Bulat Okudzhava - biography, information, personal life. Okudzhava Bulat: biography, personal life, creativity, memory Okudzhava war years

Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava, whose biography deserves great attention, was a famous Soviet singer, composer, and poet. The talented performer himself wrote songs based on his poems, being one of the most famous representatives in the genre of art songs. His work spanned an entire era. The poet and composer has long been dead, but Bulat Okudzhava’s poems and songs are still heard in companies and on TV screens.

Bulat Okudzhava lived a difficult, but interesting life. He was born on May 9, 1924 in Moscow into the family of Georgian Shalva Stepanovich Okudzhava and Armenian Ashkhen Stepanovna Nalbandyan. His parents were communists by conviction: his father was a prominent party leader, and his mother also found a place in the party apparatus.

When Bulat was two years old, the family moved to Tbilisi, then to Nizhny Tagil. They always followed their father, who was rapidly making a party career. Shalva Stepanovich held important positions until a quarrel with Beria and a false denunciation turned his life upside down. Okudzhava Sr. was arrested, sent to a camp and shot there. For a year Bulat, his mother and grandmother lived in Moscow, in a communal apartment on Arbat. In 1938, Bulat’s mother was sent to a camp in Karaganda as the wife of a traitor to the motherland, and Ashkhen was able to return from there only in 1947.

After his mother's arrest, Bulat lived with relatives in Tbilisi. The boy studied at school, then entered the factory as a turner. In 1942, the young man volunteered for the front and took part in many fierce battles. In 1943 he was wounded near Mozdok. During this period, Okudzhava wrote his first song, “We Couldn’t Sleep in the Cold Warehouses.”

When the war ended, Bulat Shalvovich entered Tbilisi State University at the Faculty of Pedagogy. He graduated from university in 1950 and began working as a teacher in a rural school. According to the distribution for two and a half years, the future bard ended up in the village of Shamordino, Kaluga region. At this time, Okudzhava constantly wrote poetry, many of which later became songs.

Literature and music

The start of his literary career dates back to 1954. Bulat Okudzhava was at a meeting of writers N. Panchenko and V. Koblikov with readers, and after the end of the event he plucked up courage and offered them his poems. I liked the poems - soon the Kaluga newspaper “Young Leninist” began publishing Okudzhava.

In 1956, a collection of poetry “Lyrics” was published there, in Kaluga. I liked Bulat Okudzhava’s poems. In 1961, the almanac “Tarussky Pages” published the writer’s story “Be Healthy, Schoolboy.” In 1987, the autobiographical work was published in a separate edition. In just four decades, about 15 collections of poetry were published, including “Islands”, “The Cheerful Drummer”, “Magnanimous March”, “Arbat, My Arbat”.

Bulat Okudzhava did not leave aside works for children and youth, the most famous of which was the fairy tale “Charming Adventures”. The writer created the children's story by describing his everyday life in Yalta in fairy-tale language in letters to his little son. Bulat Shalvovich’s bibliography also includes one play that he wrote in 1966, “A Sip of Freedom.”

Bulat Okudzhava also translated from Arabic, Swedish, and Finnish, translating mainly poetry. Until 1961, the author worked as editor of the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house and headed the poetry department at Literaturnaya Gazeta. Then he quit and never worked for hire again - he was engaged in creativity.

Bulat Okudzhava became a songwriter in 1958. By that time, the writer had already returned to Moscow - his parents had been rehabilitated.

Okudzhava’s concerts were sold out: there were no posters in the capital, but word of mouth worked excellently. In the early 60s, Bulat Okudzhava was one of the most popular Soviet bards. His songs “On Tverskoy Boulevard”, “Sentimental March” and others were remembered and loved by listeners. The musician paid tribute to his historical homeland– Georgia, creating the musical composition “Grape Seed”.

Okudzhava's first official concert took place in Kharkov in 1961. After this, the poet and singer began touring the cities of the USSR. The performer became a prominent representative of Russian art song - this was his main creative direction.

