Vladimir Vysotsky

Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (Владимир Семёнович Высоцкий; 25 January 1938 – 25 July 1980) was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor who had an immense and enduring effect on Soviet culture.

He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often-humorous street jargon.

He was also a prominent stage- and screen-actor.

Though the official Soviet cultural establishment largely ignored his work, he was remarkably popular during his lifetime and has exerted significant influence on many of Russia's musicians and actors.

Vysotsky was born on January 25, 1938, at the 3rd Meshchanskaya Street (61/2) maternity hospital in Moscow.

His father was Semyon Vladimirovich (Volfovich) Vysotsky, a Jewish man who came originally from Kyiv.

His mother, Nina Maksimovna Vysotsky (née Seryogina), was Russian, and worked as a German translator.

In March 1941 he was sent to the front.

Nina and Vladimir were evacuated to the village of Vorontsovka in Orenburg Oblast, where the boy had to spend six days a week at kindergarten while his mother worked twelve hours a day in a chemical factory.

In 1943, both returned to their flat in Moscow.

In September 1945, Vladimir entered the first grade at the 273rd Moscow Rostokino District School.

In December 1946, Vysotsky's parents divorced.

From 1947 to 1949, Vladimir lived with Semyon Vladimirovich (then an army Major) and his Armenian wife, Yevgenya Stepanovna Liholatova, whom the boy called "Aunt Zhenya," at a military base in Eberswalde in the Soviet occupation zone in Germany.

"We decided that our son would stay with me. Vladimir came to stay with me in January 1947, and my second wife, Yevgenia, became Vladimir's second mother for many years to come. They had much in common and liked each other, which made me really happy," Semyon Vysotsky later remembered.

Here the living conditions were much better than at Nina's communal flat in Moscow; the family occupied the whole floor of a two-story house, and for the first time in his life Vladimir had a room to himself.

In 1949, Vladimir and his stepmother returned to Moscow.

In 1953 Vysotsky, by this point very interested in theater and cinema, enrolled in drama courses led by Vladimir Bogomolov.

That same year he received his first-ever guitar, as a birthday present from his mother.

His close friend Igor Kokhanovsky, who would go on to become a well-known Soviet pop lyricist, taught him basic chords.

In 1955 Vladimir moved into his mother's new home at No. 76, 1st Meshchanskaya, and in June of that year he graduated from school with five A's.

In 1955, Vladimir enrolled into the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, but dropped out after just one year to pursue an acting career.

In June 1956 he joined Boris Vershilov's class at the Moscow Art Theatre School.

There he met the third-year student Iza Zhukova, who four years later would become his wife.

The two soon settled in a common room at the Meschanskaya flat, where their space was sectioned off by a folding screen.

It was also at the MAT School that Vysotsky met Bulat Okudzhava, who at this point was already a popular underground bard.

He was even more impressed by his Russian literature teacher, Andrey Sinyavsky, who often invited students to his home to stage improvised disputes and concerts.

In 1958, Vysotsky got his first role at the Moscow Art Theatre: that of Porfiry Petrovich in Crime and Punishment.

In 1959 he was cast in his first cinema role, that of the student Petya in Female Age-Mates.

The family lived in a communal flat at No. 126, 1st Meshchanskaya Street.

Vladimir's theatrical inclinations became obvious at an early age, and were supported by his mother, herself a great fan of theatre.

Vysotsky later recalled: "I didn't have anyone in my family who was an actor or a director [...] nobody who was in the arts. But my mother really loved theatre, and every Saturday—from the very earliest age until I was about thirteen or fourteen—she would take me to the theatre. And that probably stuck."

His paternal grandmother Dora Bronshteyn also supported his interests.

The boy used to recite poems, standing on a chair and "flinging hair backwards, like a real poet," and often used expressions he could hardly have heard at home.

Once, at the age of two, when he had tired of the family's guests' poetry requests, he, according to his mother, sat himself under the New Year tree with a frustrated air about him and sighed: "You freeloaders, let the child rest!"

His sense of humor was extraordinary, but often baffling for people around him.

At three years old he would jeer at his father while the latter was in the bathroom, breaking out unexpected poetic improvisation ("Take a look what's happening here! / Our goat's decided to shave!") or appall unwanted guests with street folk songs.

Vysotsky remembered these earliest years of his life in the autobiographical song "Ballada detstva" ("Ballad of Childhood").

After the outbreak of World War II, Semyon Vysotsky, who had been a reserve officer, was called up for service in the Red Army.

There he joined the fifth grade of the 128th School of Moscow and settled at 15, where they had two rooms of a four-room communal flat to themselves.

Vysotsky found "Auntie Zhenya," who was just 28 at the time, to be a woman of great kindness and warmth, and later remembered as her as being a second mother to him.