93 Facts About Vladimir Vysotsky

Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor who had an immense and enduring effect on Soviet culture.

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

Vladimir Vysotsky's father was Semyon Vladimirovich Vysotsky, a Jewish man who came originally from Kiev.

Vladimir Vysotsky remembered these earliest years of his life in the autobiographical song "Ballada detstva".

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

Vladimir Vysotsky came to stay with me in January 1947, and my second wife, Yevgenia, became Vladimir Vysotsky's second mother for many years to come.

Vladimir 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.

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

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

On 20 June 1960, Vladimir Vysotsky graduated from the MAT School.

Vladimir Vysotsky soon joined the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre, then led by Boris Ravenskikh, where he spent almost three troubled years.

In 1961 and 1962 Vladimir Vysotsky appeared in the films Dima Gorin's Career and 713 Requests Permission to Land, respectively.

In 1961 Vladimir Vysotsky wrote his first proper song, called "Tatuirovka", starting a long and colorful cycle of artfully stylized criminal underworld romantic stories, full of undercurrents and witty social comments.

Copies of it quickly spread, and Vladimir Vysotsky's name became known in Moscow and elsewhere, though many of the songs were referred to as being either folk music or anonymous.

Vladimir Vysotsky then wrote multiple songs for, and appeared in, Yuri Lyubimov's World War II play The Fallen and the Living, which premiered at Taganka Theatre in October 1965.

On 17 May 1966 Vladimir Vysotsky appeared in his first leading theater role, Galileo in Lyubimov's production of Life of Galileo.

The role required Vladimir Vysotsky to perform numerous acrobatic tricks on stage.

Around this time Vladimir Vysotsky landed his first "serious" film role, appearing as Volodya in Viktor Turov's I Come From Childhood.

In 1967 Vladimir Vysotsky starred in Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters, which featured another off-the-cuff musical piece, this time the melancholy "Dela".

In 1969 Vladimir Vysotsky starred in two films: Master of the Taiga, where he played a villainous, timber-floating Siberian labour-brigade foreman, and Georgi Yungvald-Khilkevich's Dangerous Tour.

In 1970, after visiting the dislodged Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at his dacha and having a lengthy conversation with him, Vladimir Vysotsky embarked on a massive and, by Soviet standards, dangerously commercial concert tour in Soviet Central Asia.

Vladimir Vysotsky wrote several songs for it, but was dropped at the behest of the General Director of Mosfilm, Nikolai Sizov, ostensibly for being too recognizable as a popular figure.

Vladimir Vysotsky appeared on Soviet Estonian TV for an episode entitled "Noormees Tagankalt", in which he performed his songs and gave an interview.

Nonetheless, the court found that Vladimir Vysotsky had to pay a fine of 900 rubles.

In 1973 Vladimir Vysotsky starred alongside Oleg Dahl in Bad Good Man, playing the role of von Koren.

Vladimir Vysotsky's performance earned him the award of "Best Actor in a Male Role" at the 5th Festival of Nations competition at the Taormina Film Fest in Italy.

That same year Vladimir Vysotsky wrote some thirty songs for Alice in Wonderland, an audio play in which he voiced several minor roles.

In September 1974 Vladimir Vysotsky received his first state award, an Honorary Diploma of the Uzbek SSR, following a tour of the Taganka Theatre in Uzbekistan.

In 1975 Vladimir Vysotsky was granted membership in the Cinematographers Union of the USSR.

Also in 1975 Vladimir Vysotsky made his third trip to France, where he took the risk of visiting his former tutor, Andrey Sinyavsky, by then a celebrated dissident emigre.

Vladimir Vysotsky became friends with the Paris-based artist Mikhail Shemyakin, with whom he would often drink.

The 1976 Taganka Theatre made a visit to Bulgaria, where Vladimir Vysotsky filmed an interview and recorded 15 songs for the Balkanton record label.

Reportedly, this was when the stressed-out Vladimir Vysotsky started taking amphetamines.

