Soviet Dead Poet`s Society Honors Mr. Everyman

Other than these elite, only two men have been honored with burial in Article No. 6. One was made for Andrei Sakharov, Nobel laureate and conscience of the USSR.

The other was for Vladimir Vysotsky.

Vladimir Vysotsky? For eternity lying in the same style of box as Stalin and Brezhnev in a land where even coffins are deficient?

Vysotsky`s acid-penned lyrics dealt with such ironies. Lyrics sung in a sandpaper baritone before the actor, bard and poet died 10 years ago Wednesday of what friends called the «Russian`s Disease» (drinking).

«He spoke to the soul, not to the head,» said Aleksandr Lipnitsky, founder of the Soviet rock group Zvuki Mu.

«The mind of each social class is different,» said Lipnitsky, asked to write a tribute for the evening newspaper Vecherny Leningrad. «But the spirit of all men is the same.»

Sadly, it is difficult to translate Vysotsky`s words and adequately convey how perfectly they captured the crumminess, insult and random tiny triumphs of modern Soviet life.

It is equally difficult to explain to Americans how a man who released no albums and played few official concerts in his life could have become the most popular artist in the USSR, with devoted fans in every age part of society.

Thousands came to Vagankovskoye Cemetery on Wednesday to honor their poet, gathering in the daylong drizzle to sing his songs and swap cassettes of his music. Vysotsky had lived in every one of their apartments, and been a member of every family.

«My uncle was in the (prison) camps, and he said that Vysotsky must have been there with him-that`s how well he could write about it,» said Olga Kuzmina, a pensioner.

«And when my husband came back from the Great Patriotic War, he said that Vysotsky must have been in the trenches against the Nazis too.»

Of course, Vysotsky was neither. He died July 25, 1980, at age 42, felled by a heart attack. Friends said it was death by drink.

His widow, Marina Vladi, the French actress and Communist Party member, wrote that Vysotsky also was a morphine addict, but that hardly tarnished his popularity.

In American terms, think of Vysotsky, then, as part James Dean, part Bob Dylan and part John Belushi.

Vysotsky`s official work was a 15-year tenure as an actor with the avant- garde Taganka Theaterin Moscow. His most famous role was Hamlet, played in a baggy black sweat shirt, interpreting Shakespeare`s words translated into Russian by Boris Pasternak.

But his near-mythical popularity came from his songs.

Vysotsky sang of soldiers at the front, and mountaineers atop the peaks of Transcaucasia. His stories were set in drunk tanks, labor camps and psychiatric wards. His characters often were the Soviet Everyman. But sometimes, his focus shifted, perhaps to a wolf pack chased by hunters or a fragile leaf pinned to a microscope stand for scrutiny.

«Vysotsky was never a dissident,» said Army Capt. Ivan Kulizhanov, arriving at Vagankovskoye Cemetery bearing flowers. «He was a poet who described life as it was — and still is.»

Even so, his music was banned for decades, so his songs passed hand-to-hand on bootleg cassettes across the largest country on Earth.

This week, he was honored by TV specials every night. A 10-album set has been issued by the Soviet record company, Melodiya, and a museum exhibit was sponsored by the Soviet Culture Fund.

Vysotsky`s tombstone is a statue of the poet emerging from a boulder like Prometheus unbound, wrapped in a shroud, a guitar emerging from his back like an angel`s wing.

Next to his grave Wednesday, a dozen umbrellas shielded a man playing Vysotsky`s songs on a guitar. All of those within earshot, easily several dozen people, joined in singing.

Although Vysotsky`s popularity obviously is undiminished, it is relevant to ask what his songs can contribute now, 10 years later, when the USSR is undergoing dramatic self-analysis with Mikhail Gorbachev`s program of openness.

As if in answer, a rain-drenched militia officer ordered the singers off the cemetery, saying such behavior was not proper.

«That is why Vysotsky is still so important,» said Sasha Petrov, wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with «Illinois 1983 Junior Wrestling Champions.» He said he got the cap from a tourist by trading his brother`s Soviet army hat.

«We may have glasnost, but we do not have truth,» he added. «We may have democratization, but we have no democracy.»

The musician`s guitar was wrapped in plastic bags. Devotees instead lit perfumed church candles for the dead, and sheltered the flames as the candles spit and sputtered in the rain.

By Thom Shanker

Chicago Tribune, July 26, 1990