Vladimir Vysotsky was born on January 25, 1938.
RT talked with People's Artist of the RSFSR Larisa Luzhina, who was friends with Vladimir Vysotsky, starred with him in the film “Vertical” and to whom the poet dedicated the song “She was in Paris” in 1965.
Bomb shelter under the bed
— You were born in Leningrad, where you spent your early childhood. Do you have any memories of that time?
— I was two and a half or three years old, we lived near the Narva Gate.
Mom went to work at the Red Triangle plant and told my six-year-old sister: “Lyusenka, when the air raid alert starts, grab Larochka and go straight to the bomb shelter.”
After work, my mother immediately went there, but didn’t find us there - apparently, Lucy was afraid to run and we hid under the far bed of the house.
This was our bomb shelter.
The sound of the metronome and the howl of the air raid alarm still sometimes ring in my head.
I know the rest about the blockade from my mother’s stories.
One day, she and her grandmother went to collect some firewood and wood chips in the yard, the bombing began, and the grandmother shouted to her mother: “Get down!”
When everything calmed down, my mother got up, but my grandmother did not - she was killed by a shrapnel.
My father, a long-distance navigator, had leather belts from his naval uniform.
Mom cooked these belts and wallpaper, which were made with flour paste, and made stew.
- Your father and sister also died at this time...
“Dad didn’t go to the front, but when the siege of the city began, he joined the militia.
He was wounded while defending the Gray Horse fort near Kronstadt, where coastal batteries were stationed.
My father died of exhaustion in 1942.
After being wounded, he was brought home.
I think that if he had gone to the infirmary, he might have survived.
There were no coffins or anything to bury as expected.
The dead were sewn into a blanket, the bodies were collected in a truck and taken to one of two city cemeteries.
Probably, dad was taken to Piskarevskoye, but mom didn’t know for sure.
Then my mother began to sort through my father’s bed and found pieces of bread under the pillow that she had given him.
Each person received 125 grams.
He didn’t eat them himself, he saved them for me.
My sister was no longer there; she died of exhaustion.
It is possible that with this bread and at the cost of his life, dad saved mine.
After the blockade was broken in 1944, my mother and I were evacuated.
We stopped near every big city, 10-15 people were disembarked from the carriages, who were picked up by local residents, and the train moved on.
We returned from evacuation in July 1945. Already at the entrance to the city, a handsome lieutenant climbed into our freight car and said: “Girls, get ready!
40 kilometers left to Leningrad!”
Everyone began to hug him, kiss him, and almost carry him in their arms.
Then they quickly opened their bundles, those who had what was left of their outfits, began to preen themselves so that they could come to their hometown beautiful.
I was six years old at the time and had been evacuation all the way, and I remember this episode, in particular, well.
Larisa Luzhina in the film “Big Ore” directed by Vasily Ordynsky, 1964.
Legion-Media
— How did you end up in Estonia?
— When we returned to Leningrad, we found that our apartment was occupied.
Strangers opened the door and didn’t let us in.
Unfortunately, my mother did not know how to stand up for herself.
These people lived there officially, and all our documents were burned.
At first, Aunt Anya, Uncle Karl’s wife, took us in.
In 1940 they were sent to Tallinn, but Aunt Anya did not accept a different way of life and returned to Leningrad.
But Uncle Karl stayed, and we later moved in with him.
In Tallinn I went to kindergarten and graduated from school.
It was a great time.
— Did you speak Estonian?
— Everyone in our family spoke Estonian.
I am now worried and offended by the Estonians that they behaved this way towards us, that this city suddenly became a stranger to me.
Mom lived in Tallinn from 1946 until 1980, and I left earlier, in 1960, when I went to study at VGIK.
Still from the film “On the Seven Winds,” directed by Stanislav Rostotsky.
Film studio named after
M. Gorky.
1962
© © kinopoisk.ru
"A dress worthy of Monroe"
— The main role in the film “On the Seven Winds” brought you worldwide fame. How did you get it and how was filming?
— Sergei Gerasimov, with whom I studied, insisted that the film director Stanislav Rostotsky take me.
