comprehensive study of recent Russian literature is Deming Brown’s Soviet Russian Literature since Stalin (Cambridge, 1978). It excludes émigré Russian literature but admits everything that has “emerged” from Soviet society, wherever published. Brown allots one chapter to “underground” literature as a whole (pp. 352–72), of which guitar poetry gets two pages (pp. 365–67). In the revised and enlarged edition of E. J. Brown’s standard Russian Literature since the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1982), Okudzhava appears almost exclusively as a prose writer, Vysotsky as the contributor of one item to the almanac Metropol, and Galich is not mentioned at all.

4. The only substantial studies in English specifically devoted to guitar poetry are G. S. Smith, “Modern Russian Underground Song; An Introductory Survey,” Journal of Russian Studies 28 (1974): 3–12, and Gene Sosin, “Magnitizdat: Uncensored Songs of Dissent,” in Dissent in the USSR, ed. Rudolf L. Tӧkés (Baltimore and London, 1975), pp. 276–309.

5. This assertion does not mean that the music of guitar poetry can be dismissed as a mere appendage to the words. The actual subtleties within Galich’s seeming musical monotony are valuably discussed in Vladimir Frumkin, “Ne tol’ko slovo: vslushivayas’ v Galicha,” Obozrenie 8 (1984), in press. I am grateful to Professor Frumkin for the opportunity to read this article in manuscript.

6. The two classic collections, both compiled and introduced by Professor I. N. Rozanov, Russia’s greatest authority on sung poetry, are Pesni russkikh poetov (XVIII-pervaya polovina XIX veka) (Leningrad, 1936) and Russkie pesni XIX veka (Moscow, 1944). There is no satisfactory equivalent for the modern period. V. E. Gusev’s revision of Rozanov’s collections, Pesni i romansy russkikh poetov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1963), is cautious in the extreme.

7. One striking anticipation of the modern Russian guitar poets is the case of the actor Nikolai Grigor’evich Tsyganov (1797–1833), author of many songs, including the immortal “Red Sarafan” (the sarafan is a traditional Russian peasant woman’s dress.) A recent Soviet commentator, A. V. Sidel’nikova, writes: “N. G. Tsyganov did not write down his songs, but performed them to guitar accompaniment among his friends, and it was evidently through them that they broke through into oral existence. . . . Tsyganov . . . never saw the first printed edition of his works” (“N. G. Tsyganov i ego pesennoe tvorchestvo,” Uchenye zapiski moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo instituta, vol. 455, 1971, pp. 143–59).

1. Song in State Service

1. Anon., “Sovetskaya pesnya,” Pravda, 12 September 1975, p. 1.

2. Russkie sovetskie pesni, 1917–1977, comp. N. Kryukov and Ya. Shvedov (Moscow, 1977), pp. 164–65.

3. As quoted in Harold Swayze, The Political Control of Soviet Literature, 1946–1959 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), p. 113. The second paragraph was slightly modified at the V Congress of Soviet Writers in 1954.

4. The evolution of the official theory is illustrated in C. Vaughan James, Soviet Socialist Realism: Origins and Theory (London, 1973). Its practical significance is examined in Abram Terts (Andrei Sinyavsky), “Chto takoe sotsialisticheskii realizm,” in Fantasticheskii mir Abrama Tertsa (London, 1967), pp. 399–446; translated as Abram Tertz, On Socialist Realism (New York, 1960). Katerina Clark’s The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago and London, 1981) provides an illuminating discussion of the origins and nature of Socialist Realism and its reflection in the orthodox Soviet novel from the 1930s to the present day.

5. Geoffrey Hosking, Beyond Socialist Realism (London, 1980); Deming Brown, “The Literary Situation,” in his Russian Literature since Stalin (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 1–22.

6. The best available discussion of the system is contained in The Soviet Censorship, ed. Martin Dewhirst and Robert Farrell (Metuchen, N.J., 1973); also helpful are the relevant sections of Ronald Hingley, Russian Writers and Soviet Society, 1917–1978 (London, 1978), and Andrei Sinyavsky, “Samizdat and the Rebirth of Literature,” Index on Censorship 9, no. 4 (1980): 8–13.

7. Russkie sovetskie pesni, 1917–1977. This book will be referred to hereafter as RSP.

8. Robert Rothstein, “The Quiet Rehabilitation of the Brick Factory: Early Soviet Popular Music and Its Critics,” Slavic and East European Journal 39, no. 3 (1980): 374–85.

9. The best available treatment of the subject is Vladimir Frumkin’s regrettably brief “Tekhnologiya ubezhdeniya: zametki o politicheskoi pesne,” Obozrenie 5 (July 1983): 17–20 and 6 (September 1983): 23–26. The fullest Soviet work on official song is A. Sokhor, Russkaya sovetskaya pesnya (Leningrad, 1959).

10. Wolfgang Kazack, “Lebedev-Kumač,” in Lexikon der russischen Literatur ab 1917 (Stuttgart, 1976), pp. 204–205.

11. Modern Russian Poetry, ed. Vladimir Markov and Merrill Sparks (London, 1966), pp. 738–41, contains the full original text of the song, with an English translation. The second quatrain of the verse refers to and quotes the “Stalin” Constitution of 1936.

12. On this subject, see Vera Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middle-Class Values in Soviet Fiction (Cambridge, 1976).

13. Pavel Leonidov writes of “. . . the musical mafia that stands guard over the sinecure trough (kormushka-koryto) of royalties on songs, the most calorific trough in the country, apart, perhaps, from the aircraft- and rocket-builders’ trough, but they work in secret, while songwriters have fame” (Vladimir Vysotsky i drugie, New York, 1983, p. 53). The relations between text writers and musicians are described from an official standpoint in Mikhail Isakovsky, “Istoriya dvukh pesen,” collected in his book O poetakh, o stikhakh, o pesnyakh (2d ed., Moscow, 1972), pp. 116–24.

14. Felix J. Oinas, “The Political Uses and Themes of Folklore in the Soviet Union,” in Folklore, Nationalism, and Politics, ed. Felix J. Oinas (Columbus, 1978), pp. 77–95.

15. A good deal of information about the “repertoire sheets” of various variety artists, including the comedian Arkadii Raikin and the very popular singers Muslim Magomaev and Mark Bernes, is contained in Pavel Leonidov, Vladimir Vysotsky i drugie. Leonidov asserts that the cabaret singer Aleksandr Vertinsky (1889–1957) had a “repertoire sheet” personally authorized by Molotov, who had been instructed by Stalin to see to his welfare (pp. 128–29).

2. The Middle Ground and the Amateurs

1. Pasternak’s lyric “Hamlet” was first published under his own name in the USSR in the annual Poetry Day of 1980 (Den’ poezii 1980, Moscow, 1980, p. 181). In an accompanying note, Andrei Voznesensky asserts that he had earlier published the poem in an article on poetic translation in the journal Foreign Literature (Inostrannaya literatura).

