What was Vladimir Vysotsky's nationality? The truth about how Jewish roots influenced Vysotsky Genealogy of Vysotsky

Great-grandfather Shliom worked as a Russian teacher; his family raised 4 children. At the end of the 19th century the family moved to Small town High - according to some sources, it was the name of this town that played a key role in the celebrity’s surname. But there are no facts that can prove this theory.

1941. Volodya Vysotsky “with a bear” in Moscow in the first days of the war. Photo from the end of June

Vysotsky’s maternal grandfather moved to Moscow from the Tula province. It is known that he worked as a doorman in several capital hotels. When he got married, his chosen one gave him 5 children, one of whom was the mother of the future great bard.

Vladimir Vysotsky’s paternal grandfather was Jewish by nationality, and at home the family spoke Yiddish. He had three higher education and spoke in three languages. Due to persecution in Russian Empire he changed his first and last name to Russian. So he turned from Wolf Shliomovich into Vladimir Vysotsky. Before her marriage, my grandmother’s name was Dora Bronstein; she also changed her name and converted to Orthodoxy. Despite the fact that the grandmother worked as a nurse and cosmetologist all her life, she was a big theatergoer and her grandson’s main supporter - she was pleased with her relative’s desire for art. In the very later years of her life, she was a real fan of Vladimir Semyonovich’s songs.

In Soviet times, Vladimir Vysotsky’s father was already far from religion and alienated from his own culture.

Vladimir with his parents

It is interesting that one of the singer’s sons, Arkady, married a Jewish woman. After the divorce, his wife took the children from him and currently she and the children live in the United States. The granddaughter of Vladimir Vysotsky, Natalya, became deeply religious and married according to the Jewish rite.

How did Vladimir Vysotsky perceive himself?

Despite the fact that the great singer knew his ancestry, he considered himself Russian. Moreover, according to Jewish tradition, nationality is determined by the mother, and for Vladimir Vysotsky it was Russian. According to his Soviet passport, he was also “Russian.” The bard himself spoke openly about his origins and never hid his Jewish roots. He even wrote the work “Once Upon a Time There Were the Jews Vysotsky.”

Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladimir on vacation in Pitsunda

Despite his pedigree, the singer was better than others able to express the Russian soul and character in songs Soviet era. Thanks to his talent, he became a legend, an icon and history of the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Vysotsky, whose biography will be presented in this article, is a Russian poet, performer and songwriter, actor. He was born in 1938, on January 25, in a maternity hospital in Moscow, located at Shchepkina, 61/2.

Vysotsky's parents

The parents of the future poet are Semyon Vladimirovich Vysotsky and Nina Maksimovna Seregina. They lived together for about five years. Vladimir's father met another woman at the front and therefore left the family. Nina Maksimovna remarried after some time.

Young Vladimir's relationship with his stepfather did not work out from the very beginning. This man had no authority in the boy's eyes. Apparently, this was one of the reasons that Vysotsky asked his own father take him to Germany with you, where, as an officer Soviet army, Semyon Vladimirovich was sent to serve in January 1947.

Life in my youth

Vladimir Vysotsky, whose biography interests us, until October 1949 lived with his father and his second wife, Evgenia Stepanovna Likholatova, in the city of Eberswalde, in a military garrison. Then the family was returned to their homeland. The father went to serve in Kyiv, and his wife and Vladimir settled in Moscow, in Bolshoi Karetny Lane, in house No. 15. Evgenia Stepanovna lived here with her first husband, who died before the war.

Vysotsky was excused from physical education classes in the seventh grade due to ill health. Doctors discovered a murmur in his heart. They advised Volodya's parents to make sure that the boy behaved moderately - he jumped and ran less.