For me it was a gift of fate, but the work at the beginning of the film did not work out.
Rostotsky was not very friendly towards me.
And Vyacheslav Tikhonov came from “Two Lives” as a white officer with a touch of arrogance, he hardly spoke to me.
In addition, they dyed my hair blonde, which absolutely does not suit me.
In general, it got to the point that Rostotsky wanted to remove me from the role.
He brought the material to Moscow and showed it to Sergei Gerasimov with the words: “She can’t cope, and the success of the film depends on the main character.”
To which Sergei Apollinarievich replied: “It’s your own fault.
Why would she be blonde?
She has a beautiful natural color.
And she just finished the first year and is moving on to the second.
It's raw clay and you have to mold it.
If it doesn’t work out, then you’re a bad sculptor.”
— Did Gerasimov’s words prove effective?
- Yes, everything is fine.
The painting went well.
Although there were also negative assessments.
For example, film critic Nikolai Klado said that this is not a film about war, but a Christmas fairy tale.
But the picture is really not so much about the war, but about love, fidelity, about those millions of women who created the home front.
Vysotsky has a song that begins with the words “Half an hour before the attack...” It talks about how the postman brings triangular envelopes to the unit before the fighters go to take the heights.
A soldier receives a message from his fiancée that she has fallen in love with someone else, and this mental wound kills him even before he receives a bullet wound.
My heroine Svetlana is a representative of that female rear who waited, loved, who created the strength that fueled our guys.
Larisa Luzhina in the film “The Love of Seraphim Frolov” directed by Semyon Tumanov, 1968.
Legion-Media
— Have you ever met women like Svetlana in your life?
- Yes, and quite recently.
I was in the military hospital named after.
Vishnevsky, and saw young guys there, to whom their brides came.
There have already been three weddings!
A guy with no legs is sitting, and next to him is a girl in a white dress.
Svetlanas still exist, nothing has changed.
There are still more people who were born with kindness in their souls and the ability to sympathize than there are evil ones.
Klado did not understand this film.
Every episode there is a human destiny.
Here is a military doctor played by Klara Luchko.
The girls can’t understand why she throws away her husband’s letters without opening them?
Because he didn’t go to the front, and she can’t forgive that.
And only when a letter arrives from the front does she read it.
Another nurse finds her love - a wounded soldier without arms.
The third fate is that of Svetlana herself, who is waiting for her groom from the front.
And around how she grows towards the end of the film into the personification of love, purity and female fidelity, the rest of the episodes are united.
— After the release of this picture, did you wake up famous?
— In 1962, the film “On the Seven Winds” was sent to the Cannes Film Festival.
Our delegation in France was very serious.
And there were many stories with me there.
For example, in Paris Match magazine there was a publication with a photo of me dancing the twist.
Larisa Luzhina on the centerfold of Paris Match magazine.
1966
© From personal archive
At that reception we were together with Inna Gulae.
Both are traveling abroad for the first time.
Before entering VGIK, I worked as a fashion model at the Model House in Tallinn.
When I had to go to the festival, I rushed to them for help, and they sent me two beautiful dresses.
And there the artist Nadezhda Leger, a compatriot who once left for France, helped out.
She had a small atelier where she embroidered cambric scarves.
Nadezhda protected our delegation in every possible way and once asked us: “What will you wear?”
I showed her my dresses, but Inna had nothing.
Then Nadezhda bought her a beautiful red dress, and for me a blue one, the shade of Pervanche, made of lace with a lining.
I wore this dress to the film screening.
At the banquet, an American journalist approached me and asked me to dance a twist, so I went.
The article said that I was wearing “a dress worthy of Marilyn Monroe.”
When we arrived, Minister of Culture Furtseva immediately put this magazine on the table.
Larisa Luzhina and Vladimir Vysotsky in the film “Vertical”.
Directed by Stanislav Govorukhin and Boris Durov.
Odessa film studio, 1967.
© kino-theatr.ru
“Volodya immortalized the film”
— Did your acquaintance with Vysotsky begin with the film directed by Stanislav Govorukhin “Vertical”?
— We knew Volodya before.