2. Alexander Shtein, “Povest’ o tom, kak voznikayut syuzhety,” Znamya 5 (1964): 130, 147. Vertinsky’s memoirs, somewhat unctuous and composed throughout with cautious hindsight, make interesting reading: “Chetvert’ veka bez rodiny. Vospominaniya,” in V krayakh chuzhikh (Moscow, 1962), pp. 197–309. His songs have been published most fully abroad: Pesni i stikhi, 1916–1937gg. (New York, 1975).

3. Mihajlo Mihajlov, Moscow Summer (London, 1966), pp. 51, 61, 205.

4. Vera Sandomirsky [Vera Dunham], “The Sad Armchair: Notes on Soviet War and Postwar Lyrical Poetry,” Harvard Slavic Studies 3 (1957): 289–327. The theme is further developed in Professor Dunham’s In Stalin’s Time: Middle-Class Values in Soviet Fiction (Cambridge, 1976).

5. B. M. Dobrovol’sky, “Sovremennye bytovye pesni gorodskoi molodezhi,” in Fol’klor i khudozhestvennaya samodeyatel’nost’ (Leningrad, 1968), pp. 176–200.

6. RSP, p. 405. The text is dated 1947, but Dobrovol’sky (“Sovremennye bytovye pesni,” 187–88) asserts that the song was in fact written in the second half of the 1930s by Mikhail L’vovsky, using the tune of another popular song of the time, Mikhail Svetlov’s “Behind the Green Fence” (“Za zelenym zaborikom”).

7. Sovetskie poety, pavshie na Velikoi otechestvennoi voine (Moscow-Leningrad, 1965), pp. 281–82.

8. Lev Kopelev, “Pamyati Aleksandra Galicha,” Kontinent 16 (1978): 340. The cultural significance of the virgin lands campaign has not been seriously studied, but it is of considerable interest. The number of young poets who went on geological expeditions in the late 1950s was remarkable; indeed, there has recently been talk of a “geological school” of poets: Konstantin Kuz’minsky, “Geologicheskaya shkola,” in The Blue Lagoon Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry, vol. 1 (Newtonville, 1980), pp. 387–93.

9. The atmosphere of samodeyatelnost’ is evoked in E. Ryazanov’s delightful film Beware of Cars (Beregis’ avtomobilya), in which an “honest thief” and a policeman unwittingly investigating his case are rehearsing a samodeyatelnost’ production of Hamlet. The amateur actors are piquantly played by two of the greatest living Soviet professionals, Innokenty Smoktunovsky and Oleg Efremov.

10. There is an abundant literature in English on this subject; contemporary accounts include The Soviet Cultural Scene, 1956–1957, ed. Walter Z. Laqueur and George Lichtheim (New York-London, 1958); George Gibian, Interval of Freedom: Soviet Literature during the Thaw, 1954–1957 (Minneapolis, 1960); Hugh McClean and Walter Vickery, “Introduction,” in their The Year of Protest, 1956: An Anthology of Soviet Literary Materials (New York, 1961); Thomas P. Whitney, “Russian Literature and Soviet Politics,” in his anthology The New Writing in Russia (Ann Arbor, 1964); and the introductory articles in two anthologies edited by Max Hayward and Patricia Blake, Dissonant Voices in Soviet Literature (London, 1964) and Half-Way to the Moon: New Writing from Russia (London, 1964). The later Khrushchev period is surveyed in Patricia Blake, Khrushchev and the Arts: The Politics of Soviet Culture, 1962–1964 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965). More recent discussion of the period includes the appropriate sections of the books by Deming Brown and Edward J. Brown (see above, Introduction, Note 3.)

11. R. F. Thmanovsky, “Den’ poezii,” in Kratkaya literaturnaya entsikopediya, vol. 2, col. 593 (Moscow, 1964).

12. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, A Precocious Autobiography, trans. Andrew R. Mac Andrew (London, 1963), p. 107. See also Anatoly Gladilin, The Making and Unmaking of a Soviet Writer, trans. David Lapeza (Ann Arbor, 1979), pp. 78–85.

13. Olga Carlisle, Poets on Street Corners (New York, 1968), 15.

14. Yury Andreev, “Chto poyut?” Oktyabr’ I (1965): 182–92; reprinted in Literatura i sovremennost’, 6: Stat’i o literature 1964–1965 godov (Moscow, 1965), pp. 257–79.

15. Andreev, Literatura i sovremennost’, p. 258.

16. Ibid., p. 276.

17. Dobrovol’sky.

18. Ibid., p. 193. Vladimir Vysotsky used the term avtorskaya pesnya to refer to the genre of his songs, contrasting them with the “stage” or “vaudeville” song (estradnaya pesnya): “Vladimir Vysotsky o sebe i o svoikh pesnyakh,” in Vladimir Vysotsky, Pesni i stikhi, vol. 2 (New York, 1983), p. 193.

19. Dobrovol’sky, p. 193.

20. A. A. Bragina, Neologizmy v russkom yazyke: Posobie dlya studentov i uchitelei (Moscow, 1973). The lexical group centered on the word shanson’e is discussed on pp. 128–35.

21. Bragina, p. 134, quoting an unidentified article from Sovetskaya kul’tura, 10 October 1967.

22. The discussions in Literaturnaya gazeta are surveyed in Pavel Mikhalevsky, “Russkaya pesnya,” Russkaya mysl’, 25 September 1975, p. 2.

23. Dmitry Kabalevsky, article in Komsomol’skaya pravda, 26 February 1967, reported in Mikhalevsky, p. 2.

24. Mikhail Isakovsky, “Vernut’ pesne muzyku i poeticheskoe slovo!” (March 1967), reprinted in his O poetakh, o stikhakh, o pesnyakh (2d ed., Moscow, 1972), pp. 125–30.

25. L. Oshanin, untitled speech, in Chetvertyi s”ezd pisatelei SSSR. 22–27 maya 1967 goda. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1968), p. 194.

26. V. Kukharsky, “V interesakh millionov,” Sovetskaya muzyka 10 (1968), reported in anon., “ ‘Samodeyatel’nye’ pesni v Sov. soyuze,” Russkaya mysl’, 22 May 1969, p. 3.

27. V. Frumkin, “Pesnya i stikh,” Sovetskaya muzyka 10 (1969): 21–27. In an interview given outside the USSR many years later, Okudzhava implicitly agreed with Frumkin’s point; his views on Blanter’s settings appear in Larissa Gershtein, “Razgovor s Bulatom Okudzhavoi,” Dvadtsat’ dva 5, no. 25 (1982): 193–94.