The work of Bulat Shalvovich influenced the development of the bardic movement, which also included,. Two of Okudzhava’s songs – “Let’s join hands, friends...” and “François Villon’s Prayer” (“While the Earth is still spinning...”) – received the status of anthems for art song rallies. Festivals named after Bulat Okudzhava are still held in Moscow, Perm, on Lake Baikal, in Israel, and there is also a gathering of singer-songwriters “And I will call friends...”.

In 1962, he wrote the first song for a movie - it was a composition for the film “Chain Reaction”. Unfortunately, the film was not a success. But the next song for the movie instantly became a super hit: “We Need Victory,” performed in the film “Belorussky Station,” was heard on the radio and from tape recordings.

Bulat Okudzhava wrote songs for the films “Straw Hat”, “Star of Captivating Happiness”, “Key Without the Right of Transfer”, “Pokrovsky Gate”. The song “Your Honor, Lady Luck” for the cult film “White Sun of the Desert” was also written by Okudzhava. In total, the bard's songs were performed in almost 80 Soviet films.

In 1967, Okudzhava was in France, where he recorded 20 of his compositions - they became the basis for a record that was released in Paris a year later. In 1974, Okudzhava recorded the first long-playing plastic in the USSR, but it was released two years later. In 1978, another disc was recorded, and in the mid-1980s, two records of songs about the war were released, which included the musical compositions already known from the films “Goodbye Boys”, “Take Your Overcoat, Let’s Go Home”, “Song about the Infantry” and others.

The songs of Bulat Okudzhava have not yet been forgotten; they are performed by many pop artists -,.

Speaking about the biography of Bulat Okudzhava, one should also note his participation in cinema. The artist’s roles were only episodic; he appeared as a cameo, and sometimes he was not listed in the credits at all. These are the films “Chain Reaction”, “Untransferable Key”, “Ilyich's Outpost”, “Keep Me, My Talisman”. A larger role went to Okudzhava in the eight-part feature film “The Strogovs,” where Bulat played an officer.

Okudzhava also tried himself as a film scriptwriter. With his participation, the script for the film “Loyalty” was created, of which he became the director and second screenwriter. The film told the story of a young soldier, former tenth-grader Yura Nikitin (Vladimir Chetverikov), who met his love, the girl Zoya (), when he was already a student at the infantry school. But a few days after the meeting, the young man is sent to the front, where he dies.

The film received the main prize of the II All-Union Film Festival, as well as the Venice Festival award in the category “Best Debut”. In the mid-60s, Okudzhava also participated in the creation of scripts for the film “Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha” and an unproduced film about.

Personal life

WITH early years Okudzhava was distinguished by his great amorousness. Even at school, Bulat showed romantic feelings for his classmates. Each time, due to the next move from city to city, the platonic relationship collapsed.

When Bulat Okudzhava returned to Moscow for some time after the war, he met a girl, Valentina, who, like him, lived on Arbat. The lady of the heart studied at the studio named after. and showed no interest in the short, black-eyed guy. Later, the girl became an equally famous person throughout the Soviet Union - she was rightly called a legend of Soviet television.

Bulat Okudzhava managed to settle down early. There was a longing for the comfort of home, which the young man was deprived of due to the repression of his parents, and then participation in the war.

His first wife, Galina Smolyaninova, studied with Bulat at the same university. The students got married in their second year. In this marriage, the couple had two children. But the daughter died at an early age, and the son Igor, as an adult, became addicted to drugs and went to prison. In 1964, the family broke up. Exactly a year later, on the day of the divorce, Galina died of a broken heart: she was 39 years old.

Bulat's second wife was Olga Artsimovich, a physicist by training. The family had a son, Anton, who followed in his father’s footsteps and became a musician and composer. The relationship in this marriage was happy, although few photographs and other evidence have survived.

Since the mid-80s, Bulat Okudzhava’s personal life was connected with another woman, singer Natalya Gorlenko. They lived in a civil marriage for several years, but the bard never decided to part with Olga. IN last days and for hours of the poet’s life it was Artsimovich who was next to Bulat.

Death

Last years Okudzhava spent his life in Paris. After the tragic death of his eldest son Igor, the maestro’s health deteriorated - Okudzhava always felt guilty for the fate of his first-born. The poet was hospitalized with the flu, which caused complications on the kidneys. The doctors' forecasts were not encouraging. Okudzhava always considered himself a believer and was baptized a few hours before his death. Bulat Shalvovich was named in honor.

