- 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 publishing house “Young Guard”, then worked at “ Literary newspaper».
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 Bulat Okudzhava" in the Moscow region.
Also in his honor, already in Moscow itself, 2 monuments were erected (2002, 2007).

B ulat Okudzhava was a soldier, Russian language teacher and editor. He wrote poetry and prose, film scripts and books for children. But Okudzhava considered the happiest day of his life to be the one when he composed his first poem.

"Arbat, forty-four, apartment twenty-two"

When Andrei Smirnov, the film's director, invited him to write a song, the poet initially refused. Only after looking at the picture did he agree to compose the lyrics and melody for it.

“Suddenly I remembered the front. It was as if I saw with my own eyes this amateur front-line poet, thinking about his fellow soldiers in the trench. And then the words spontaneously appeared: “We will not stand behind the price...”

Bulat Okudzhava spent the last years of his life in Paris, where on June 25, 1995, his last concert took place at UNESCO Headquarters. In 1997, the bard passed away. In the same year, by decree of the President of Russia, the Bulat Okudzhava Prize was approved, which is awarded to poets and performers of original songs. Five years later, a monument to the “singing poet” was unveiled on Arbat.

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 wears highest rank and the title 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 now the long-awaited Victory in the cruel war has come, a worthwhile life millions of people, in a war that robbed a generation just entering 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, like guiding star- "hopefully a small orchestra led by love." The word love is used by the poet very often. After all we're talking about, 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: “A grape seed in 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 triumph common sense and wisdom.

Okudzhava Bulat Shalvovich (1924-1997) - Soviet and Russian poet, prose writer and screenwriter, bard and composer. Most bright representative author's song in the USSR. Based on his own poems and the folk epic of the Caucasus, he composed more than 200 original and pop songs.

Childhood

Bulat was born on May 9, 1924 in the famous Moscow maternity hospital named after Grauerman. The family where the boy was born was Bolshevik. His father, Shalva Stepanovich Okudzhava, was sent from Tiflis to the Moscow Communist Academy for party studies. My father was Georgian by nationality, and my mother, Nalbandyan Ashkhen Stepanovna, was Armenian.

On Moscow's Arbat, in a five-room apartment, the family was allocated two rooms. Six months after the birth of Bulat, Shalva Okudzhava was again called to Georgia in connection with party work. His wife with their little son and nanny remained in Moscow.

Bulat was mainly raised by a nanny, since his mother worked in the party apparatus. As an adult, Okudzhava recalled that dad was so distant, as if drawn, and mom was almost a ghost who appeared only in the evenings. A tired woman came home when her baby was already asleep, hugged the warm little bundle tightly to her, and continued to think about her party affairs.

When the boy was 5 years old, his father came to Moscow. But a year later he was appointed to new position- First Secretary of the Tiflis City Party Committee. This time the Okudzhavas all left for Georgia together.

Youth

Bulat began his studies at the Tiflis Russian School. Since he had perfect pitch by that time, he was additionally sent to study at a music school.

My father did not stay long at party work in Georgia, as he had a conflict with Beria, and Shalva Okudzhava himself turned to Ordzhonikidze to be transferred to work in Russia.

In 1932, the family moved to Nizhny Tagil, where Bulat’s father led the construction of the largest Ural carriage plant. The Okudzhavas now lived far from the center of the USSR, and in Leningrad it was at this time that the wheel of political terror had already begun to spin. Everything was calm in Bulat’s family; in 1934, his brother Victor was born.

But in 1937 this bloody wheel reached Nizhny Tagil. Shalva Stepanovich was arrested, and his wife and two sons moved to Moscow again. She was expelled from the party and soon arrested. Bulat recalled how he was afraid then that he and his brother would not be handed over to Orphanage. But the boys were taken in by their maternal grandmother Maria Vartanovna.

All the relatives helped as much as possible, but there was still not enough food. The grandmother devoted all her strength to looking after little Vitya, and 13-year-old Bulat was completely left to his own devices. He grew up as an ordinary “red” boy, idolized the pilot Chkalov and the Spanish communist Dolores Ibarruri, dreamed of becoming a hero of the Arctic, rejoiced at the successes of socialism, and was sure that he lived in the best advanced camp in the world. And I didn’t know that by that time my father had already been shot.

Since it was difficult for the grandmother with two boys, Bulat was taken to her mother’s sister Sylvia in Tbilisi. On summer holidays he visited there often, but now he moved to a permanent place of residence and went to a Georgian school in the fall.

By this time, the young man had already begun to write poetry. My uncle, having listened to his works, jokingly said that it was time to publish him, like Pushkin. The naive boy believed and went to the publishing house. The secretary listened carefully to the boy and said that he would be happy to publish his poems, but, unfortunately, the publishing house had run out of paper.

And then there was no time for paper: the war began. Bulat Okudzhava volunteered for it. He was wounded near Mozdok and ended up in the hospital. Having recovered, Bulat returned to the front, but the wound was constantly tormenting him, and he was demobilized in 1944.