In North America Vladimir Vysotsky stopped in New York City, where he met Mikhail Baryshnikov and Joseph Brodsky.

Vladimir Vysotsky recorded a segment for 60 Minutes with Dan Rather, which aired on 20 February 1977.

The program incorrectly stated he had served time in a labor camp and presented him as a dissident, though Vladimir Vysotsky stressed during his interview that he loved his country and did not want to do it any harm.

In September 1976 Vladimir Vysotsky accompanied the rest of the Taganka Theatre troupe to Yugoslavia, where Hamlet won first prize at the annual BITEF festival.

Vladimir Vysotsky then traveled to Hungary for a two-week concert tour.

Vladimir Vysotsky suffered heart, kidney, and liver failures, a jaw infection, and a nervous breakdown.

In 1977 three of Vladimir Vysotsky's LPs were released in France, including the one he recorded with RCA during his trip to Canada in the previous year.

Subsequently, in May 1978 Vladimir Vysotsky began filming in The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed, a five-part television film about two detectives pursuing a criminal gang in 1945 Moscow.

In January 1979 Vladimir Vysotsky again visited America with highly successful series of concerts.

That was the point when a glimpse of new, clean life of a respectable international actor and performer all but made Vysotsky seriously reconsider his priorities.

In July 1979, after a series of Central Asia concerts, Vladimir Vysotsky collapsed, experienced clinical death and was resuscitated by Fedotov, colleague and close friend Vsevolod Abdulov helping with heart massage.

In January 1980 Vladimir Vysotsky asked Lyubimov for a year's leave.

The songwriting showed signs of slowing down, as Vladimir Vysotsky began switching from songs to more conventional poetry.

In May 1979, being in a practice studio of the MSU Faculty of Journalism, Vladimir Vysotsky recorded a video letter to American actor and film producer Warren Beatty, looking for both a personal meeting with Beatty and an opportunity to get a role in Reds film, to be produced and directed by the latter.

On 22 January 1980, Vladimir Vysotsky entered the Moscow Ostankino TV Center to record his one and only studio concert for the Soviet television.

The last six months of his life saw Vladimir Vysotsky appearing on stage sporadically, fueled by heavy dosages of drugs and alcohol.

Occasionally Vladimir Vysotsky paid visits to Sklifosofsky institute's ER unit, but would not hear of Marina Vlady's suggestions for him to take long-term rehabilitation course in a Western clinic.

Vladimir Vysotsky was reduced to begging some of his close friends in the medical profession for supplies of drugs, often using his acting skills to collapse in a medical office and imitate a seizure or some other condition requiring a painkiller injection.

Fully aware of the dangers of his condition, Vladimir Vysotsky made several attempts to cure himself of his addiction.

Vladimir Vysotsky underwent an experimental blood purification procedure offered by a leading drug rehabilitation specialist in Moscow.

Vladimir Vysotsky went to an isolated retreat in France with his wife Marina in the spring of 1980 as a way of forcefully depriving himself of any access to drugs.

Vladimir Vysotsky had been a defendant in two criminal trials, one for a car wreck he had caused some months earlier, and one for an alleged conspiracy to sell unauthorized concert tickets.

Vladimir Vysotsky unsuccessfully fought the film studio authorities for the rights to direct a movie called The Green Phaeton.

Vladimir Vysotsky had developed severe inflammation in one of his legs, making his concert performances extremely challenging.

On 3 July 1980, Vladimir Vysotsky gave a performance at a suburban Moscow concert hall.

Vladimir Vysotsky informed Fedotov of this but was told not to worry, as he was going to monitor Vysotsky's condition all night.

Vladimir Vysotsky's associates had all put in efforts to supply his drug habit, which kept him going in the last years of his life.

At first this was a reasonable return on their efforts; however, as his addiction progressed and his body developed resistance, the frequency and amount of drugs needed to keep Vladimir Vysotsky going became unmanageable.