Company from Bolshoi Karetny

Vova, starting from the seventh grade, began to skip classes often. Sometimes he would be absent for up to a month a year. He visited the Hermitage, the garden theater, where famous artists performed, as well as cinemas located nearby: “Moscow”, “Screen of Life”, Metropol”, “Central”, etc. After visiting these places, a noisy company usually gathered at Levon Kocharyan’s apartment , who lived in the same house where Vysotsky lived, several floors above. Here friends played cards, listened to music, drank. According to the recollections of Marina Vladi (the wife of Vladimir Semenovich, about whom we will talk later), Vysotsky first tried wine at the age of 13 in this company from Bolshoi Karetny.

Faculty of Mechanics

Vladimir Vysotsky (the biography compiled by us only briefly describes the main events of his life and work) in 1955 entered the mechanical faculty of the Civil Engineering Institute. But he didn’t study there for long - he dropped out of school after three months, firmly deciding to enter drama school.

Study at the Moscow Art Theater

In the summer of 1956, Vladimir Vysotsky applied to the Moscow Art Theater and entered there the first time, to the surprise of his loved ones. Visits to the drama club, led by V.N., helped. Bogomolov. During his studies, Vladimir Semenovich met a girl who became his first wife. Her name was Iza Zhukova. She was in her third year and was a year older than Vladimir. The acquaintance occurred at the moment when Vysotsky was invited to participate in the play “Hotel Astoria” - course work third-year students. He played the silent role of a soldier in it.

Iza Zhukova becomes Vysotsky's first wife

Vladimir Vysotsky will create songs for theater and cinema a little later. At this time, he was captivated by work in the theater and attended all rehearsals. Quite quickly, in a word, he became a friend among the third-year students, which was not too difficult given his sociable character. At the same time, I became closely acquainted with Iza Zhukova. He began dating this girl, and in 1957, in the fall, he persuaded her to finally move from the hostel on Pervaya Meshchanskaya to live with him. The girl only had a small suitcase, so this move did not cause much trouble for the young couple.

The wedding took place only in May of the following year (1958), when Iza Zhukova completed her studies and received a diploma. At the insistence of Vysotsky’s parents, she was celebrated at Bolshoi Karetny.

Iza was by that time an independent girl, so for her family life was not burdensome. The same could not be said about the 20-year-old artist. Even after becoming a family man, Vladimir Vysotsky did not change his old habits and continued to visit men’s companies, in which he was much more interested than at home. The young people soon began to have serious quarrels on this basis.

Film debut

Vladimir Vysotsky made his film debut in 1959. In the film "Peers" by Vasily Ordynsky, he played a cameo role as a student at a theater institute. Appearing in the frame only for a few seconds, Vladimir uttered only one phrase: “Chest and trough.”

First performance on stage

Vladimir Semenovich appeared on stage for the first time that same year. He mastered playing the guitar immediately after graduating from school and by that time had managed to create several songs own composition. He performed them on the stage of the MSU student club and was a success with the public. True, Vladimir Semenovich was not able to sing all the songs then, since P. Pospelov, a candidate member of the Politburo and one of his guards, demanded that the performance be stopped.

Vladimir Vysotsky (biography, whose photo is presented in our article) successfully graduated from the Studio School in June 1960 and was faced with the problem of choosing a place to work. Because of his youth, he wanted the thrill and novelty, so Vysotsky chose the Theater. Pushkin. At that time, Boris Ravenskikh, a new director, came to his management. He offered Vladimir only roles in the crowd, which is why he began to have breakdowns, and he began to disappear from the theater more and more often.

Songs, plays and films

Singer Vladimir Vysotsky, whose biography is presented in this article, based his work on the traditions of domestic urban romance. At the Taganka Theater since 1964, he took part in the performances "Pugachev", "Hamlet", " The Cherry Orchard" and others. Below is a photograph of Vladimir Semenovich while performing his role in the play "Pugachev".

Vysotsky starred in the following films: “Vertical”, “Brief Encounters” and “The meeting place cannot be changed” (1967, 1968 and 1979, respectively), etc.