Okudzhava returned to Georgia, graduated as an external student high school and became a student of the Faculty of Philology at the university.

Creative path

In 1950, having received a diploma and assignment, Bulat and his wife Galya went to the village of Shamordino, Kaluga region, and were sent there to teach at a rural school.
He didn’t like working at school at all, and Okudzhava suffered from it. But he didn’t have to work in the village for long: he was soon transferred to Kaluga. After working there as a school teacher for a while, Bulat got a job at a local newspaper.

In 1956, N.S. Khrushchev came to power, many were rehabilitated, including Bulat’s parents. Dad was posthumous, and mom returned from Siberia to Moscow and received a two-room apartment on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment. Bulat, his wife and younger brother went to visit their mother in Moscow.

There he started labor activity at the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house, then headed the poetry department at Literaturnaya Gazeta. At evenings at Literaturka, Bulat performed songs based on his own poems with a guitar for a close circle. Colleagues predicted a great future for him and repeatedly persuaded him to go on stage. But he didn't attach much importance to their words.

Soon Bulat Okudzhava’s family was given a dacha in Sheremetyevo. Living at the dacha, they developed a certain ritual: in the evenings, neighbors, colleagues and friends gathered around the fire and listened to the poet’s poems and songs. The Moscow intelligentsia began vying with each other to invite him to their homes for evenings, and songs were recorded on tape reels. So the author and performer of songs came out to the people. Okudzhava himself was still poorly known, but half the country was already singing the songs. “The Grape Seed” and “The Prayer” were copied on paper by hand from each other.

Only in 1961 Okudzhava’s first solo concert took place. The Leningrad Hall was overcrowded.

In 1965, the first record with Bulat's songs was released.

In 1967 for the verse " Tin soldier my son" Bulat received the "Golden Crown" at a poetry festival in Yugoslavia. His performances in Paris and Germany were a great success, but in the Soviet Union he did not give big concerts, he performed in cultural centers, institutes and libraries.

But in 1970, Okudzhava gained all-Union fame after the release of the film “Belorussky Station”, where his song “Birds Don’t Sing Here...” was performed.
For my creative life Bulat wrote songs for many popular Soviet and Russian films:

• “Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha”;
• "White Sun of the Desert";
• "Straw Hat";
• “Aty-baty, the soldiers were coming”;
• "Star of Captivating Happiness";
• "The Pokrovsky Gate";
• "Legitimate marriage";
• "Turkish gambit".

Personal life

Okudzhava was very amorous in his youth. The girls also did not pass by the brown-eyed man handsome guy with a mop of black curls. He was charming in himself, and he treated girls with such respect that they were immediately captivated. But the most important thing, why there were always crowds of girls around him, was that he sang amazingly with a guitar.

At the age of 23, he began a stormy relationship with Galya Smolyaninova, who studied with him at the same faculty. Bulat and Galya got married, then he no longer lived with his uncle and aunt, but rented a room in a communal apartment.

In 1954, the couple had a son, Igor. In 1962, Bulat and Galya separated.

When Okudzhava was 38 years old, he met Olga Artsimovich, who later became his second wife and gave birth to a son in 1964, named Bulat after his father.

In 1997, Okudzhava and his wife went on a trip to Europe. He did not like to stay in Moscow for his birthday, as he hated all these celebrations. They visited Germany, then went to Paris to visit friends. There he fell ill with the flu, the poet was admitted to the hospital, but they could no longer help, he died on June 12, 1997.

Bulat Okudzhava is a bard, poet, writer and public figure.

Despite the war years and repression, during which he lost almost his entire family, he was able to live a bright and eventful life.

Childhood and young years

Bulat Okudzhava was born on a day that the whole country would later celebrate as Great Victory- May 9, 1924 in Moscow.

His parents were natives of Tiflis and arrived in the capital to study at the Academy of Communism.

Father - Shalva Stepanovich was a native Georgian. His great-grandfather for 25 years military service received land plot in Kutaisi.

And his brother, Vladimir Okudzhava, became famous as an anarchist-terrorist who attempted the life of the governor of Kutaisi.

Mom - Ashkhen Stepanovna, an Armenian, was a relative of the famous poet V. Teryan in Armenia.

Bulat Okudzhava in childhood with his mother

The family had 8 children, including Bulat. Almost immediately after the birth of his son, the father was sent to serve in the Caucasus in the Georgian division.

And my mother got a job in the party apparatus in Moscow.

The parents decided that Bulat should study in their hometown- Tiflis. There he was accepted into a Russian-language class.

In addition, already in childhood, Bulat Okudzhava showed a perfect ear for music.

At the same time, he began to study in 2 schools: general education and music. However, he was never able to finish music school due to his family’s constant relocations.

His father, getting into conflict situation with Beria, turns to Ordzhonikidze with a request to transfer him to serve in Russia.