28. Frumkin’s account of this affair is contained in his émigré edition of Okudzhava’s songs: Bulat Okudzhava, 65 pesen/65 Songs (Ann Arbor, 1980), pp. 11—12. While he was still in Russia, Frumkin also wrote a general essay on the nature of sung poetry, using several examples from the guitar poets. It was accepted for publication but was stopped when the author emigrated. It eventually appeared in the United States: Vladimir Frumkin, “O nekotorykh funktsiyakh muzyki v sinteticheskikh iskusstvakh,” in Papers in Slavic Philology, I: In Honor of James Ferrell (Ann Arbor, 1977), pp. 77–99.

29. I. Ignat’ev, “Ofitsial’naya sovetskaya pesnya protiv pesennogo samizdata,” Radio Liberty Information Bulletin, 21(2602), 2 June 1971, passim.

30. Matveeva’s poetry is represented in most English-language anthologies of modern Russian verse. See, for example, Post-War Russian Poetry, ed. Daniel Weissbort (Harmondsworth, 1974), pp. 183–89; Russian Poetry: The Modern Period, ed. John Glad and Daniel Weissbort (Iowa City, 1978), pp. 265–69.

31. Shkola Okudzhavy (London, 1971), reprinted from Kak nadezhna zemlya: Pesennik, comp. D. Sokolov (Moscow, 1969). Shkola Okudzhavy will be referred to in the text as ShOk, with page reference.

32. Dobrovol’sky, p. 197, relates that this song was sung from memory by an entire concert audience in Leningrad only days after Gorodnitsky first performed it in public. The song was awarded second prize (the first prize not being awarded) at the All-Union Song Contest in Moscow in 1966.

33. Several singers who perform to their own guitar accompaniment have appeared in Russia since the 1960s; the most talented of them is Zhanna Bichevskaya. In the work of these singers, who are not themselves poets, the influence of guitar poetry is joined by a strong element coming from Western singers using a sophisticated folk-based style, such as Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. Because of the latter element in Bichevskaya’s style, Okudzhava insisted that she give up performing his songs: his account of the confrontation appears in Larissa Gershtein’s interview, published outside the USSR (see above, Note 27).

3. Underground Song

1. B. Vol’man, Gitara v Rossii: Ocherk istorii gitarnogo iskusstva (Leningrad, 1961), p. 41. See also A. Larin, “Gitara v Rossii (Obzor literatury),” in Al’manakh bibliofila, vol. 11 (Moscow, 1981), pp. 142–53. According to Graham Wade, “Only in Russia did the seven-string guitar take root”: Traditions of the Classical Guitar (London, 1980, p. 98).

2. Vol’man, p. 48.

3. Robert Rothstein, “The Quiet Rehabilitation of the Brick Factory,” Slavic and East European Journal 39, no. 3 (1980): 374–85.

4. Pesni i romansy russkikh poetov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1963), p. 941.

5. Ibid.

6. Vol’man, p. 49.

7. The New Oxford Book of Light Verse, ed. Kingsley Amis (Oxford-London-New York, 1978), pp. 163–65. A more decorous version can be found in W . H. Auden’s Oxford Book of Light Verse (Oxford-New York-TorontoMelboume, 1979), pp. 476–77. For a more demotic version of the song, see Bawdy Barrack-Room Ballads (London, 1970), pp. 124–26.

8. The most useful accounts are: E. V. Pomerantseva, “Ballada i zhestokii romans,” Russkii fol’klor 14 (1974): 202–209; Ya. I. Gudoshnikov, Ocherki istorii russkoi literaturnoi pesni XVIII-XIX vv. (Voronezh, 1972), pp. 142–49. Both these accounts are condescending, treating the genre as a subliterary phenomenon.

9. D. E. Maksimov, Poeziya V. Bryusova (Leningrad, 1940), pp. 127–29.

10. Marina Tsvetaeva, “V moe okoshko dozhd’ stuchitsya,” in Stikhotvoreniya i poemy (Leningrad, 1979), p. 127. See also Simon Karlinsky, Marina Cvetaeva: Her Life and Art (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966), pp. 188–89.

11. Quoted in I. Timofeev, “Na beregu Nevy,” Novyi zhurnal 68 (1962): 84–85.

12. Rothstein, p. 376, footnote 13.

13. “Ya byl batal’onnyi razvedchik,” in anon. “Narodnye sovetskie pesni,” Student 2/3 (1964): 81; see also Mikhailo Mikhailov, Leto moskovskoe 1964 (Frankfurt/M, 1967), pp. 63–64.

14. This text has obviously been distorted by censorship. According to Vladimir Frumkin (private communication), more perfect variants of the song include the following two verses. After the present fifth verse:

Back home I went, my lads,

And wasted no time caressing my Shura.

My false leg really got in the way,

So I put it under the bed.

And a final verse:

People say fate is no turkey,

And that’s why I’m singing this song,

How a vicious little Fascist bullet

Tore off my ability.

15. Vladimir Markov, The Longer Poems of Velemir Khlebnikov (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962), p. 44.

16. Ibid., pp. 44–45.

17. “Zhila na Moskve geroinya romana,” in anon., “Pesni-stikhi iz SSSR,” Novyi zhurnal 84 (1966): 146–47.

18. Quoted in Alla Ktorova, “Yurin pereulok,” Grani 53 (1963): 38. Vladimir Frumkin advises that this song should have a penultimate verse, as follows:

Once upon a time my own dear mommy

Went to the hayloft,

And an awful drama took place:

The count, my mommy he forced.

The suppression of this verse in the text quoted is a normal example of the prudishness found in émigré Russian journals. The great artist Ernst Neizvestny has asserted that this song, along with several others, was composed by the underground student group of which he was a member in Moscow in the late 1940s: “Katakombnaya kul’tura i ofitsial’noe iskusstvo,” Posev 11 (1979): 37. The group was called “Love and hunger rule the world (there’s hunger enough, but love has to be organized).”

19. Valery Chalidze, Ugolovnaya Rossiya (New York, 1977), passim, especially, pp. 51–122.

20. N. Khandzinsky, “Blatnaya poeziya,” Sibirskaya zhivaya starina I (1926): 41–83.I am obliged to Andrew Jameson for a copy of this rare article.

21. Rothstein, p. 379, citing the Russian scholar Viktor Petrov. Rothstein’s article contains an interesting discussion of the criminal song, as well as other unofficial songs in the 1920s and 1930s.

22. “Zhuliki i vory, zlye atamany,” in anon., untitled song texts, Student 5/8 (1967): 146. Punctuation has been inserted in this translation.

23. References to the camps in Soviet literature are surveyed in Mikhail Geller, Kontsentratsionnyi mir i sovetskaya literatura (London, 1974). On the particular period of “Ivan Denisovich” there is V. Zhabinsky, “ ‘Zarubka na veka.’ Literatura o lageryakh,” Mosty 14 (1968): 314–32. In Soviet poetry, “only Tvardovsky” was permitted to discuss the camps, according to Grigory Svirsky: Na lobnom meste: Literatura nravstvennogo soprotivleniya (1946–1976 gg.) (London, 1979), pp. 141–42.