Bard died on June 12, 1997 at the age of 73. renal failure in a military hospital in the suburbs of Paris. Bulat Okudzhava was buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery in Moscow.

Bibliography

• 1956 – “Lyrics”
• 1959 – “Islands”
• 1966 – “A breath of freedom”
• 1967 – “The front is coming to us”
• 1967 – “Magnanimous March”
• 1971 – “Lovely Adventures”
• 1976 – “Arbat, my Arbat”
• 1985 – “Date with Bonaparte”
• 1987 - “Be healthy, schoolboy!”
• 1991 – “The Adventures of a Secret Baptist”
• 1993 – “Mercies of Fate”

Songs

• 1958 – “Goodbye, boys”
• 1966 – “Song about the Infantry”
• 1967 – “Grape Seed”
• 1967 - Union of Friends"
• 1967 – “Your Honor, Lady Luck!...”
• 1971 – “We need one victory”
• 1974 – “I’m getting married”
• 1975 – “Song of the Cavalry Guard”
• 1975 – “Song about the Field of Miracles”
• 1975 – “Wish to Friends”
• 1982 - “It hasn’t been sewn yet, your wedding outfit...”

His father, Shalva Okudzhava, was Georgian by nationality, and his mother, Ashkhen Nalbandyan, was Armenian.

In 1934, he moved with his parents to Nizhny Tagil, where his father was appointed first secretary of the city party committee, and his mother was appointed secretary of the district committee.

In 1937, Okudzhava's parents were arrested. On August 4, 1937, Shalva Okudzhava was shot on false charges, Ashkhen Nalbandyan was exiled to the Karaganda camp, from where she returned only in 1955.
After the arrest of his parents, Bulat lived with his grandmother in Moscow. In 1940 he moved to relatives in Tbilisi.

Since 1941, since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, worked as a turner at a defense plant.

In 1942, after finishing ninth grade, he volunteered for the front. He served on the North Caucasus Front as a mortar operator, then as a radio operator. He was wounded near Mozdok.

“In 1942, after ninth grade, at the age of seventeen, I voluntarily went to the front. He fought, was a mortarman, a private, a soldier. Mainly the North Caucasus Front. Wounded near Mozdok from a German plane. And after recovery - heavy artillery of the reserve of the High Command...
That's all I managed to see.

I didn't make it to Berlin.

I was a very funny soldier. And, probably, I was of little use. But I tried very hard to make everyone happy. I shot when I had to shoot. Although I’ll tell you honestly that I didn’t shoot with great love, because killing people is not a very pleasant thing. Then I was very afraid of the front.

The first day I got to the front line. Both I and several of my comrades, seventeen years old like me, looked very cheerful and happy. And we had machine guns hanging on our chests. And we walked forward to the location of our battery. And everyone already imagined in their imagination how we would now fight and fight wonderfully.

And at the very moment when our fantasies reached their climax, a mine suddenly exploded, and we all fell to the ground, because we were supposed to fall. But we fell as expected, and the mine fell half a kilometer away from us.

Then everyone who was nearby walked past us, and we lay there. Everyone went about their business, and we lay there. Then we heard ourselves laughing. They raised their heads. We realized that it was time to get up. They got up and went too.

This was our first baptism of fire. That was the first time I learned that I was a coward. First time. By the way, I must tell you that before this I considered myself a very brave person, and everyone who was with me considered themselves the bravest.

And then there was a war. I learned and saw a lot... And I also learned that everyone who was with me was also afraid. Some showed the view, others did not. Everyone was afraid. This consoled me a little.

The impression from the front was very strong, because I was a boy. And then, later, when I began to write poetry, my first poems were on military theme. There were many poems. They turned into songs. Of some. These were mostly sad songs. Well, because, I’ll tell you, there’s nothing fun about war.”