Vladimir Vysotsky met Lyudmila Abramova in September 1961, while they were both filming 713 Requests Permission to Land in Leningrad.

Abramova was still a student at Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, while Vladimir Vysotsky was then with the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre.

In 1967 Vladimir Vysotsky fell in love with Marina Vlady, a French actress of Russian descent, who was working at Mosfilm on a joint Soviet-French production at that time.

For 10 years the two maintained a long-distance relationship as Marina compromised her career in France to spend more time in Moscow, and Vladimir Vysotsky's friends pulled strings for him to be allowed to travel abroad to stay with his wife.

Also in 1981 Yuri Lyubimov staged at Taganka a new music and poetry production called Vladimir Vysotsky which was promptly banned and officially premiered on 25 January 1989.

In 1989 the official Vladimir Vysotsky Museum opened in Moscow, with the magazine of its own called Vagant devoted entirely to Vladimir Vysotsky's legacy.

Vladimir Vysotsky's tombstone became the subject of controversy, as his widow had wished for a simple abstract slab, while his parents insisted on a realistic gilded statue.

In 1995 in Moscow the Vladimir Vysotsky monument was officially opened at Strastnoy Boulevard, by the Petrovsky Gates.

In October 2004, a monument to Vladimir Vysotsky was erected in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, near the Millennium Bridge.

The bronze statue shows Vladimir Vysotsky standing on a pedestal, with his one hand raised and the other holding a guitar.

The actor Sergey Bezrukov portrayed Vladimir Vysotsky, using a combination of a mask and CGI effects.

Vladimir Vysotsky presented this guitar to Moroccan journalist Hassan El-Sayed together with an autograph, written in Russian right on the guitar.

In January 2023, a monument to the outstanding actor, singer and poet Vladimir Vysotsky was unveiled in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in the square near the Rodina House of Culture.

Totally credible from the specialists' point of view, the book caused controversy, among other things, by shocking revelations about the difficult father-and-son relationship, implying that Vladimir Vysotsky-senior was deeply ashamed of him and his songs which he deemed "anti-Soviet" and reported his own son to the KGB.

The multifaceted talent of Vladimir Vysotsky is often described by the term "bard" that Vladimir Vysotsky has never been enthusiastic about.

Vladimir Vysotsky accompanied himself on a Russian seven-string guitar, with a raspy voice singing ballads of love, peace, war, everyday Soviet life and of the human condition.

Vladimir Vysotsky was largely perceived as the voice of honesty, at times sarcastically jabbing at the Soviet government, which made him a target for surveillance and threats.

Vladimir Vysotsky used to sleep little, using the night hours to write.

Vladimir Vysotsky's songs were passed on through amateur, fairly low quality recordings on vinyl discs and magnetic tape, resulting in his immense popularity.

Vladimir Vysotsky slowly grew out of this phase and started singing more serious, though often satirical, songs.

In essence, Vladimir Vysotsky's songs were miniature theatrical dramatizations, often with a protagonist and containing many dialogues.

Vladimir Vysotsky achieved such a high level of authenticity that many real life former prisoners, war veterans, boxers, and footballers refused to believe that Vysotsky had not himself spent time behind bars, fought in the war, or been a boxer or footballer.

Musically, virtually all of Vladimir Vysotsky's songs were written in a minor key, and tended to employ from three to seven chords.

Vladimir Vysotsky composed his songs and played them exclusively on the Russian seven string guitar, often tuned a tone or a tone-and-a-half below the traditional Russian "Open G major" tuning.

At around 1970, Vladimir Vysotsky began writing and playing exclusively in A minor, which he continued doing until his death.

Vladimir Vysotsky used his fingers instead of a pick to pluck and strum, as was the tradition with Russian guitar playing.

Vladimir Vysotsky used a variety of finger picking and strumming techniques.

Apart from his recognizable raspy voice, Vladimir Vysotsky had a unique singing style.

Vladimir Vysotsky had an unusual habit of elongating consonants instead of vowels in his songs.