24. Boris Thomson, The Premature Revolution: Russian Literature and Society, 1917–1946 (London, 1972), p. 197.

25. The stage direction at the end of Act IV simply says “Music and dances” (Muzyka i tantsy); Nikolai Pogodin, Sobranie dramaticheskikh proizvedenii, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1960), pp. 157–60.

26. Aleksandr Vardi, Podkonvoinyi mir (Frankfurt/M, 1972), pp. 24–28.

27. “Tovarishch Stalin, vy bol’shoi uchenyi,” in anon., “Narodnye sovetskie pesni,” Student 2/3 (1964): 81–84.

28. Ibid.; Mikhailov, Leto moskovskoe 1964, p. 58; the song is attributed to Vladimir Vysotsky in Pesni russkikh bardov (Paris, 1977), vol. 3, p. 31. The first authorized publication of the song was Yuzef Aleshkovsky, “Pesni,” Kontinent 21 (1979): 146–47.

29. Quoted in Mikhailov, Leto moskovskoe 1964, pp. 59–60; also in Na lobnom meste, pp. 464–65, where it is ascribed to “a convict poet who perished in the camps.”

30. B. Zhabinsky, “Fal’sifikatsiya ili fol’klor?” Mosty 3 (1958): 266–70.

31. After this section had been written and revised, Yakov Weisskopf’s anthology of prison and camp songs came to hand: Blatnaya lira: Sbornik tyuremnykh i lagernykh pesen (Jerusalem, 1981). It includes, among other things, a very full text of “Murka” (pp. 22–26).

32. Nadezhda Mandel’shtam, Vospominaniya (New York, 1970), p. 205. This passage is omitted from the relevant chapter of Max Hayward’s translation, Hope Against Hope (New York, 1971).

33. Mikhailov, Leto moskovskoe 1964, pp. 56–65. The English edition of his book, Moscow Summer (London, 1966), gives these songs only in truncated versions.

34. Yuly Daniel [Nikolai Arzhak], “Atonement,” in This Is Moscow Speaking (London, 1968), pp. 77–78.

35. S. Frederick Starr has gone even further about the importance of camp songs. He asserts that “incessant propaganda had debased the spoken and written word and turned many young people away from language as such. Significantly, when their interest in verbal communication revived in the late fifties, they turned first to poetry and works by their contemporaries, Andrei Voznesensky and Yevgeni Yevtushenko. A decade of mass songs had also debased singing. Not until an entirely new genre of songs filtered back from the Siberian labor camps did the sung word return to Russia.” Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in Russia (New York and Oxford, 1983), p. 242. As we have seen, there was always an alternative, underground culture of song in the towns; and the prison-camp element is only one, and not even the most important, of the elements making up the actual “entirely new genre of songs” that returned the sung word to Russia, that genre being the guitar poetry of Okudzhava and his followers.

36. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “ ‘Intelligentsiya’ poet blatnye pesni,” Druzhba narodov 7 (1975): 84–85. Krasnaya Presnya is an old working-class district of Moscow, the scene of heroic Communist deeds during the 1905 revolution. The “writers in Pakhra” probably included the famous poet and editor Aleksandr Tvardovsky (1910–71), who had a dacha in Pakhra and was a very able singer of folk songs (Viktor Nekrasov, “Tvardovsky,” Novoe russkoe slovo, 6 December 1981, p. 5).

37. Vladimir Roslyakov, “Dva rasskaza,” Yunost’ 3 (1969): 34.

38. The Blue Lagoon Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry, vol. 1, ed. Konstantin K. Kuz’minsky and Grigory L. Kovalev (Newtonville, Mass., 1980), is a substantial step toward assembling the materials for a history of underground poetry mainly during the 1950s. For the preceding period there is only Boris Filippov’s pioneering anthology Sovetskaya potaennaya muza (Munich, 1961).

39. Ruf’ Zernova, “Elizabet Arden,” Vremya i my 58 (1980): 64–65.

40. Ibid., p. 67.

41. For example, anon., “Narodnye sovetskie pesni,” Student 4 (1964): 48. The song is attributed to Vladimir Vysotsky in Pesni russkikh bardov (Paris, 1977). vol. 3, pp. 21–22. Many variants of it exist; the first line is usually “Once I was on the lookout” (“Sizhu ya raz na streme”).

42. Blue Lagoon Anthology, vol. 1, p. 431.

43. See Suzanne Massie, The Living Mirror: Five Young Poets from Leningrad (Garden City, 1972), especially pp. 111–65, and Blue Lagoon Anthology, passim.

44. Reported by Konstantin Kuz’minsky, in Blue Lagoon Anthology, p. 429.

45. For a general survey, see Karl Riha, Moritat, Bänkelsang, Protestballade: Zur Geschichte des engagierten Liedes in Deutschland (Frankfurt/M, 1975).

46. On Biermann, see Thomas Rothschild, ed., Wolf Biermann, Liedermacher und Sozialist (Hamburg, 1976); Michael Morley, “Hard Times for Poetry: On the Songs and Poems of Wolf Biermann,” Index on Censorship 2, no. 2 (1973): 23–36.

47. Bulat Okudzhava, “Pamyati Brassensa,” Novoe russkoe slovo, 22 November 1981, p. 5. The article was acknowledged as a reprint from Literaturnaya gazeta, but no details were given.

4. Magnitizdat

1. The following passage is included in my “Modern Russian Dissident Culture,” Strathclyde Modern Language Studies 3 (1983): 37–50.

2. Abram Terz (Andrei Sinyavsky), “The Literary Process in Russia,” in Kontinent I: The Alternative Voice of Russia and Eastern Europe (London, 1976) , p. 91.

3. For an account of the broadcasts of guitar songs alone from Radio Liberty—over a thousand programs in the ten years from 1971—see R. Polchaninov, “Vysotsky v peredachakh ‘Svobody,’ ” Novoe russkoe slovo, 7 February 1982, p. 6.

4. O. Zhadan, “Idem po pelengu,” Komsomol’skaya pravda, 19 September 1974. P. 4.

5. Anon., “Radioizdat,” Russkaya mysl’ , 6 February 1975, p. 5.

6. Gene Sosin, “Magnitizdat: Uncensored Songs of Dissent,” in Dissent in the USSR: Politics, Ideology and People (Baltimore and London, 1975), p. 277.

7. Aleksandr Zinov’ev, Ziyayushchie vysoty (Lausanne, 1976), p. 303 (my translation). The passage is on p. 444 of Gordon Clough’s translation: Alexander Zinoviev, The Yawning Heights (New York, 1978).

8. A man named V. Kotsishevsky was prosecuted in 1982 for privately producing and marketing cassette recordings; the three tapes he made before being arrested featured: “folklore of the 1920s”; a plagiarized Vysotsky concert recorded by an unknown singer; and a collection of “criminal lyrics.” Kotsishevsky made these recordings using Odessa musicians and facilities, and then sold them to street dealers. Yu. Gavrilov, “ ‘Fol’klor’ iz podvorotni,” Sotsialisticheskaya industriya, 16 April 1982, p. 3.