As a regimental singer, in 1943 at the front he composed his first song, “We couldn’t sleep in the cold heated vehicles...”, the text of which has not survived.
Okudzhava: “There is nothing fun in war.”
In 1945, Okudzhava was demobilized and returned to Tbilisi, where he passed his high school exams as an external student.
In 1950, he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Tbilisi State University and worked as a teacher - first in a rural school in the village of Shamordino, Kaluga region and in the regional center of Vysokinichi, then in Kaluga.
He worked as a correspondent and literary employee for the Kaluga regional newspapers “Znamya” and “Young Leninist”.

Okudzhava’s first poem was published in 1945 in the newspaper of the Transcaucasian Military District “Fighter of the Red Army”. Then the poet's poems were regularly published in other newspapers.

In 1946, Okudzhava wrote the first surviving song, “Furious and Stubborn.”

In 1956, after the publication of the first collection of poems “Lyrics” in Kaluga, Bulat Okudzhava returned to Moscow, worked as deputy editor for the literature department in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, editor at the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house, then head of the poetry department at Literaturnaya Gazeta " He took part in the work of the Magistral literary association.

In 1959, the poet’s second collection of poetry, “Islands,” was published in Moscow.

In 1962, having become a member of the USSR Writers' Union, Okudzhava left service and devoted himself entirely to creative activity.
Author of collections of lyrics “The Cheerful Drummer” (1964), “On the Road to Tinatin” (1964), “Magnanimous March” (1967), “Arbat, my Arbat” (1976) and others.

In 1996, Okudzhava’s last collection of poetry, “Tea Party on the Arbat,” was published.

Since the 1960s, Okudzhava has worked a lot in the prose genre. In 1961, his autobiographical story “Be Healthy, Schoolboy” (published as a separate edition in 1987), dedicated to yesterday’s schoolchildren who had to defend the country from fascism, was published in the almanac “Tarussky Pages”. The story received a negative assessment from official critics, who accused Okudzhava of pacifism.

In 1965, Vladimir Motyl managed to film this story, giving the film the title “Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha.” In subsequent years, Okudzhava wrote autobiographical prose, compiling the collections of stories “The Girl of My Dreams” and “The Visiting Musician,” as well as the novel “The Abolished Theater” (1993).
At the end of the 1960s, Okudzhava turned to historical prose. The stories “Poor Avrosimov” (1969) about the tragic pages in the history of the Decembrist movement, “The Adventures of Shipov, or Ancient Vaudeville” (1971) and the novels “The Journey of Amateurs” (1976 - the first part; 1978) were published in separate editions - second part) and “Date with Bonaparte” (1983).

Okudzhava’s poetic and prose works have been translated into many languages ​​and published in many countries around the world.

Since the second half of the 1950s, Bulat Okudzhava began to act as the author of poetry and music, songs and their performer, becoming one of the generally recognized founders of the art song.
Okudzhava is the author of more than 200 songs
The earliest known songs of Okudzhava date back to 1957−1967 (“On Tverskoy Boulevard”, “Song about Lyonka Korolev”, “Song about the Blue Ball”, “Sentimental March”, “Song about the Midnight Trolleybus”, “Not tramps, not drunkards”, “Moscow Ant”, “Song about the Komsomol goddess”, etc.). Tape recordings of his performances instantly spread throughout the country. Okudzhava’s songs were heard on radio, television, films and performances.

Okudzhava's concerts took place in Bulgaria, Austria, Great Britain, Hungary, Australia, Israel, Spain, Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, USA, Finland, Sweden, Yugoslavia and Japan.

In 1968, the first disc with Okudzhava’s songs was released in Paris. Since the mid-1970s, his discs have also been released in the USSR. In addition to songs based on his own poems, Okudzhava wrote a number of songs based on poems by the Polish poetess Agnieszka Osiecka, which he himself translated into Russian.
Okudzhava's concerts took place in Europe, the USA, Canada and Japan
The performer gained national fame from Andrei Smirnov’s film “Belorussky Station” (1970), in which the song was sung to the words of the poet “Birds don’t sing here...”.

Okudzhava is the author of other popular songs for such films as “Straw Hat” (1975), “Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha” (1967), “White Sun of the Desert” (1970), “Star of Captivating Happiness” (1975). In total, Okudzhava’s songs and his poems are heard in more than 80 films.

In 1994, Okudzhava wrote his last song, “Departure.”