There the family ended up in the Urals, in Nizhny Tagil. Bulat transferred to school No. 32.

In 1937, misfortune came to the family. Bulat's father and his paternal uncles were arrested on charges of an assassination attempt in 1934 on Ordzhonikidze, the People's Commissar of Heavy Industry.

In August 1937 they were shot as supporters of Trotsky. Six months after the death of the father, the family returns to Moscow.

Now only his grandmother and mother were fully involved in raising Bulat. At first they lived in a communal apartment on Arbat.

A year later, in 1938, the mother was arrested and exiled to the Karlag forced labor camp. After the war, in 1947, she was released.

During this time, the grandmother, Maria Vartanovna, took care of the children. Bulat was already a teenager, and so that he would not get out of hand at all, he was sent to relatives in Tbilisi.

There he first studied, and then went to work at a factory as a turner's apprentice. At the same time, Bulat begins to write his first poems.

In 1941, Bulat’s sister Olga Okudzhava, by that time the wife of the poet G. Tabidze, was also shot.

Great Patriotic War began when Bulat was not yet 18 years old and he was not subject to conscription.

Nevertheless, he and his friend constantly came to the military registration and enlistment office with a request to send them to the front as volunteers.

Soon the military registration and enlistment office surrendered under their pressure, and in 1942 they were assigned to the 10th Mortar Division.

War years

Before being sent to the front, Bulat completed a 2-month course on the Transcaucasian front. He was assigned as a mortarman to the cavalry regiment of the 5th Cossack Corps.

However, he did not serve for long. In the winter of 1942 he was wounded near Mozdok and sent to the hospital. Having recovered, he decided not to return to active duty.

At first he served in Batumi in the reserve rifle regiment, after which he was a radio operator on the Transcaucasian Front.

According to some information, he then wrote poetry for his first song, “We couldn’t sleep in the cold heated cars.”

In 1944, Bulat, with the rank of guard private, left the army for health reasons. After the war, Bulat quickly received a certificate of secondary (complete) education.

In 1945 he became a student at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Tbilisi.

At the university, everyone looked at him as a front-line soldier, a war hero. He commanded respect and admiration from his fellow students.

Activities of a poet and writer

During his studies (1946), he wrote his second song with the logical title “Old Student Song.”

After receiving his diploma, he moved to the Kaluga region. There Bulat Okudzhava begins cooperation with the newspaper “Young Leninist”.

In 1956, his first collection of poems, Lyrics, was published.

In 1959 he returned to the capital. From that time on, he began to present his songs to the public, and acquired his first fans.

In the period from 1956 to 1967, Bulat Okudzhava wrote his most popular songs - “Not tramps, not drunkards”, “On Tverskoy Boulevard”, “Moscow Ant” and others.

At the same time, his activity as a writer developed. He is accepted into the All-Union Writers' Union, he actively participates in the activities of the literary organization "Magistral".

In 1962, he got a job as an editor at the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house, and a little later headed the poetry department at Literaturnaya Gazeta.

Soon his songs begin to sound from the TV screen. In 1970, the film “Belorussky Station” was released, where for the first time a song written by B. Okudzhava was heard - “We need one victory.”

Songs based on his poems are heard in other fairly well-known films - “Straw Hat”, “Zhenya, Zhenechka, Katyusha”.

Bulat wrote lyrics for more than fifty films.

He was on a par with V.S. Vysotsky, Yu. Vizbor, A.A. Galich. In 1967 he left for France.

In a Paris studio, he records about 20 songs that will form the basis of his first album, “Le Soldat en Papier.” It will be released in 1968, also in France.

At the same time, these songs will be released in Poland performed by Polish singers. Only the composition “Farewell to Poland” will be performed by Bulat Okudzhava himself.

The return to the Russian capital occurred in the early 90s. Bulat settles in a country house.

He gives concerts both in Russia and abroad - Germany, the USA, Canada and Israel. In the summer of 1995, he gave his last concert at UNESCO in Paris.

In addition, Bulat Okudzhava was a member of the editorial board of the Evening Club newspaper and was on the board of founders of such publications as Moscow News and Obshchaya Gazeta.

Most of his works were published in numerous languages, and were also published in Russian abroad.

Personal life

Bulat Okudzhava entered into his first marriage at the age of 23. While studying at the university, he met a girl, Galya, who was a little younger than him.

In 1947, they got married, especially since by that time Bulat was already renting separate housing in a communal apartment.

Bulat Okudzhava with his son Igor

Upon completion of their studies, young distribution specialists leave for Kaluga, where they get a job in a secondary school.

Bulat does not like to remember these years. He says that they lived on the outskirts of the village, and the children did not love him, in fact, just as he did not reciprocate their feelings.

However, it was here that the first-born, Igor, appeared in the family.

Officially, the marriage would last until 1965, but already in 1962 he met his second wife, Olga Artsimovich.

He will go with her to Leningrad, where in 1964 she will give birth to another son, named Bulat after his father.