Hero of Vysotsky

He had an “avalanche” powerful temperament. The truly tragic hero of Vladimir Vysotsky is a lone rebel, a strong personality, aware of doom, but not even allowing the thought of surrender. In comic genres, Vladimir easily changed social masks, while achieving absolute recognition of his “sketches from life.” In dramatic roles and “serious” songs, a deep force came out, a longing for justice, tearing at the soul. Vladimir Vysotsky (biography, whose personal life in subsequent years is presented below) posthumously, in 1987, received the USSR State Prize.

Trip to Krasnodar region

In 1965, on November 4, the premiere of the play “Fallen and Living” took place at the Taganka Theater. In the same year, cinema offered him two roles: in the films “The Cook” and “Our House”. To participate in the first one in July-August I went to Krasnodar region Vladimir Vysotsky. The biography and personal life of this artist are described in our article, in which we tried to include the most significant episodes related to the life and work of Vladimir Vysotsky. These include this trip, which was necessary as an opportunity to get away from home problems at least for some time. Vladimir did not take the role itself seriously.

However, on this business trip, Vysotsky did not find the necessary peace. He started drinking again, and therefore Keosayan, the director of “The Cook,” was forced to kick him out of filming twice. However, this was not the first and not the last director to do this with Vysotsky. The same story happened at the beginning of 1965 with the actor and A. Tarkovsky.

Seeing how the whirlpool of drunkenness was sucking Vladimir deeper and deeper, relatives and friends attracted Yu. Lyubimov to their side. This was a man whose authority for Vysotsky in those years was indisputable. He persuaded him to go to the hospital.

Marriage to Marina Vladi

On December 1, 1970, Vladimir Semenovich officially registered his marriage with Marina Vladi. Immediately after the ceremony, the newlyweds went on a trip (Odessa-Sukhumi-Tbilisi). Upon arrival in Moscow, a wedding took place on 2nd Frunzenskaya. In mid-January, before the echoes of the feast in honor of the wedding had died down, after a conflict with Lyubimov, Vysotsky started drinking again and went to the Sklifosovsky Institute for three days. Vladi, distraught with despair, packed her things and went to France.

"Hamlet"

Vladimir Vysotsky in 1970, on January 24, almost strangled his wife, tore off the door, and broke the windows. In 1971, on November 29, the premiere of “Hamlet” took place at the Taganka Theater. It was Lyubimov's production. Vysotsky performed the role of Hamlet. This role, without a doubt, became a star in the career of Vladimir Semenovich. The seventies began - a time later dubbed the “era of Vysotsky.” Hamlet formed the image of Vladimir Semenovich as a fighter against the era of timelessness, and served as an impetus for further reflection about his place in the world, the chosen path, the meaning of life.

Concert activities in 1972

Vladimir's creative activity continued to gain momentum in 1972. His concert routes stretch from Moscow to Tyumen. The halls at all performances were always packed to capacity. Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky was already a very popular artist at that time. His biography can be supplemented by the appearance of numerous songs. A whole series of them comes from his pen. They became extremely popular among the people. Vladimir Vysotsky wrote and performed the following songs at that time: “We Rotate the Earth”, “Rope Walker”, “In the Reserve”, “Hymn to the Chess Crown”, “Mishka Shifman”, “Fasicky Horses” (these are only the most famous works among the people) .

Vysotsky again at the Sklifosofsky Institute

In 1977, on April 6, the premiere of “The Master and Margarita” took place at the Taganka Theater (production by Beloved). Vysotsky Vladimir Semenovich, whose biography was already noted at that time successful work in the theater, was supposed to play the role of Ivan Bezdomny. However, he did not bring it to the premiere. At the beginning of April, he was again admitted to the Sklifosofsky Institute, as his body functions had shut down. One kidney did not work at all, the second barely functioned. The liver was severely damaged. Vysotsky was constantly tormented by hallucinations, he had partial swelling of the brain, and he was delirious. When Marina Vladi entered the room, Vladimir Vysotsky simply did not recognize her. The (short) biography of this man’s life is already approaching the end.