In the second half of the 1960s, Bulat Okudzhava acted as a co-author of the script for the films “Loyalty” (1965) and “Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha” (1967).

In 1966, he wrote the play “A Breath of Freedom,” which a year later was staged in several theaters.

In the last years of his life, Bulat Okudzhava was a member of the founding council of the Moscow News newspaper, Obshchaya Gazeta, a member of the editorial board of the Evening Club newspaper, a member of the Memorial Society Council, vice president of the Russian PEN Center, and a member of the Pardons Commission under the President of the Russian Federation ( since 1992), member of the commission for State Prizes of the Russian Federation (since 1994).

On June 23, 1995, Okudzhava’s last concert took place at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

On June 12, 1997, Bulat Okudzhava died in a clinic in Paris. According to his will, he was buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery in Moscow.

Okudzhava was married twice.

From his first marriage to Galina Smolyaninova, the poet had a son, Igor Okudzhava (1954−1997).

In 1961, he met his second wife - the niece of the famous physicist Lev Artsimovich - Olga Artsimovich. The son from his second marriage, Anton Okudzhava (born in 1965), is a composer and his father’s accompanist at creative evenings in recent years.

In 1997, in memory of the poet, a decree of the President of the Russian Federation approved the regulations on the Bulat Okudzhava Prize, awarded for the creation of works in the genre of art songs and poetry that contribute to Russian culture.

In October 1999, the State Memorial Museum of Bulat Okudzhava opened in Peredelkino.

In May 2002, the first and most famous monument to Bulat Okudzhava was unveiled in Moscow near house 43 on Arbat.

The Bulat Okudzhava Foundation annually holds the “Visiting Musician” evening at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow. Festivals named after Bulat Okudzhava are held in Kolontaevo (Moscow region), on Lake Baikal, in Poland and in Israel.

Bulat Okudzhava has been the master of feelings for several generations now. His unique songs give the impression of trust and ease. However, Okudzhava’s spontaneity is not at all synonymous with simplicity. Okudzhava is a virtuoso of poetic style.

Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava - poet and prose writer - one of the founders of the bard song genre, was born and raised in Moscow.

My city bears the highest rank and title of Moscow,

But he always comes out to meet all the guests himself.

His childhood was spent in small cozy courtyards on quiet Arbat alleys. It was she, the Arbat children, who came up with the game “Arbatstvo” and the ritual of initiation into her “class”.

Even though my love is as old as the world,

He served and trusted only her alone,

I, a nobleman from the Arbat courtyard,

Inducted into the nobility by his court.

In 1942, ninth-grader Okudzhava volunteered to go to the front. Instead of textbooks, he masters the science of infantry combat.

Ah, the war - it won’t last another year -

That's why it's war;

Many more kilometers of foot wraps

Cut from linen.

Private Bulat Okudzhava fought until the end of 1944. Injuries, hospitals... and we didn’t have to fight anymore. “Take your overcoat and let’s go home”... And then it came long-awaited Victory in a cruel war, costing the lives of millions of people, in a war that took away from a generation that had just entered adult life, four whole years of youth.

From the words of the poet himself, it is reliably known that his first song to his own melody, “We couldn’t sleep in the cold train cars...” appeared at the front in 1943. And if the first, front-line one, which the author himself considers weak, has long been forgotten, then the second has been preserved and is still heard today, although the year of its birth is 1946.

Fierce and stubborn

Burn, fire, burn!

To replace December

Januarys are coming.

After graduating from university, Okudzhava is assigned to work in one of the rural schools in the Kaluga region. New poems appear, which are published from time to time in Kaluga newspapers. In 1956, the first collection of poems, Lyrics, was published. He returns to Moscow, first works as an editor at the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house, and later heads the poetry department at Literaturnaya Gazeta.

It was during these years that songs began to appear one after another: “About Lenka the Queen”, “The girl is crying - the ball has flown away”, “The last trolleybus”, “Goodbye, boys”. You can’t count them all, but you can’t help but linger on the Arbat melodies.

You flow like a river.

Strange name!

And the asphalt is transparent, like water in a river.

Ah, Arbat, my Arbat, you are my calling.

You are both my joy and my misfortune.

