Acknowledgments

This book has grown out of a lecture-recital I have given in a number of places during the last ten years. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to present my views to so many people and receive their comments.

Martin Dewhirst and Michael Nicholson, master bibliographers, have supplied me with many pages of material. This book could not have been written without their help.

In the years before printed texts became available, Tanya Chambers spent many hours transcribing songs from tape with me. Ilya Serman and Ruf’ Zernova guided my steps and forgave my excesses from the earliest days of the project. Victor and Marina Raskin, Mark and Natasha Serman, and Marina Tarlinskaya have helped with delicate points of detail. Vladimir Frumkin kindly used his unique inside knowledge to clean some major errors out of my text. For those that remain, and for all matters of fact and judgment, I take sole responsibility.

I am grateful to Carl and Ellendea Proffer for permission to use photographs of Bulat Okudzhava and Aleksandr Galich from the Ardis Archive and to Igor Vysotski for making available the photograph of Vladimir Vysotsky.

Part of this book was written, and a good deal of the material was organized, during my tenure of a Research Fellowship at the University of Liverpool. I am very grateful to Professor A. B. McMillin and the University Research Committee for their confidence. I was able to finish the book because of the support of Barbara Heldt, to whom I am, literally, more than grateful.