Clinical death of Vladimir Semenovich

In 1979, on July 25, exactly a year before his death, Vysotsky experienced clinical death. He went on tour at the end of July throughout Central Asia. Happened clinical death through the fault of the artist himself. When Vladimir ran out of drugs, he injected him with medicine used for dental treatment. Vysotsky immediately felt ill. It was only by a miracle that he was saved.

The accident that Vladimir Vysotsky survived

The biography and creativity (briefly) of the last year of his life are marked by the following events. In 1980, on January 1, Vladimir Semenovich had an accident (crashed into a trolleybus) due to the fact that the artist ran out of drugs. Vladimir Vysotsky himself (the brief biography does not describe all the details of this story) was almost unhurt, but his fellow traveler was less fortunate: Yanklovich had a concussion, and Abdulov had a broken arm. Fortunately, the accident occurred opposite the hospital, so the victims were immediately taken there.

An attempt at a cure

In 1980, on January 25, Vysotsky decided on his birthday to try to recover again. Only three guests were in his apartment that day: Shekhtman, Yanklovich and Oksana Afanasyeva. Fedotov (Vysotsky’s doctor) says that they locked themselves with him for a week in an apartment located on Malaya Gruzinskaya. The doctor put Vladimir on a drip, which relieved the withdrawal symptoms. However, psychological and physiological dependence develops from drugs and alcohol. They were able to remove the physiological one, but the psychological one was more difficult...

Death of Vysotsky

In the same year, on July 25, Vladimir’s heart stopped between 3 and 4.30 am “due to a heart attack.” Doctor A. Fedotov gave Vysotsky an injection of sleeping pills at about two o’clock in the morning, and he finally fell asleep, sitting on an ottoman in a large room. Fedotov came home from his shift exhausted and tired. So he lay down for a while and fell asleep at about three o'clock. The doctor woke up from an ominous silence. He rushed to Vysotsky, but it was too late. Cardiac arrest occurred between three o'clock and half past five. It was an acute myocardial infarction, judging by the clinic. This is how Vladimir Vysotsky died. His biography ends here, but his memory continues to live in the hearts of many.

Nationwide love

They still argue about who Vysotsky was more - a poet or an actor. Some argue that his poems and songs are very ordinary, and only the brilliant performance of them by Vladimir Semenovich makes them real works of art. Others believe that none of his roles on screen or stage can compare in terms of talent and originality with the songs that Vladimir Vysotsky created.

His biography and work arouse constant interest. This discussion is legitimate, which will probably never end as long as they remember, watch and listen to Vladimir Semenovich. One side of his creativity is inextricably linked with the other. This must be remembered when we talk about a person like Vladimir Vysotsky. His songs are most often monologues on behalf of various characters: military men, ordinary people, fairy-tale heroes, punks... B last years he wrote mainly on his own behalf. The acting, acting, and deeply personal essences of Vladimir Semenovich are mixed in his work. The same mixture can be found in best roles him: on the stage - Hamlet and Galileo, on the screen - a White Guard officer ("Two Comrades Served"), a geologist ("Short Encounters"), a radio operator ("Vertical"), Gleb Zheglov ("The meeting place cannot be changed").

Memory of Vladimir Semenovich

Vysotsky’s songs are relevant and popular today. His style and manner of performance gave birth to a new genre in our country, called “Russian chanson”. Even among greatest personalities Russian art is not lost, Vladimir Vysotsky is not lost. This suggests that his work and life were not in vain. A photo of the monument located in Poland is presented below.

Since 1994, a permanent exhibition has been held on Gogolevsky Boulevard (Moscow), which presents amateur and professional photos from the life of Vladimir Semenovich.

The annual “Own Track” award named after him was established in 1997. In 1999, Taganka actors staged a play called “VVS” (stands for Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky). In 2013, a film about him was released - “Thank you for being alive.” In Yekaterinburg there is a skyscraper named after Vysotsky (photo below).