Only by knowing the truth about those years of separation and turmoil, “when the lead rains beat so hard on our backs that you couldn’t expect any mercy,” can you understand why Okudzhava’s beloved Arbat is both joy and misfortune. A year earlier, another “Arbat” song was written, less enthusiastic, but even more biographical.

What did you change your mind about, my father, who was shot,

When I walked out with the guitar, confused but alive?

It’s as if I stepped from the stage into the midnight comfort of Moscow,

Where the old Arbat boys are given their fate for free.

A song or a romance is one thing, a poet with a guitar on the stage is quite another. It is curious that the author himself, at least before, did not consider his songs to be songs themselves. For him, they were and remained poems, only not written down on paper, but sung from the voice.

Okudzhava’s quiet, soulful voice attracted people and forced them to listen. He never wrote sonorous poems “to order.” “Social orders” were not for him. His soul and heart unmistakably defined themes that were important to his contemporaries.

In our life, beautiful and strange,

and short, like the stroke of a pen,

over a smoking fresh wound

It's time to think about it, really.

The call “Let’s compliment each other” is not just beautiful phrase, but a vital necessity for each of us. In a world of crumbling ideals, “hope is a small orchestra led by love” as a guiding star. The word love is used by the poet very often. After all, we are talking, in essence, about human life, the basic principle of his existence. Life can only happen if there is love: for the world around us, for people, for life in all its manifestations.

The unexpected death of Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava in 1997 shocked us, his contemporaries. He sang about eternal, true, truly important values ​​for a person: " Grape seed V warm earth I will bury..." Who among us did not feel sad under these piercing words, who did not ask the question: “Otherwise, why do I live on this sinful earth?”

The profession of a poet is “dangerous and difficult.” The role of the poet in society, his purpose and fate - Bulat Okudzhava devoted many of his lines to this topic:

Poets were persecuted, taken at their word,

nets were woven for them; swaggered

they used to give them wings,

and they led to the wall...

Okudzhava has not changed since becoming famous: a modest appearance, a guitar, amazing delicacy and respect for listeners. One of his latest collections is called “Dedicated to you,” that is, to us, his admirers, grateful to his contemporaries.

The narrow genre specialization of the creators of the poetic word, as is well known, does not exist from the very beginning. Playwright A. Volodin very recently once again recalled this: “In ancient times, poets were called singers: they themselves composed poems and melody, sang them themselves and accompanied themselves. But gradually the need for personal performance disappeared, then melody disappeared, rhyme and meter became optional , and sometimes even a thought - poetry itself began to serve unworthy purposes... Then she came to her senses and demanded: reunite me! In our country, Okudzhava was the first to do this."

There is probably some degree of hyperbolization at the end of this statement. Probably not the very first. There were Vizbor and Ancharov. However, the fact remains that if primacy is considered not only according to the chronology of events, from his very first songs, but considering their number, which are famous in a wide variety of circles, as if according to the main peak of widest popularity, then the title of the First Bard rightfully belongs to Okudzhava.

Okudzhava wrote only about one and a half hundred wonderful songs about love and hope, about the meaninglessness of wars, about faith in the triumph of common sense and wisdom.

- famous Russian poet and prose writer. A bright representative of the art song genre. He is the author of almost two hundred compositions. Year of birth: May 9, 1924 (Moscow).

Brief biography:

His father (Georgian) and mother (Armenian) were party workers, from whom Bulat was separated in 1937. The father was arrested and shot, and the mother was sent to a camp (Karaganda), where she remained until 1955.

In 1940, Bulat moved to live in Tbilisi with relatives, where he studied and worked.
Already at the age of 17, he volunteered for the front (1942). During the hostilities near Mozdok he was wounded.

During this difficult time (1943), he wrote the first song “We couldn’t sleep in the cold heated cars.” But the text, unfortunately, has not survived to our times.

“Ancient student song” became the second in a row (1946).

When the war ended, Okudzhava was enrolled in State University city ​​of Tbilisi. After graduation (1950), he worked as a teacher in a rural school (Kaluga region).

In 1954, at a meeting of writers, Bulat read his poems. After kind criticism and support, he began to collaborate with the Kaluga newspaper “Young Leninist”. This is how his first collection of poems, entitled “Lyrics” (1956), was born.