9. All the verse from the three volumes of Syntax is translated in Russia’s Underground Poets, selected and translated by Keith Bosley (New YorkWashington, 1969).

10. Radio Liberty Register of Samizdat, February 1971, no. R487 (Frankfurt/ M, 1971), p. 62.

11. Pesni russkikh bardov, 4 vols. (Paris, 1977–78). This collection will be referred to in the text as PRB, with volume and page number.

12. One certain fact in this respect is that the songs by Vysotsky that appeared in Metropol (see below, Chapter 6) had been submitted for publication and rejected in the USSR. They all appear in Pesni russkikh bardov. Remarkably, one of them, “Dialog u televizora,” was subsequently published in Vysotsky’s posthumous collection Nerv (Moscow, 1981), pp. 131–33.

13. In Pesni russkikh bardov the song is attributed to Yury Kukin. I owe the correct attribution to Vladimir Frumkin (private communication).

14. In Pesni russkikh bardov the song is attributed to Valentin Glazanov; again, I owe my information to Vladimir Frumkin.

5. Bulat Okudzhava

1. See Karl-Dieter van Ackern, Bulat Okudžava und die kritische Literatur über den Krieg (Munich, 1976), pp. 25–36; anon., “Okudzhava, Bulat Shalvovich,” in John Wakeman, ed., World Authors, 1970–1975 (New York, 1980), pp. 600–602. The latter article contains a substantial autobiographical statement.

2. An account of how Okudzhava got this job is contained in Martin Dewhirst and Robert Farrell, eds., The Soviet Censorship (Metuchen, N.J., 1973), p. 39. According to some sources, he was fired from the job for publishing Yevtushenko’s controversial poem about Soviet anti-Semitism, “Babii Yar.”

3. Ruvim Rublev, “Mest’ Bulata Okudzhavy,” Novoe russkoe slovo, 10 May 1980, p. 2.

4. For an account of this publication, see Grigory Svirsky, Na lobnom meste: Literatura nravstvennogo soprotivleniya (I946-I976gg.) (London, 1979), pp. 217–34. It was translated en bloc into English: Pages from Tarusa: New Voices in Russian Writing, ed. Andrew Field (London, 1964); Okudzhava’s story, the title translated as “Lots of Luck, Kid!” is on pp. 146–213. The story also appears, as “Good Luck, Schoolboy!” in Half-Way to the Moon: New Writing From Russia, ed. Patricia Blake and Max Hayward (London, 1964), pp. 149–81.

5. A. G. Dement’ev and Μ. M. Kuznetsov, eds., Istoriya russkoi sovetskoi literatury v4-kh tomakh, 1917–1945, 2d ed., vol. 4, 1954–1965 (Moscow, 1971), pp. 116–17.

6. van Ackem, passim.

7. Bulat Okudzhava, “ ‘Vse bylo ochen’ ser’ezno. . .’ ” Teatr 5 (1980): 21–23.

8. Bulat Okudzhava, 65 Songs/65 pesen. Musical arrangements, selection, and editing by Vladimir Frumkin (Ann Arbor, 1980), p. 155. The translation is my own. The source of the quotation is not identified.

9. For an interesting attempt to relate Okudzhava’s prose to his songs as part of an evolving concept that assigns positive values, particularly nobleness (blagorodstvo), to the period of Russian history preceding the Great Reforms of the 1860s, see Marran, “Bulat Okudzhava i ego vremya,” Kontinent 36 (1983): 329–54. Okudzhava has recently made things even more explicit: “The narodniki don’t interest me as an object of literary inquiry. I think they were filled to the brim with malice, simply boiling with hatred, and that’s always bad. Toward the Decembrists, on the other hand, I feel profound affection: they weren’t specialists in murder, they were dilettantes, people governed by noble aspirations, not by the thirst for revenge. They were unselfish, decent, and what they did arouses sympathy in me.” Bulat Okudzhava, “ ‘My vse rezhe zadumyvaemsya o chesti, chestnosti, chelovechskoi poryadochnosti . . .’ Interv’yu pol’skogo ezhenedel’nika s Bulatom Okudzhavoi,” Russkaya mysl’, 24 November 1983, p. 8. The implications of this statement with regard to subsequent periods of Russian history are, of course, unmistakable. In the same interview, Okudzhava made equally transparent remarks about his sympathy for Poland’s plight.

10. For a list of the main translations to 1975, see the bibliography in van Ackern.

11. Index on Censorship 1, no. 3/4 (1972): 120–21.

12. Mikhailo Mikhailov, Leto moskovskoe 1964 (Frankfurt/M, 1967), pp. 82–92.

13. Sel’skaya molodezh’ 1 (1966): 33; on the consequences, see The Soviet Censorship, ed. Martin Dewhirst and Robert Farrell (Metuchen, N.J., 1973), p. 91.

14. Bulat Okudzhava, 65 Songs/65 pesen (Ann Arbor, 1980).

15. The accusation of ephemerality is leveled in Gerald Abrahams’s review of 65 Songs: “Unpatriotic Ironies,” The Times Literary Supplement, 20 February 1981.

16. The best analysis of Okudzhava’s melodic gift is contained in V. Frumkin, “Pesnya i stikh,” Sovetskaya muzyka 10 (1969): 21–27.

17. On the “Khrushchev thaw” see Chapter 2, Note 10 above.

18. This categorization was made in the earliest serious study of Okudzhava’s poetry to be published outside the USSR: I. I. Mezhakov-Koryakin, “Osobennosti romantizma v poezii Bulata Okudzhavy,” Melbourne Slavonic Studies 7 (1972): 58–83; the article concludes with a detailed bibliography of Okudzhava criticism to 1971.

19. References will be given in the text to Bulat Okudzhava, 65 pesen/65 songs (Ann Arbor, 1980), abbreviated as 65, with page reference. Translations are my own.

20. The song is also included in Russkie sovetskie pesni, 1917–1977 (Moscow, 1977), p. 568.

21. Also in Russkie sovetskie pesni, p. 567, and Shkola Okudzhavy, pp. 19–21.

22. Particular attention is paid to this song in Frumkin, “Pesnya i stikh” (see Note 16 above), and there is a very thorough analysis of the text in A. K. Zholkovsky, “Rai, zamaskirovannyi pod dvor: Zametki o poeticheskom mire Bulata Okudzhavy,” in NRL. Almanach 1978, edited by V. Len, G. Mayer, and R. Ziegler, pp. 101–120 (Salzburg, 1979).