So, we introduced you to such an interesting artist as Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky. short biography was described by us as succinctly as possible. However, facts about the life and work of this person can be supplemented. Today, quite a lot is known about such a great artist as Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky. A short biography, memoirs and entire books about him were created by many of his contemporaries. For example, Anatoly Utevsky, a friend of Vysotsky, to whom he dedicated a song called “On Bolshoi Karetny,” created a book about him (“And again on Bolshoi Karetny”). It describes the biography of Vladimir Vysotsky. Summary We used it (among other sources) when compiling this article.

The ancestors of the legendary bard and actor were Jews, and Vysotsky did not hide this

“Rumors are flying around houses like flies here and there,” Vysotsky sang mockingly. He himself was the object of intense interest, and after his death, “sensations” from his biography fell one after another.

Thus, many were taken aback when they learned that some of the ancestors of the fair-haired and light-eyed poet and actor were Jews. There were also arguments that the pedigree significantly influenced the work of Vladimir Semenovich. Is it so?

Wulf – Valvel - Vladimir

The artist's great-grandfather on his father's side, Shlomo, lived in Belarus, in Brest-Litovsk, and was a very interesting and versatile person. He was simultaneously a Russian language teacher and a class glass blower. Shlomo married Hase Bulkovshtein(later Vysotskaya).

In 1914, the couple left for Kyiv with four children, one of whom was the artist’s grandfather, Wulf(sometimes called Valval). Vladimir Semenovich's grandfather received a good education. He was a chemist, a specialist in perfumery, and had deep knowledge in economics and jurisprudence. Grandmother Deborah worked as a paramedic-midwife. After the revolution, the couple changed their Jewish names to more familiar ones (Vladimir and Daria).

It must be said that the Jewish question has existed in Russia for centuries; many different decrees are associated with it, which were adopted at the level of tsars and emperors. All this ricocheted into the minds of unenlightened citizens. IN Tsarist Russia Pogroms of Jewish shops and houses, accompanied by murders and violence, were not uncommon.

IN Soviet time the Jewish question seemed to have disappeared, but only in appearance. With the emergence of the State of Israel (1948), many Jews wanted to emigrate to " historical homeland" And if this was impossible under the Stalinist regime, then later, albeit with difficulty, the Soviet government made some concessions in this regard.

Again, unspoken, but it was still believed that if a Jew received a good education for free, then a job, and then emigrated, this would cause irreparable harm to our country. And many Jews in the USSR, who did not even plan to go anywhere, tried by all means to have “Russian” written in their passports (and then there was a “nationality” column).

In general, the situation in the USSR was very interesting: on the one hand, there was a mass mixed marriages, between representatives of the most different nationalities, and at the same time, everyday nationalism has always existed – including everyday anti-Semitism. Moreover, the way of life of Jewish families was different in that they tried to give their children a good education, they were taught music and foreign languages. Jew-alcoholic was an anecdotal concept.

Jewish origin did not prevent the sons of Wolf Vysotsky from obtaining a military specialty. AND Semyon, And Alexei went through the war and fought valiantly. Vysotsky’s father has more than 20 military awards and honorary citizenship of the cities of Prague and Kladno.

The uncle of the actor and poet Alexey, having gone through the war, graduated from the Faculty of Journalism and became a writer. It was from him that the future bard heard exciting stories about real war, which “passed” through all of Vysotsky’s work, he wrote masterpieces about the war that are heard everywhere to this day: “On mass graves...”, “He did not return from the battle” and others.

Mom Nina and mom Zhenya

The poet's mother - Nina Maksimovna, born Seregina. Her father came to Moscow as a teenager from Tula region and worked as a porter and then as a porter. Vysotsky's grandmother, Evdokia Sinotova, originally from Utitsa near Moscow. She also came to the capital as a girl, where she married early and raised five children.

Nina met Semyon while studying at a technical school, and when her military husband was assigned to Novosibirsk, she left with him. But their son was born in Moscow on January 25, 1938.

By the way: According to Vladimir Vysotsky, he would be considered uniquely Russian.

