Okudzhava Bulat: biography. Bulat Okudzhava: creativity

Okudzhava Bulat Shalvovich - Russian poet, composer, prose writer, writer. Widely known as one of the brightest performers of the author's song in the USSR in the 50-80s of the last century. More than two hundred different compositions were included in the repertoire performed by Okudzhava Bulat. The biography of this man, who became a vivid symbol of the so-called epoch of the sixties, and also one of the brightest writers and musicians of his generation, is brought to your attention.

Pre-war time

The life of Bulat Okudzhava was dramatic and unusual. Little is known that he was given the name Dorian at birth, naming in honor of the hero of the novel Oscar Wilde. Okudzhava Bulat, whose biography is offered in this article, was born in Moscow on May 9, 1924. His parents were convinced communists. Shalva Okudzhava, father, was a Georgian, came to Moscow to study at the Communist Academy. Ashkhen Nalbadnjan, mother, Armenian, was in close relationship with Vahan Teryan, a famous poet from Armenia.

In 1926, after graduation, the family returned to Tbilisi. Bulat's father made a party career: he worked in the City Party Committee in this city, was a division commissioner. But after the conflict with Beria, Shalva Okudzhava asked for work in Russia and was sent to the Urals. Here he worked first as a party organizer in Nizhny Tagil in the construction of the plant, after which he was appointed first secretary of the local city party committee.

Bulat Okudzhava began his studies in Russian in Tbilisi, and then in Nizhny Tagil, where, together with his mother, he moved after his father. Shalva's career was interrupted by a false denunciation. Like many other members of the party, who were considered "unreliable", his fate was as follows: first a reference to the camp, followed by a shooting. This was a difficult time, which Bulat Okudzhava experienced. Biography, family, the origin of the poet reflected later in his work. The boy's mother returned with her son to Moscow, and they began to live in the Arbat. She was arrested in 1938, sent to Karaganda, where there was a special camp for the wives of "traitors to the Motherland". She returned from there only 17 years later, in 1955.

Okudzhava Bulat, whose biography began dramatically, during his life tried not to remember about this time. Only in 1993, in the declining years, he told about the tragic family events in his novel "Abolished Theater".

Bulat Okudzhava returned to Tbilisi in 1940, where his relatives lived. After graduation, he entered the factory and worked for a while as a turner student.

After the Great Patriotic War, in 1942, a 17-year-old boy volunteered for the front. He served as an artillery radio operator, mortarman, participated in many battles. It was at that time that he created one of his first songs entitled "We could not sleep in the car." In 1943, after a serious injury received at Mozdok, Bulat Shalvovich was sent for the front line, to the rear.

The beginning of literary activity

Demobilized at the end of the war, Bulat Okudzhava, whose brief biography is now covered, passed the exams for secondary school externally. Then, in 1950, he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Tbilisi University and went to the Kaluga region, in the village of Shamordino, where he taught literature and Russian at school. Six years later, the local publishing house of Kaluga published his first poetic collection entitled "Lyrics". And in 1954 in the newspaper "Young Leninist" poems were published, which Okudzhava Bulat Shalvovich wrote. His biography is further connected with Moscow.

Return to the capital

After the famous XX Congress of the Communist Party, in 1956, when the members of Stalin's personality cult was convicted by her members , Okudzhava's mother was rehabilitated. Together with her son, she moved to Moscow on permission from the government. In the same year Bulat Shalvovich became a member of the CPSU.

His active work in the literary field began in 1957. He worked at that time in the Komsomolskaya Pravda, Literaturnaya gazeta and Molodaya Gvardiya editor. The story of Bulat Okudzhava "Be healthy, the schoolboy" was included in the literary almanac "Tarussky pages" in 1961, composed by Konstantin Paustovsky, a well-known writer (it was on this story that the director V. Motyl shot in 1965 the film "Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha" ).

Increased popularity

During this period, Okudzhava's fame began to grow. He began to learn both as a performer and as an author of his songs. In 1956-1966, he composed many compositions that enjoyed love and popularity to the present day ("Tverskoy Boulevard", "Blue Ball", "Midnight Trolley", "About Lenka Queen", "Song about ants", "Sentimental March" "Not vagabonds, not drunks" and many others).

Bulat Shalvovich worked in Moscow, as we already mentioned, the editor, after which he became the head of the department of poetry in Literaturnaya Gazeta. He was a member of the association "Magistral", was one of the most active of its members. In 1962, Bulat Shalvovich was also admitted to the Writers' Union.

His first works, I must say, were very coolly received by official criticism. For example, in the story "Be healthy, the schoolboy" saw pacifist sentiments, expressed in the perception of a young man of the war, whose events reflected the biography of Bulat Okudzhava. The summary of this work is as follows: it tells about the 17-year-old boy who came to the front, how boys, who were recently schoolboys, passed through themselves and understood war, how she changed people and broke illusions. To get acquainted with this story it is possible and on the above-mentioned film "Zhenya, Zhenechka, Katyusha". Bulat Okudzhava, whose biography and work is very interesting, expressed in this work his thoughts and feelings, experienced by himself. In the early 1960s, almost all the songs were sharply condemned, since the Writers' Union suggested that they did not depict the true aspirations and mood of the Soviet heroic youth.

Okudzhava in the late 1960s turned to the study and comprehension of historical events. At this time he wrote the novel "Poor Avrosimov", dedicated to Pavel Pestel, as well as the play "Shot of Freedom" about Mikhail Bestuzhev. During the same period he became interested in Tolstoy's biography, in particular, why this writer was constantly harassed by gendarmes. "Adventures of Shipov," an adventurist novel, was the result of these studies. These works received a very ambiguous assessment by official criticism, but among the intelligentsia were received positively, became very popular.

Songs written for movies

In 1962, Bulat Shalvovich first participated in the creation of the cinema: he sang the song "Midnight Trolley" of his own composition in the film entitled "Chain reaction". The nationwide fame came to Okudzhava in 1970, after the film "Belorussky Vokzal", in which the song "And now we need one victory" sounded, is one of the best in his work. Okudzhava later said that when the director invited him to write a song for this film, he first refused.

It was not just necessary to create a composition, but it was with the stylization of the text for the poetic creation of the period of the Great Patriotic War, since, according to the story, an ordinary soldier sitting in the trench of the front-line poet, compiling his friends with simple lines, rather than a professional, should perform it. This task was very difficult for Bulat Shalvovich, since he always wrote about the war from the standpoint of a man who lives already in peacetime, but in the front they thought differently, they said, they sang. However, the memory prompted the musical intonation and the right words. After such an experience Bulat Shalvovich became the author of many popular songs created for more than eighty movies.

Free Thought

Okudzhava from 1961 left work for hire, deciding to devote himself exclusively to creativity. At that time, he liked to flaunt this independence. His poems were published abroad, he signed a letter in defense of Sinyavsky and Daniel. Strangely enough, punishment for this "freethinking" never came.

Song creativity

The biography of this author will be incomplete if you do not point to such an important branch of his work as an author's song. The first concert took place in Kharkov in 1961. The first records appeared in Poland and Paris in 1968, and from the mid-1970s, songs began to be recorded in our country.

Last years

Our story about such a great man as Okudzhava Bulat Shalvovich has come to an end. A brief biography in the aspect of the last years of his life is inextricably linked with perestroika. During this period, he took an active part in the life of the country. In 1990, Okudzhava Bulat, whose biography was presented in this article, left the CPSU. The last concert of the performer took place in Paris in June 1995, and two years later Okudzhava died in Clamart, a Paris suburb.