23. Violetta Ivemi, ‘ “Kogda dvigaetes’, staraites’ nikogo ne tolknut’,’” Kontinent 24 (1980): 362.

24. Quoted in anon., “Poeziya, rozhdennaya muzykoi,” Sputnik 3 (1978): 160. Neither the date of this statement nor the circumstances under which it was made are mentioned in this source.

25. Literaturnaya Rossiya 1 (1977): 5.

26. Bulat Okudzhava, Pesni, Melodiya S 60–13331–2.

27. “Novye pesni Bulata Okudzhavy,” Literaturnyi Kur’er, 6 (1983); 3.

6. Vladimir Vysotsky

1. The most substantial source of information on Vysotsky’s private life is Pavel Leonidov, Vladimir Vysotsky i drugie (New York, 1983), even though only about 40 of its over 250 generously illustrated pages are specifically about him. A considerable number of articles and memoirs, including the orations at Vysotsky’s funeral, are collected in vol. 2 of Vladimir Vysotsky, Pesni i stikhi (vol. I, New York, 1981; vol. 2, 1983; a third volume is projected). The biographical information in the posthumous Soviet collection, Nerv (Moscow, 1981), is restricted to two small paragraphs (p. 233) simply listing the main events in Vysotsky’s career.

2. Vladimir Vysotsky, “Pesnya—eto ochen’ ser’ezno,” Literaturnaya Rossiya, 27 December 1974, p. 14; reprinted in Pesni i stikhi, vol. 2, pp. 221–25.

3. Grigory Svirsky, Na lobnom meste: Literatura nravstvennogo soprotivleniya (I946-I976gg.) (London, 1979), p. 189.

4. Pavel Leonidov, “Do svidaniya, Volodya!” Novoe russkoe slovo, 14 August 1980, p. 3.

5. Svirsky, Na lobnom meste, p. 189.

6. Alexandr Gershkovich, “Poslednyaya rol’ Vladimira Vysotskogo,” Obozrenie 2 (1982): 38.

7. See Part I, Chapter 2 above.

8. K. Shcherbakov, “ ‘Gamlet.’ Tragediya Shekspira na stsene teatra na Taganke,” Komsomol’skaya pravda, 26 December 1971, p. 3; A. Bartoshevich, “Zhivaya plot’ tragedii: ‘Gamlet’ v teatre na Taganke,” Sovetskaya kul’tura, 14 December 1971, p. 2. Vysotsky was scheduled to play Hamlet on the day he died; a recording of the performance was substituted, and a full house at the Taganka heard it through.

9. Andrei Voznesensky, “Sud’ba poeta,” Druzhba narodov 1 (1982): 136.

10. Yury Lyubimov, quoted in Leonidov, “Do svidaniya, Volodya!” p. 3.

11. On Vysotsky’s work in radio, see A. Efros, “Osoboe chuvstvo,” in Pesni i stikhi, vol. 2, pp. 277–80.

12. For details of Vysotsky’s early films, see Sovetskie khudozhestvennye fil’my: Annotirovannyi katalog, vol. 4, 1958–1963 (Moscow, 1965), per index. Vysotsky once stated that his favorite film star was Charles Bronson (Leonidov, Vladimir Vysotsky i drugie, p. 222).

13. Anon., “ ‘Chetvertyi,’ ” Literaturnaya gazeta, 1 September 1972, p. 3.

14. Leonidov, “Do svidaniya, Volodya!” p. 3.

15. Voznesensky, “Sud’ba poeta,” p. 136.

16. Andrei Voznesensky, “Rekviem optimisticheskii po Vladimiru Semenovu [sic], shoferu i gitaristu,” in Vzglyad (Moscow, 1972), pp. 147–49. The poem includes the lines: “There he went, more popular than Pele,/Guitar on shoulder,” and the epithet “Chansonnier of All the Russias” (Shanson’e Vseya Rusi).

17. Leonidov, “Do svidaniya, Volodya!” p. 3. Leonidov has also said that Vysotsky was a morphine addict (Vladimir Vysotsky i drugie, pp. 226–27).

18. Efim Etkind, “Sovetskie tabu,” Sintaksis 9 (1981): 3–20.

19. Agathe Godard, “Marina Vlady: ‘Je suis folle de Vladimir parce que je le vois un jour sur deux,’ ” Paris Match, 16 May 1980, pp. 20–21.

20. The Taganka did eventually succeed in performing in Paris, at the Palais de Chaillot in 1978.

21. Leonidov, “Do svidaniya, Volodya!” p. 3. Elsewhere, Leonidov describes a concert given by Vysotsky for the Foreign Faculty of Moscow University in 1959 or 1960, with the implication that it was his first concert appearance as a guitar poet (Vladimir Vysotsky i drugie, pp. 111—16).

22. Ruvim Rublev, “Vysotsky nachinalsya tak,” Novoe russkoe slovo, 6 May 1980, p. 4. Vysotsky’s poems, songs, and parodies written for student occasions are described by Roman Vil’dan, his contemporary at the Moscow Arts Theater studio, and by Vysotsky himself (Pesni i stikhi, vol. 2, pp. 281–86, 207–208 respectively).

23. “Vladimir Vysotsky o sebe i o svoikh pesnyakh,” in Pesni i stikhi, vol. 2, p. 193.

24. Voznesensky, “Sud’ba poeta,” p. 136.

25. G. Mushta and A. Bondaryuk, “O chem poet Vysotsky,” Sovetskaya Rossiya, 9 June 1968, p. 3.

26. The song is Vizbor’s “Conversation between Engineer Petukhov and an African Prince,” which has the famous refrain: “And that’s why we make those rockets,/And why we’ve dammed the Enisei,/And even in the sphere of ballet/ We’re ahead of the entire planet.” The words of the song have never, apparently, been published; they are not in Pesni russkikh bardov.

27. Anon., “Chastnym poryadkom,” Sovetskaya kul’tura, 30 March 1973, p. 4. See also Hedrick Smith, “Underground in Moscow,” International Herald Tribune, 6 April 1973, p. 5.

28. A total of seven records was released in the USSR during Vysotsky’s lifetime, according to the information in Nerv (Moscow, 1981), p. 233. They include: Pesni Vladimira Vysotskogo, Melodiya (Leningrad), GOST 5289–73, M62–375/6 (“Skalolazka,” “Moskva-Odessa,” “Ona byla v Parizhe,” and “Koni preveredlivye”); and another record with the same title, Melodiya GOST 5289–68, 33D-00032907 (“On ne vernulsya iz boya,” “Pesnya o novom vremeni,” “Bratskie mogily,” and “Pesnya o zemle”). A set of songs from the film Begstvo mistera MakKinli (Mr. McKinley’s Escape) was released as no. 11 in the journal Krugozor 4 (1976). Vysotsky appeared on several other Soviet records as a performer, notably O. G. Gerasimov’s Alice in Wonderland, for which Vysotsky also wrote the songs.