In 1947, Vysotsky’s parents divorced, his father married Evgenia Martirosova, Armenian. Together with his new wife, Vysotsky Sr. left for his duty station in Germany, where Volodya came. The boy treated “Mama Zhenya” very warmly. They claim that for her sake he was even baptized in the Armenian Apostolic Church.

As we see, from an early age the poet did not have any special national preferences; he grew up like all Soviet children, surrounded by people of various nationalities. About this in his “Ballad of Childhood”:

“And the sun beat into three streams, sifted through the holes in the roofs

To Evdokim Kirillich and Gisya Moiseevna. She told him: How are your sons? - Yes, missing people! “Oh, Giska, we are one family, you are also victims.”

As an adult, Vysotsky unequivocally spoke about himself: “By my passport and in my soul, I am Russian.” This does not mean that he renounced anything. Vysotsky’s phenomenon, perhaps, consisted in the fact that he perceived everything around him, brilliantly knew how to get into the insides of any person, instantly penetrate into the intricacies of any profession, any mentality.

It is known that dozens of people claimed: they fought with Vysotsky, sat in Stalin’s camps (Vysotsky simply could not do both the first and the second due to his age), “did time” for a “criminal” crime, climbed mountains, panned for gold...

Everyone thinks that I am a Negro

Therefore, the Jewish theme in Vysotsky’s work was and sounded in a variety of tones. He caustically ridiculed everyday anti-Semitism and responded to the trial of writers Sinyavsky And Daniel, touched on the conflict in the Middle East.

Touching on the Jewish topic, Vysotsky could put on the mask of a narrow-minded man in the street, or he could sing angrily about plans completely on his own behalf. Hitler destroy the Jews, and that the “fifth count” ruined the lives of many talented people.

Vysotsky is widely known as a bard, actor and poet, but he also tried his hand at prose. Here, for example, are two excerpts from the pamphlet “Dolphins and Crazies”:

“...They say there was an incident at the Bolshoi Theater. Two extras or cashiers, no one remembers this, fell in love with the conductor Faer or Faidilmer (this is not important, the important thing is that he is a Jew and is not worth it).”

“...and for me everything is from there, from the West - all Polish Jews. But no one knows this. Everyone thinks that I'm a Negro. "

Experts who study Vysotsky’s work find similarities in the compositions of some of his poems (“A Day Without a Single Death”) with the compositions of Jewish prayers “Shema, Israel.” That is, there is an influence of the architectonics of prayers on the creative techniques themselves used by the author. So, in receiving transfers from Vysotsky - instead of the usual homogeneous members, characteristic of the Russian language - he applies “the principle of clarifying each position with a whole system of explanations” (as in Jewish texts).

It is unknown how familiar Vysotsky was with religious texts. On the one hand, his grandparents received an appropriate Jewish upbringing. They did not follow any further traditions, but in Orthodox Jewish families everyone knows the texts of the main prayers.

Probably, experts can give many more examples of the influence of origin on the entire work of Vladimir Semenovich. But for the majority of Soviet and post-Soviet people who speak Russian, it remains “ours”. Vysotsky forever entered the culture of complex, multi-structured and multinational Russia.

A huge contribution to the study of the genealogical tree of the Vysotsky family was made by historians V. Tkachenko and M. Kalnitsky. They pulled up archives dating back to the 19th century and conducted research over several generations.

The founder of the Vysotsky family is considered to be Leiba Buklkovshtein from the town of Selets (near Brest), who was the great-great-grandfather of the bard. The artist’s great-grandfather, Shliom Vysotsky, became the first bearer of the famous surname. His family raised four children. From one of the daughters named Shulamith, it was subsequently possible to learn details about the genealogy of their family. Vysotsky’s great-grandfather was a teacher of the Russian language and, they say, had “golden hands,” so the family lived in abundance. TO end of the 19th century century, he and his family left Selets and moved to the small town of Vysokoye. Some historians draw a parallel between their surname and title settlement. But it is hardly possible to say reliably that the surname came from this name; there are no documents officially confirming this version.