This article is devoted to the biography and work of Alexander Arkadievich Galich, a Russian poet and prose writer, as well as a screenwriter, playwright, author and songwriter.
Surname Galich was born as a creative pseudonym as a result of the merger of the first letters of the last name and first name, as well as the end of the middle name: G (-inzburg) + AL (-exander) + (Arkadyev-) ICh.
Biography
Alexander Ginzburg was born on Ukrainian soil in the city of Yekaterinoslav (in Soviet times - Dnepropetrovsk, then the Dnieper) in October 1918. His father was the Jewish economist Aron Ginsburg, and his mother was Feig (Faina) Veksler, who worked at the conservatory.
In 1920, the Ginzburg family moved to Sevastopol, and three years later - to Moscow. There is a boy and graduated from high school. The biography of Alexander Galich would be incomplete if we did not mention that his first poem (signature - Alexander Ginzburg) was called “Peace in a shout” and was published in the Pionerskaya Pravda newspaper in 1932. Later, other poems by young Galich appeared in this newspaper.
He was born on October 19 - it was the opening day of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, in which Pushkin studied. The uncle of the future poet was a famous literary critic - Pushkinist Lev Ginsburg. It was probably from his hands in the Ginzburg family that such a coincidence was a special sign. Perhaps that is why at the end of the ninth grade Galich entered the Literary Institute. Soon he became a student at the Opera and Drama Studio.
In the end, he had to make a choice between the two educational institutions, and he made it in favor of the Studio and Stanislavsky, who taught there last year. But he did not finish his studies in it, moving to the Studio Theater under the guidance of famous playwrights Alexander Arbuzov and Valentin Pluchek.
Galich’s stage and authorial debut was the play “The City at Dawn,” which premiered in 1940. As a playwright, he participated in the creation of this play ("The City at the Dawn" was written by the collective author), in addition, Galich wrote songs for the play. The debut acting role of the future poet is the role of the construction commander of the Borshchagovsky construction site.
At the beginning of the war, Galich was drafted into the army, but doctors discovered a congenital heart defect in the young man, and thus he was released from service.
Then Galich gets a job in a geological exploration expedition and, as part of it, goes to the south of the country. In Grozny, he managed to work as a member of the troupe of the local theater, and then he moved to a small theater in the city of Tashkent, newly formed by the forces of former studio students Arbuzov and the playwright himself.
Personal life
Galich met his future wife, actress Valentina Arkhangelskaya at the same time in Tashkent. They also decided to get married there, but it so happened that a suitcase was stolen from them, where all the documents lay. The marriage had to be postponed - they got married in 1942 in Moscow. Soon the couple had a daughter, who was named Alexandra (Alena).
However, in 1945, the wife of Alexander Galich was offered a place in the troupe of the Irkutsk Drama Theater, and she left Moscow. And although she became a leading actress in this provincial theater, for the most part her departure was dictated by the constrained housing conditions in which the newlyweds lived. Nevertheless, the departure of Valentina became the reason for the divorce following the departure.
In 1947, Galich made a new marriage. His second wife was Angelina Nikolaevna Shekrot (Prokhorova).
Children
The first daughter of Galich, also named Alexandra (Alena Galich-Arkhangelskaya), later became an actress.
In 1967, from an extramarital affair with Sofia Mikhnova-Voitenko (Filkinshtein), who worked in the Gorky Film Studio as a costume designer, his son Gregory was born. Subsequently, he became a Russian religious and public figure, bishop of the Apostolic Orthodox Church.
Creation
According to the scripts of Alexander Galich, such feature films as “Taimyr Calls You” (1948), “Faithful Friends” (1954, in both cases the plays under the script were written by Galich in collaboration with the Soviet playwright Konstantin Isaev) and “On the Seven Winds” ( 1962).
Since the 1950s, the poet began to select the first melodies for his lyrics, accompanying himself on a seven-string guitar (see photos of Alexander Galich made at concerts). In this work, he based himself primarily on Vertinsky’s romance, but managed to find and develop his own style. Poems by Alexander Galich, performed as songs, by the sixties, along with the works of Bulat Okudzhava and Vladimir Vysotsky, found their listener. These were works of tragic, sometimes tragicomic content, most often they wore an acute social coloring.