29. Daniel Vernet, “Des écrivains soviétiques non-dissidents refusent la censure et éditent une revue dactylographiée,” Le Monde, 25 January 1979, p. 3, the first substantial report of the affair in the West. Russian émigré comment was rather muted: Vladimir Maksimov, “Metropol’ ili metropol,” Russkaya mysl’, 17 May 1979, p. 4.

30. Metropol’: Literaturnyi al’manakh (Ann Arbor, 1979), p. 191. References will be given in the text to this edition, abbreviated as M, with page number, or to Pesni russkikh bardov, vols 1–4 (Paris, 1977), with volume and page number. Metropol’ has been translated en bloc into English: Metropol: Literary Almanac, foreword by Kevin Klose (New York-London, 1982); Vysotsky’s songs, translated by H. W. Tjalsma, appear on pp. 154–75.

31. The north-central Moscow street that from time immemorial had been called Karetnyi ryad (Carriage Row) was renamed in the Soviet period and became part of the Petrovka.

32. The most famous of them is, of course, Isakovsky’s “Katyusha” (Russkie sovetskie pesni, 1917–77, Moscow, 1977, p. 89).

33. Some information concerning Vysotsky’s highly placed patrons and protectors can be found in Leonidov, Vladimir Vysotsky i drugie (New York, 1983): they included at different times the KGB general Svetlichnyi, together with Ishkov, the Minister of Fisheries (pp. 85–86); and the Politburo member D. S. Polyansky (pp. 206–207). On Polyansky, see also Chapter 7, Note 12 below.

34. On Vysotsky’s death and funeral, see anon., “Des Sängers Fluch,” Der Spiegel 32 (1980): 121, 124; anon., “Kak khoronili Vysotskogo,” Novyi amerikanets, 27 August/2 September 1980, p. 18; anon., “Mr. Vladimir Vysotsky” (obituary), The Times, 1 August 1980, p. 14; Aleksandr Gershkovich, “Poslednyaya rol’ Vladimira Vysotskogo,” Obozrenie 2 (1982): 37–39.

35. “Ballada o zemle,” “Gornoe ekho,” in Den’ poezii 1981 (Moscow, 1981), p. 118.

36. Vladimir Vysotsky, “ ‘. . . kak korabli iz pesni,’ ” Druzhba narodov 1 (1982): 137–41.

37. Vladimir Vysotsky, Nerv (Moscow, 1981), produced in an edition of 55,000 copies, which is modest in the extreme by Soviet standards, and sold mainly in foreign currency stores and abroad. The book was compiled and supplied with an introduction by Robert Rozhdestvensky. It includes 132 texts. Of them, no less than 44 were commissioned for Soviet plays, films, or records. There are none of Vysotsky’s early “underground” songs and very few of the personal lyrics; of the songs discussed in this chapter, “Dialogue” is the only one included in the book (see also Part II, Chapter 4, Note 12 above.) On the way the book distorts Vysotsky’s texts, see Leonidov, Vladimir Vysotsky i drugie, pp. 232–42, and the very detailed review by Heinrich Pfandl, which also discusses the New York Pesni i Stikhi: Wiener slawistischer Almanach 9 (1982): 323–35. The publication of Nerv led to a flurry of discussion of Vysotsky’s work in the Soviet press; the main articles are summarized in anon., “Vysotsky’s Art: How Good? How Bad?” The Current Digest of the Soviet Press 34, no. 31 (1982): 10–12 (see Bibliography for further details).

38. A record of Vysotsky songs was published in the United States in 1973 on Voice Records; and a “cover” was published by Nuzgar Sharia the same year: see Petr Kursky, “Pesni Vysotskogo uzhe v Amerike,” Russkaya mysl’, 22 November 1973, pp. 6–7. By far the most extensive collection of Vysotsky songs published in his lifetime is contained in the four volumes of Pesni russkikh bardov; it was followed by several smaller publications, for example, “Dve novye pesni,” Ekho 3 (1978): 4–7. A record on French Polydor PR 350, with Vysotsky singing mainly in French, was released in 1978. A prose work of 1968, “Zhizn’ bez sna,” appeared in Ekho 2/10 (1980): 7–24; it is reprinted in Pesni i stikhi, vol. 2, pp. 123–50, and after it (pp. 150–92) appears another, previously unknown, piece of prose, “Roman o devochkakh”; it is unfinished and undated.

39. For example, Clifford D. May and Alfred Friendly, Jr., “Singing Out,” Newsweek, 22 March 1976, p. 14; anon., “Protestlieder. Witze von Karl,” Der Spiegel 13 (1971): 126, 129; V. Maslov, “Tri znakomstva s Vysotskim,” Posev 1 (1971): 56–60. By far the best critical article on Vysotsky published in his lifetime was Petr Vail’ and Aleksandr Genis, “Shampanskoe i politura,” Vremya i my 36 (1978): 134–42; see also Ruvim Rublev, “Voennye pesni Vysotskogo,” Novoe russkoe slovo, 8 May 1980, p. 4.

40. This double album, entitled N’yu-iorkskii kontsert Vladimira Vysotskogo, 1979, carries no label name, serial number, or liner notes; it contains twenty-seven songs.

41. Bulat Okudzhava, “Pamyati V. Vysotskogo,” Russkaya mysl’, 10 December 1981, p. 8. The text has not been published, apparently, in the USSR. It is reprinted, with the dedication “To Marina Polyakova” [i.e., Marina Vlady], in Pesni i stikhi, vol. 2, p. 275.

42. Public tributes in the USSR have been conspicuous by their absence. Tributes in the émigré press include Ruvim Rublev, “O Vladimire Vysotskom,” Novoe russkoe slovo, 24 January 1981, p. 4; idem, “Spi, shanson’e Vseya Rusi,” Novoe russkoe slovo, 29 July 1980, p. 3; Nataliya Rubenshtein, “Narodnyi artist,” 22 14 (1980): 193–202; Mikhail Morgulis, “Dusha Rossii,” Novoe russkoe slovo, 24 July 1980, p. 4; statements by Aleksandr Glezer, Vasilii Aksenov, Vladimir Maksimov, and Misha Shemyakin, with some songs, were published in Tret’ya volna 10 (1980): 3–11, and the issue’s cover bears a striking picture of Vysotsky; Vladimir Alloi, “Zhivoi,” Russkaya mysl’, 5 August 1982, p. II.

43. “Trevoga. Razgovor s Vladimirom Maksimovym,” Kontinent 25 (1980): 412.

44. Bulat Okudzhava, “ ‘My vse rezhe zadumyvaemsya o chesti, chestnosti, chelovecheskoi poryadochnosti . . .” Interv’yu pol’skogo ezhenedel’nika s Bulatom Okudzhavoi,” Russkaya mysl’, 24 November 1983, p. 8.

45. Voznesensky, “Sud’ba poeta,” p. 136.

46. “Pamyati Vladimira Vysotskogo,” in Andrei Voznesensky, Bezotchetnoe (Moscow, 1981), p. 31.

