Moscow, 28th July 1980. Vysotskii’s Funeral

Taganka. 28 July 1980. Photo: A. Evseev.

Dates: 25^th–28^th of July 1980

Place: Moscow

Description:
In the early hours of 25^th July 1980, while Moscow was gridlocked due to the XXII Olympic Games, Vladimir Vysotskii, the Soviet poet with a guitar, died at the age of 42. These were years of intense magnitizdat activity but no other singer –  Bulat Okudzhava, Aleksandr Galich, Iulii Kim – could boast Vysotskii’s popularity. As his fame grew so did the wariness of officialdom toward him. He had been granted a passport for expatriation, but he was closely watched and the slow trickle of his music through official channels and his insignificant number of official releases, hardly represented his enormous following. Paired with the sound of an often-ill-tuned guitar, his hoarse and strangled voice succeeded in bringing together all segments of Soviet society: from workers to intellectuals, from prisoners to party leaders, from inmates in labour camps to KGB agents, everyone identified with Vysotskii’s songs (cf. Sacchi 2009: 11), but because of the rough and unorthodox content of his work, officially his music was viewed with suspicion.
The official reticence to report on Vysotskii’s premature, sudden and (as for all maudit poets) anticipated death is telling. The only media outlets to report his death were the newspapers “Sovetskaia Kul’tura” and “Vechernaia Moskva”, in which an obituary of a few lines appeared on 26^th of July (cf. Orekh’’ 2018: web). Despite the silence of the media, the news quickly circulated, bringing thousands of people to Malaia Gruzinskaia n.28, where Vysotskii lived, in the following hours and days. The crowds began to gather in the square in front of the Taganka Theatre, to which Vysotskii (a versatile and hailed actor, as well as singer) was still intricately linked.
Perhaps his most famous role was Hamlet, which he was scheduled to play again on 27^th of July at the Taganka. The authorities allowed the theatre director and founder Iurii Liubimov to cancel the play, although all other performances were expected to go ahead. Not a single person asked for their ticket to be refunded. The day after – possibly a Monday was chosen by the authorities to discourage attendance – a crowd of over one hundred thousand people, according to police data (cf. ibid. 2018), formed a line of several kilometres to say goodbye to the bard, whose body had been laid out since the morning in the foyer of the theatre (cf. Sacchi 1992: 16). The coffin was transferred to the Vagan’kovo cemetery in the afternoon, accompanied by thousands of citizens.
This huge spontaneous unofficial display of mourning during the Brezhnev era, too large to be disbanded by the police (who were present in large numbers with mounted units), took place in a city that had previously attempted to make outcasts of figures such as Vysotskii, many of whom, as described in the song Militseiskii protokol (Police report), had given themselves up to drink.
Vysotskii’s funeral, held in those muggy days of July, while the Soviet capital was in the spotlight for the Olympic Games, was an unprecedented event, about which the writer Iurii Trifonov said: “after Vysotskii it will no longer be possible to die” (Orekh’’ 2018: web).

Police report

(…)

Let me say a few words off record.
What do they teach us at home and at school?
That life itself will harshly punish those like us. Isn’t that so?
We can agree on that. Tell them, Serioga!

He’ll wake up tomorrow and say so for certain:
Let life condemn me, let life punish me!
So let us go now – it’ll be easier for you too.
Why are you hesitating if life will condemn us?

You don’t see it, but Seriozha is nodding –
he’s taking everything in!
He’s quiet because he’s worried, experiencing a
moment of awareness and lucidity.

Don’t lock us up, people, our children are crying at home.
He has to go to Khimki and I have to go to Medvedki!…
But it doesn’t matter: the buses don’t turn up,
the metro is closed and the taxis don’t stop for us.

Anyway, it’s nice that they respect us here:
Look, Serioga, they’re giving us a lift, they’re taking us inside!
We won’t wake up tomorrow when the cockerel crows, a
Sergeant will get us up, like we are men!

They’ll lead us off almost with music, as soon as we wake up.
Sergei, listen, I’ve saved a rouble, shall we drink to it?
Yet, brother, our way is hard!
Ah, you poor wretch! Ok, sleep on, Serioga.

Federico Iocca
[30th June 2021]

Translation by Alice Bucelli and Tammy Corkish

Bibliography

• Orekh’’ A., Glava 116. «Kak umirat’ posle Vysotskogo?..», 28^th July 2018, https://echo.msk.ru/blog/odin_vv/2245992-echo/, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).
• Piretto G.P., Il radioso avvenire: mitologie culturali sovietiche, Einaudi, Torino 2001.
• Sacchi S., Il volo di Volodja [with CD], ARCANAeditrice, Milano 1992.
• Sacchi S.., Vladimir Vysotskij: Volodja, Giunti, Firenze-Milano 2009.