Returning to Moscow in 1959, Bulat began performing in front of large audiences. In addition to poetry, performances began to include guitar. It was from this moment that his popularity began to grow.

At the same time, he was the editor of the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house, then worked at Literaturnaya Gazeta.
Since 1961 - Okudzhava began to focus only on his creativity and no longer worked for hire.

In the same year, the first official concert of Bulat Okudzhava took place in Kharkov.
In 1962, he also starred for the first time in the feature film “Chain Reaction”, where he performed the composition “Midnight Trolleybus”.

Also a year later, his song “And we need one victory” was performed in the film “Belorussky Station”. Now, Bulat's songs and his poems are heard in about eighty films.

To all other Okudzhava wrote several songs based on the poems of Ognieszka Osiecka (Polish poetess), which he previously translated into Russian.

Singer Natalya Gorlenko also played a special role in his work. They had a long affair. (1981).

In the 90s, he more often lived at his dacha in Peredelkino (Moscow region). Gave concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He has also performed in Canada, the USA, Germany and Israel. His last concert was in Paris. (1995).

June 12, 1997 – Bulat Okudzhava died in a hospital in the suburb of Clamart (Paris). He was buried in Moscow at the Vagankovskoye cemetery.
In 1999, the “State Memorial Museum of Bulat Okudzhava” was opened in the Moscow region.
Also in his honor, already in Moscow itself, 2 monuments were erected (2002, 2007).

The name of Bulat Okudzhava is known to many former Soviet citizens, because he was a singer and composer of that time, who created an incredible atmosphere and became a symbol of his era.

Bulat Okudzhava was born on May 9, 1924 in Moscow, but his relatives were from Armenia and Georgia, which is why Bulat had a non-Russian surname. Bulat Okudzhava’s childhood did not take place in the capital of the USSR, but in the city of Tbilisi. In Tbilisi, Bulat Okudzhava’s father was lucky, because he got a place in the party and became one of the most successful party leaders. Bulat’s family moved very often, but this did not last too long, because, unfortunately, following a denunciation, Bulat’s father ended up in the camps and was then sentenced to death (that’s the party system).

At first Bulat stayed with his mother, they tried to escape by returning back to Moscow, however, this did not save them and Bulat’s mother also ended up in a camp for wives who were married to traitors to the motherland. Bulat Okudzhava’s mother stayed in the camp for twelve years, and all this time the boy stayed with relatives in Tbilisi.

Bulat Okudzhav’s career began with working as a turner at a factory. For the average Soviet man– it was a completely normal and ordinary job. In 1942, he decided to volunteer for the front. In 1943 he was wounded, but still, having recovered, he went to the front line. Bulat Okudzhava wrote his first song at the front. It became quite popular, but after which he did not have a creative takeoff, but rather, on the contrary, a decline. The title of this song is “We couldn’t sleep in the cold heated cars.”

After the war, Okudzhava decided to study at the University of Tbilisi, and after receiving his diploma, he managed to work as a rural teacher. But my creative activity Bulat Okudzhava did not give up; he continued to write poetry, which he later used as musical texts.

The first poems of Bulat Okudzhava were published in the newspaper “Young Leninist” after very interesting events. The start of his career and recognition was made when, at a performance by famous writers Nikolai Panchenko and Vladimir Koblikov, Bulat Okudzhava simply approached them and offered to read his poems and give them an assessment. Apparently, such a talent of the young poet could not be hidden, so recognition came very quickly.

In 1955, Bulat Okudzhava began earning money as a songwriter. His first creative successes were “Sentimental March”, “On Tverskoy Boulevard” and others, which brought him enormous popularity. Already in 1961, Bulat Okudzhava had his first concert in Kharkov. The public appreciated his work well. After this, concerts became a common occurrence in the life of Bulat Okudzhava, and his work began to be recognized everywhere.

Bulat Okudzhava also gave concerts in many European countries, this happened especially often after the collapse Soviet Union. Bulat spent the last years of his life in Paris, where he died in 1997 due to his long illness; however, he was buried in his homeland, in Moscow, at the Vagankovskoye cemetery.

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