The Singer of the Arbat

The soft, tremulous voice, singing with haunting sadness to the accompaniment of a simple melody on a guitar, touches the soul of anyone listening. This is the voice of Bulat Okudzhava, the voice that became the conscience of a whole generation of Russians and which continues to affect the lives of millions a year after his death.

Okudzhava was the father of the modern “bard” movement, from which emerged other celebrated poet-singers such as Alexander Galich and Vladimir Vysotsky. He began to sing his poems in the late 1950’s at the beginning of the Khrushchev thaw: a time when Russians were hungry for individual expression. His lone voice, which sang of human feelings and suffering, was a far cry from the Soviet romanticism of the Stalin era. In a very short time, and in spite of the fact that no official recordings of his songs were released, Okudzhava’s popularity had spread across the Soviet Union. Bootleg cassettes were food for anyone who couldn’t hear him in concert, and his words and melodies became the spiritual mainstay of the sixties generation. 

“He was in the atmosphere, part of our everyday life ... people saw the truth in him” said Natalia Ivanova, deputy editor of the literary magazine Znamya, referring to her student days at Moscow University.

This “truth” could be a synonym for Okudzhava’s humanity as well as the humanity which had been forced to lie dormant in the Soviet psyche for so long. “He sang in our name,” said writer Anatoly Kim. This sense of a common understanding comes out in many of his poems. “Join hands, friends, so we won’t perish one by one” is a much quoted line. In “Midnight Trolleybus,” one of his most famous songs, he refers to the midnight bus “picking up all who have suffered at night” and goes on to say,

Your passengers – your sailors – come to the rescue.

I’ve often escaped from my troubles with them 

I have touched their shoulders ... 

Imagine how much kindness there is in silence, in silence.

Kim talks about a psychological energy which emanated from the soul of Okudzhava and which made it possible for the internal to communicate itself to listeners. It is this which differentiates him from other great bard figures of the same generation. Galich’s songs were to a large extent commemorative and romantic, telling about the outward appearance of a generation. Vysotsky’s rasping voice and forthright, even aggressive manner certainly appealed to a people aching to be shaken up by bare-faced truth, but did not touch an internal chord in the same way as Okudzhava did.

Bulat Okudzhava was born in 1924 in Moscow to a Georgian father and an Armenian mother. His parents were Communist Party functionaries and he was brought up speaking Russian, “the language of the great Lenin.” Throughout his life he maintained a passion for Moscow, and particularly for the Old Arbat, the street where he grew up. This comes across in his powerful and plaintive “Song of the Arbat,” written in 1959.

You flow like a river with your strange name! 

And your asphalt, transparent like water in a river. 

Oh, Arbat, my Arbat, you are my vocation, 

You are my joy and my misfortune.

Unfortunately, the Arbat of today is not the same street which invoked such adoration in the singer. The “pedestrianisation” of the Arbat, in Okudzhava’s eyes, took way its spirit, a spirit infused with centuries of Russian culture. The new streetlights seemed to him to “come from another world and epoch” just like the crowds of restless and idle people “who do not belong here.”

In spite of the fact that his parents fell victim to Stalin’s purges – his father was shot in 1937 and his mother was sent to the labor camps for ten years – Okudzhava went to the front at the age of seventeen with romantic notions of patriotism, only to be disillusioned by the horror and degradation of what he saw. He graduated from the philology department of Tbilisi University in 1950, and then taught in the Kaluga region of Russia, before concentrating on his own writing.

Okudzhava was a member of the Communist Party from 1955 until the end of the Gorbachev era. Although not overtly political in his writing – he was never considered a dissident in the Soviet Union – he did sometimes tread a fine line. His songs abound with allusions that could be, and indeed were, understood as subtle political metaphors. His paper soldier in the poem of the same title who wanted “to remake the world, so that everyone would be happy” is undoubtedly the Soviet citizen powerless in his desire to take on the regime. In the end, “he took the step, and there burned up for nothing ...” In the song “The Black Cat,” the cat hiding a smile behind his moustache while terrorizing its neighbors could be a metaphor for Stalin. On the whole, Okudzhava’s songs were unpopular with the authorities for being simply too sad. He was never persecuted, just occasionally banned from performing.

Although best known as a bard, Okudzhava was also a prolific prose writer. The popularity of his historical novels and short stories culminated in his receiving the 1994 Russian Booker Prize for his autobiographical novel, The Closed-Down Theatre, first published by the literary magazine Znamya in 1993. In spite of this and other successes (much of his work continued to be published in literary magazines), towards the end of his life Okudzhava was criticized by the new generation. He felt increasingly misunderstood and alone. In the last poem he wrote before his death, he refers to his defenselessness in the face of his critics, saying that they point their weapons at he who is “unarmed, like the lowest junker.” He goes on to say

Now the trigger has been pulled. 

Arbat is destroyed... 

There is an iron fence behind me. 

Round as a martyr’s crown ... 

But nobility is not a reward 

After all for this late end.

American journalist Jean Mackenzie detected a certain bewilderment in him during his final years. “It was”, she said, as if he had had his specific place in the world, and then all the values changed.” She, like everyone who met him, said she was struck by the sheer goodness of this man and by his immense modesty.

Okudzhava died at the age of seventy-three in Paris on June 12th, 1997, following a history of heart trouble. His death was an enormous shock to the Russian speaking world. Many great public figures expressed their sorrow publicly. “The land which gave birth to his vine branch is weeping for the unforgettable Bulat,” said Georgian President Edward Shevardnadze. Russian President Boris Yeltsin said “the sweet voice of Bulat Okudzhava entered everybody’s hearts.” Yeltsin announced plans to errect a statue of the poet on the Old Arbat and to name a street after him. 

Okudzhava’s funeral took place in the packed Russian Orthodox Church of St. Alexander Nevsky. His body was brought back to Moscow for a memorial service on 18th June in Okudzhava’s beloved Vakhtangov Theatre, on the Old Arbat. Thousands attended. He was buried in a quiet cemetery in western Moscow: the cemetery where Vysotsky was buried in 1980.

One of Okudzhava’s favorite quotations was Voltaire’s maxim that “ to die is not dreadful – dreadful is not to live.” Okudzhava lived with every fibre of his being for an entire generation of people. Their past and present, their pain and suffering was brought to life through his poems and music. While his voice lives on, the bard tradition defined by Okudzhava from the 1960’s to the end of 1980’s has not maintained its impact following the collapse of communism. The tradition is nevertheless alive. A Bulat Okudzhava stipend is being established by the presidential administration to be awarded annually to the best singing poet. Alexander Gorodnitsky and Olga Arefeyeva are two likely contenders this year.

Okudzhava’s grave lies in a quiet corner of Vagankov cemetery. There was yet no headstone this summer, two days before the first anniversary of his death. Instead, a metal sign displays his name and the date of his death. The mound is covered with flowers. 

On this day there was a huddle of people in front of the bard’s grave, paying their respects. A late middle-aged woman spoke of what Okudzhava meant to her. “He was a great man, one of the greatest,” she said. “Everyone loved him, whether they were young or old.” “Do you think he will be forgotten?” she is asked. “Never,” she replied, “ his memory will live on into the next epoch.”  RL

Emily Glentworth is a freelance writer living in London. She recently lived and wrote in Moscow for three years.