True, the first songs - such as "Helen" (1959), "About painters, a stoker and the theory of relativity" and "Law of nature" (1962) can be considered politically harmless. But these songs were already real songs of Galich, it was already his style. In addition, there was a turning point in them - a transition from the creative path of an ordinary, quite prosperous Soviet writer to the work of the disgraced poet.
This turning point was also facilitated by the fact that his play “Sailor's Silence”, specifically written for the then-recently created Sovremennik Theater, was banned from showing. The play was already rehearsed, the play was waiting for its premiere. But the author was told: "You have a distorted idea of the role of Jews in the Great Patriotic War" - and the play fell on the shelf. Later, this episode in his biography, Alexander Arkadievich Galich will describe in his story "General rehearsal." What else can be said about the work of this person.
Songs and books of Alexander Galich
At one time, the songs of this poet were so popular that their words were known by heart. Famous, for example, was the poem-song of Galich "The miners' waltz" with a refrain:
Keep silent - you will fall into the rich!
Keep silent, keep silent, keep silent!
Or the piercing "When I Get Back" is a song-longing for the Motherland:
When I'll come back,
Nightingales will whistle in February -
That old motive -
that long-standing, forgotten, indifferent.
And I will fall
Conquered by his victory
And poke my head
as to the marina, to your knees!
When I'll come back.
And when will I be back?! ..
Other songs were no less famous and memorable to his listeners: “In memory of Boris Pasternak”, “Ask, boys!”, “Are you leaving ?! Leave — for customs and clouds ...”, “We are no worse than Horace”, “Once again about the line "," Draft of the epitaph "," Kadish "(in memory of Janusz Korczak"), "Train" and many others.
What are the best poems by Alexander Galich? Read - and choose for yourself.
Conflict
Further song work Galich led to escalation of the conflict with the authorities. His performances and concerts were banned, access to publications in magazines and the publication of his own works were blocked, he was not given permission to release records ... All that remained for a poet who wants to be heard is in this situation to perform at small "home" concerts at his friends. So, in due time, Galich’s songs began to circulate on improvised tape recordings, often not of the best quality. And yet, quite quickly, he became very popular.
In 1969, the Posev publishing house, founded by Russian emigrants in Germany, released a collection of texts of his songs. This publication caused further persecution of Alexander Galich - he was expelled from the Union of Writers of the USSR and the Union of Cinematographers. In 1972, Galich was actually “written off” - due to several heart attacks that occurred during all these troubles, he receives a second disability group and a pension of 54 rubles.
Emigration
In 1974, Galich was actually forced to emigrate - by Glavlit’s decree, by direct order “from above”, all his previously published works were directly prohibited. It is said that Galich left with modest luggage - a typewriter and two suitcases.
He found his first refuge in Norway, then moved to Munich, where he broadcast on the American radio station Liberty. The last years, Alexander Galich lived in Paris.
Death
On December 15, 1977, new equipment was brought to Galich’s apartment in Paris - it was the Grundig stereo combine. Her connection was appointed tomorrow, but the owner did not want to wait for the arrival of the master and decided to do it on his own.
Little knowledgeable in technical matters, Galich touched the high voltage hole with an antenna wire. He was struck by electric shock and fell on the radiator, causing the circuit to close. Journalist Fyodor Razzakov wrote in one of his books that when his wife returned, Galich was still alive, but the doctors called in arrived too late - the poet’s heart, which had already suffered several heart attacks, could not stand it.
True, the daughter of Galich Alena later claimed that the "long-armed" KGB killed the poet. There were even rumors that Galich was “visited” by a killer from the CIA, but many friends of Galich, in particular the Russian and American artist and sculptor Mikhail Shemyakin, refuted this information:
No KGB, no one was hunting him. Just illiteracy, because he bought the equipment, we wanted to make a record with him. But he decided to make a master tape at home. My wife went to the store, he began to mess with the equipment, not understanding anything, what to include. You know, in Russian: turn it on here. And, in general, he made it so that he closed this equipment somewhere, and when he touched it - everything, he was electrocuted.
The grave of Alexander Galich is located in the famous "Russian" cemetery of the French town of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois, not far from Paris.