He was friends with my first husband, cameraman Alexei Chardynin, so we met often.
But in 1968, my husband and I separated, and Vysotsky met Marina Vladi, and since then we have hardly communicated.
— How was the work on the painting “Vertical”?
— We lived in tents for five months at an altitude of 4500 meters above sea level, on Elbrus, where there is eternal ice.
“Shelter 11”, where the filming took place, is at 4860 meters.
We walked there and then descended ourselves with ice axes.
All actors were invited without auditions.
The funny thing is that when Govorukhin started filming, he told the studio management that he would have Volodya Vysotsky in the film.
They answered him: “No, no, we don’t need this headache.”
Govorukhin also followed the principle and said that then the film would not be made.
But the picture was needed.
The fact is that it was the end of the year, and there was not enough work to make up to 15 films, otherwise the studio’s budget for the next year could be cut.
Therefore, they allowed to film Vysotsky, but without songs.
However, when we went to the mountains, Volodya’s songs began to appear on their own, one by one.
Vysotsky wrote songs based on his impressions.
Let's say, “If a friend suddenly appeared...” Before our eyes, two groups walked, in one of which a climber died.
We helped them and became friends.
Climbers told us a lot about incidents during ascents.
About what friendship means in the mountains, how it keeps them together, how they are ready to share the last piece or their jacket.
“This is not a plain here - the climate here is different...” We took the peak at an altitude of 2860 meters.
When we climbed it, accompanied by a climber, sat down tired and saw the mountain beauty, that’s where Volodya’s lines that completed the song were born.
Vladimir Vysotsky as a radio operator in the film "Vertical".
Directed by Stanislav Govorukhin and Boris Durov.
Odessa film studio, 1967.
RIA News
— Do you think this film went down in history thanks to Vysotsky’s songs?
- Absolutely.
And Stanislav Govorukhin said at the 25th anniversary of the film: “Thank you to Volodya for immortalizing the film.”
— And there, on the set of “Vertical,” Vysotsky wrote the song “She was in Paris,” dedicated to you. What inspired him?
— It gets dark early at altitude.
What to do?
Entertain each other.
Fadeev was good at telling jokes, Voropaev was good at telling theatrical tales, and I was the only one from our group who had been abroad.
By that time I had Cannes, Paris, Oslo, Iran, Warsaw, Dublin.
After my stories, Volodya returns one day after another departure and says: “I wrote a song for you.”
I sang it, and I didn’t like it - I decided that I was too frivolous in it.
Vysotsky writes in the first person about how a guy fell in love with some “star,” but she doesn’t understand how beautiful the flowers are in the no-man’s land, doesn’t understand the meaning of his songs.
And, of course, these words at the end: “Let them try, I’d rather wait it out” - this really offended me.
I was even offended by him.
French actress Marina Vladi and Vladimir Vysotsky on the day of celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Taganka Theater.
RIA News
© Anatoly Garanin
— The first thought is that the song is dedicated to Marina Vladi. But knowing the year the song was written and the year they met, a discrepancy is immediately visible.
“A quarter of a century after the film’s release, someone asked Govorukhin this question.
He was surprised: “Which Marina Vladi?
It was he who wrote the song to Lariska!”
And, of course, even if you don’t know about chronology, you need to understand Vysotsky.
He is a poet and very precise with his words.
If we were talking about Vladi, he would have written: “What do I care about her, she lives in Paris...” However, he formulated: “She was in Paris...”
— There is a phrase in the song in which he talks about the desire to get closer to the heroine, “I thought a little bit and we’ll be on first name terms...” Did he court you?
“He courted all the women.”
But there was no such thing as that he crossed any border.
Besides, he was friends with my husband, so we could have nothing but friendship.
Maybe there were some feelings on his part, Volodya was very loving.
But it all passed just as quickly.
— At the first moment you didn’t like the song. And now?
- Now I like her.
I tell everyone: “Imagine, with his song he extended my life.
I will be gone, but the song will continue to sound for a long time.
And the grandchildren will say: “This is dedicated to our grandmother, or our great-grandmother.”
Larisa Luzhina in the film “Fulfillment of Desires” directed by Svetlana Druzhinina, 1973.