47. Ibid., p. 32.

48. Anonymous editorial, Ekho 2/10 (1980): 6.

7. Aleksandr Galich

1. For a detailed account of Galich’s life, see my introductory article, “Silence Is Connivance,” in Alexander Galich, Songs and Poems (Ann Arbor, 1983) pp. 13–54. This book contains verse translations of almost all the songs discussed in this chapter.

2. Teatral’naya entsiklopediya, vol. 1, col. 1087 (Moscow, 1961).

3. Kratkaya literaturnaya entsiklopediya, vol. 2, col. 45 (Moscow, 1964).

4. Yury Krotkov, “A. Galich,” Novyi zhurnal 130 (1978): 242.

5. Aleksandr Galich, General’naya repetitsiya (Frankfurt/M., 1974), p. 13.

6. Ibid., p. 141. Galich was introduced on this occasion by Vladimir Frumkin, who reports that the entire audience was on its feet, “except for the first few rows, where the highest-ranking bosses of Novosibirsk were sitting. They sat there, deafened by the ovation, apprehensively glancing round at the people who were on their feet, sinking their heads down into their shoulders. All this time the movie news team from Chelyabinsk had their camera rolling, making a film (that was never shown, it goes without saying).” Vladimir Frumkin, “Ne tol’ko slovo: vslushivayas’ v Galicha,” Obozrenie 8 (1984).

7. All references to the texts of Galich’s songs will be to the most complete collection of them, Kogda ya vernus’: Polnoe sobranie stikhov i pesen (Frankfurt/M., 1981), abbreviated as KV, with page number. This book should not be confused with the smaller Kogda ya vernus’: Stikhi i pesni, 1972–1977 (Frankfurt/M, 1977).

8. Efim Etkind, “ ‘Chelovecheskaya komediya’ Aleksandra Galicha,” Kontinent 5 (1975): 405–26; Andrei Sinyavsky, “Teatr Galicha,” Vremya i my 14 (1977): 142–50.

9. Russkie sovetskie pesni, 1917–1977 (Moscow, 1977), pp. 556–57.

10. Raisa Orlova, “ ‘My ne khuzhe Goratsiya,’ ” Vremya i my 51 (1980): 14.

11. Testimony to the significance of Galich’s work may be found, for example, in Leonid Plyushch, History’s Carnival: A Dissident’s Autobiography (New York and London, 1977), and Natal’ya Gorbanevskaya, “Golosa Aleksandra Galicha,” Russkaya mysl’, 16 December 1982, p. 9. Galich is the prototype of “the Singer” (Pevets) in Aleksandr Zinoviev’s The Yawning Heights (Ziyayushchie vysoty, 1976).

12. Galich told Hedrick Smith he believed that the actual decision to move against him was taken because at the wedding party for Olga Polyanskaya (the daughter of Dimitry Polyansky, a member of the Politburo) Vysotsky sang some of his own songs—which Polyansky thought amusing—and then some of Galich’s, which Polyansky thought less than amusing. He immediately telephoned Demichev, the Politburo’s chief of cultural affairs, and ordered him to have Galich silenced. Hedrick Smith, The Russians (New York, 1976), pp. 415–16.

13. Gene Sosin, “Then Came Galich’s Turn,” New York Times, 12 February 1972.

14. Sonet Stereo SLP 1427.

15. “Beseda s Aleksandrom Galichem,” Radio Liberty Research Department, RS 217/74, 17 July 1974, no. 2 of 4 unnumbered pages.

16. A. Galich, “Kul’tura i bor’ba za prava cheloveka,” Russkaya mysl’, 24 November 1977, p. 7.

17. Ibid.

18. See anon., “Vysotsky’s Art: How Good, How Bad?” The Current Digest of the Soviet Press 34, no. 31 (1982): 10–12, containing summaries of articles by five Soviet authors; see also the speeches and statements collected in Vladimir Vysotsky, Pesni i stikhi, vol. 2 (New York, 1983). It is a token of Okudzhava’s political circumspection that after Vysotsky’s death he has published a lament for the dead poet and publicly condemned the failure to publish Vysotsky’s work during his lifetime; but Okudzhava has never, apparently, uttered a single word in public about Galich.

8. Guitar Poetry as Literary Genre

1. A succinct account of these features is given in Mark W. Booth, The Experience of Songs (New Haven and London, 1981), pp. 5–14.

2. Booth, p. 23.

3. G. S. Smith, “The Metrical Repertoire of Russian Guitar Poetry,” International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics (in press).

4. A useful introduction to the “unprintable” area is Felix Dreisin and Tom Priestley, “A Systematic Approach to Russian Obscene Language,” Russian Linguistics 6 (1982): 233–49. Apart from some work on Solzhenitsyn, though, the stylistics of modern Russian dissident literature remain unexplored.

5. Nataliya Rubenshtein, “Vyklyuchite magnitofon—pogovorim o poete,” Vremya i my 2 (1975): 171. The quatrain means something like: “He’s an s.o.b., one of those roving-eyed drivers,/He’s a speculator, a profiteer, and a tightwad,/It’s a state-owned car he does business with, and he really goes for it,/ Sometimes takes money, sometimes does it for a quick lay.” This translation does not do justice to the richness of the original. For example, the word kalymshchik derives from kalym, the Tartar word for “bride-money”; the word translated as “state-owned” is torgovaya [mashina], “a car belonging to a state organization whose official name ends with the syllable -torg ,” e.g., Voentorg “Army and Navy Stores.” No two native informants have ever given the author the same explanation of all the major elements in this quatrain.

6. Aleksandr Galich, “Pesnya, zhizn’, bor’ba,” Posev 8 (1974): 13.

7. W. H. Auden, “Introduction,” in W. H. Auden’s Oxford Book of Light Verse (Oxford-New York-Toronto-Melboume, 1979), p. ix.

8. Kingsley Amis, “Introduction,” in The New Oxford Book of Light Verse (Oxford-London-New York, 1978), p. viii.

9. Auden, p. x.

10. Amis, p. vii.

11. Of course, there are many exceptions to this generalization and those that have preceded it. Russia had an absurdist movement in the 1920s and early 1930s, notably the now rather overrated OBERIU group in Leningrad; and there has been a small but persistent trickle of successors in this tradition down to the present day. And on the other hand, the postmodernist movement in anglophone poetry, in which Auden was the most significant pioneer, tended to favor stricter verse forms, more accessible semantics, and a more colloquial diction (which did indeed lead to accusations that Auden’s later poetry is “light”). The work of Amis, Davie, Fuller, Larkin, and in the next generation Harrison continues this tendency.

12. Auden, p. xx.

Conclusions

1. On the rise of rock in the USSR, see S. Frederick Starr, “The Rock Inundation, 1968–1980,” in his Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union, 1917–1980 (New York and Oxford, 1983), pp. 289–315.