Legion-Media
“I hate the role of a martyr”
RT has at its disposal a letter from Vladimir Vysotsky to the CPSU Central Committee to Comrade Demichev, dated April 17, 1974, where he writes: “For 9 years I have been asking for one thing: to give me the opportunity to lively communicate with the audience, to select songs, to agree on a program. Why am I put in a position in which my civically responsible creativity is considered a kind of amateur activity.”
He also talks about tape-recorded counterfeits of his work and his attitude towards the atmosphere created around him: “I am disgusted by the role of a “martyr”, a kind of “persecuted poet”, which is imposed on me. I am aware that my work is quite unusual, but I also soberly understand that I can be a useful tool in promoting ideas that are not only acceptable and vital to our society.”
From Vysotsky’s letter it is clear that he was well aware of his popularity: “You probably know that in the country it is easier to find a tape recorder on which my songs are played than one on which they are not.” The poet understood that he had a lot of fans: “There are millions of viewers and listeners with whom, I am convinced, I can find contact precisely in my genre of art song, which is almost never done by other artists.”
Vysotsky ends his appeal to the CPSU Central Committee with the desire to be useful to his country: “My songs are heard in the cosmonaut town, in student dormitories, in academic classrooms and in any working-class village of the Soviet Union. I want to put my talent at the service of promoting the ideas of our society, having such popularity. It's strange that I'm the only one taking care of this. This is not a simple problem, but is it right to solve it by trying to silence me or by inventing public humiliations for me? I want only one thing - to be a poet and artist for the people I love, for the people whose pain and joy I seem to be able to express. And the fact that I am not like others is, perhaps, part of the problem that requires the attention and participation of management. Your help will give me the opportunity to bring much more benefit to our society.”
Fragment of a letter from the artist of the Moscow Taganka Drama and Comedy Theater V.S. Vysotsky dated April 17, 1973 to candidate member of the Politburo, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee P.N. Demichev and Vysotsky’s autograph / Decision of the Department of Culture of the CPSU Central Committee on Vysotsky’s appeal.
© Russian State Archive of Contemporary History
In response to this appeal, Vladimir Vysotsky received clarification about the “procedure for the passage of artists and the organization of their concert performances.” This is stated in a document from the Department of Culture of the CPSU Central Committee (available to RT).
— How would you comment on Vysotsky’s letter to the CPSU Central Committee and his relationship with the authorities?
— It’s not clear why Vysotsky was made an anti-Soviet?
Why does such a trail of prohibition follow him?
He was listened to everywhere and by everyone, right down to the members of the Central Committee.
In 1974, he could live anywhere: with his wife in France, or he could stay in New York.
But Volodya did not do this.
He wrote songs about the life that surrounded him, with all its sides, both beautiful and negative.
He did not hesitate to write about dirty things, about everyday life, about alcoholism.
Many people are now nostalgic for Soviet times.
Me not.
There were a lot of good things because I was young.
But it was impossible to buy either beautiful boots or tights.
Volodya saw all this, and honestly, without malice, with irony, he revealed our problems in poetry and songs.
He treated people well, was kind, and valued friendship.
Vysotsky has many films in which he starred.
But there are about 30 films where he was not approved.
And people, not knowing that maybe he really didn’t pass the screen test, immediately turn him into some kind of martyr.
For example, I myself am still worried that I didn’t audition for the role of Princess Marya in the film “War and Peace,” which I played at the graduation performance.
And what?
Every artist has such failures.
Vladimir Vysotsky during a performance at a concert at the Sports Palace of the Yaroslavl Motor Plant.
1979
Legion-Media
© Sergey Metelitsa / TASS Photo
— What didn’t Vysotsky like? What did he disagree with?
“He was very worried that he was not recognized as a poet.
His colleagues were in no hurry to let him into their elite.
Yevtushenko, Rozhdestvensky - they were all well-known at that time.
They were friends with Volodya, but they believed that he was not a poet, but just a songwriter.
His poems were simple and understandable to everyone, intellectuals, cosmonauts, workers and peasants.
And it is very difficult to be simple.