[12] From 1947 to 1949, Vladimir lived with Semyon Vladimirovich (then an army Major) and his Armenian[13] wife, Yevgenya Stepanovna Liholatova, whom the boy called "Aunt Zhenya," at a military base in Eberswalde in the Soviet occupation zone in Germany.

[20] In 1961 Vysotsky also wrote his first proper song, called "Tatuirovka" ("Tattoo"), starting a long and colorful cycle of artfully stylized criminal underworld romantic stories, full of undercurrents and witty social comments.

Only several months later, chess grandmaster Mikhail Tal was heard praising the author of "Bolshoy Karetny," and Anna Akhmatova (in conversation with Joseph Brodsky) quoted from Vysotsky's "Ya byl dushoj durnogo obshhestva" ("I Was the Soul of a Bad Company"), apparently taking it for a brilliant piece of anonymous street folklore.

In January 1965 he appeared in the avant-garde production The Poet and the Theater,[f] which combined the poetry of Andrey Voznesensky with sketches and music, and received his first-ever songwriting credit for his contributions.

[27] Vysotsky's musical contributions included "Zvezdy" ("Stars"), "Soldaty gruppy Tsentr" ("Center Group Soldiers"), and "Shtrafniye batalyony" ("Penal Battalions"), all striking examples of a completely new kind of war song.[how?]

[38] Marina Vlady, describing Vysotsky's popularity during this period, recalled going for a walk on a summer night and hearing his distinctive singing voice from literally every open window.

On 29 November 1971 Lyubimov's version of Hamlet premiered at Taganka Theatre, a groundbreaking production with Vysotsky in the leading role—in this incarnation a lone intellectual rebel, rising to fight the cruel state machine.

[52] He also appeared on Soviet Estonian TV (Eesti Televisioon) for an episode entitled "Noormees Tagankalt" (Young Man from Taganka), in which he performed his songs and gave an interview.

[53] Songs written by Vysotsky in 1972 included "Pevetz u mikrofona" ("Singer at the Microphone"), "Kanatohodetz" ("The Tightrope Walker"), "My vrashaem zemlyu" ("We Turn the Earth"), "Cherniye bushlaty" ("Black Pea-Coats"), "Beda" ("Disaster"), "Zhertva televidinya" ("Victim of Television"), "Chest' shashmatnoj korony" ("Honor of the Chess Crown"), and "Mishka Shifman.

Difficulties with getting travel permits were resolved after French Communist Party leader Georges Marchais made a personal phone call to Leonid Brezhnev, who, according to Marina Vlady's memoirs, rather sympathized with the celebrity couple.

[70] Vysotsky's new songs during this time included "Istoriya Bolezni" ("History of Illness"), which concerned his health problems, the humorous "Pochemu Aborigeny Syeli Kooka" ("Why Did the Aborigines Eat Captain Cook"), "Ballada o Pravda i Lzhi" ("Ballad of Truth and Lies"), and "Dve Sud'by" ("Two Fates"), a chilling story of a self-absorbed alcoholic hunted by two malevolent witches.

Occasionally Vysotsky paid visits to Sklifosofsky [ru] institute's ER unit, but would not hear of Marina Vlady's suggestions for him to take long-term rehabilitation course in a Western clinic.

Clear evidence of this can be seen in a video ostensibly shot by the Japanese NHK channel only months before Vysotsky's death, where he appears visibly unwell, breathing heavily and slurring his speech.

On 25 July 1979 (a year to the day before his death) he suffered a cardiac arrest and was clinically dead for several minutes during a concert tour of Soviet Uzbekistan, after injecting himself with a wrong kind of painkiller he had previously obtained from a dentist's office.

He had been a defendant in two criminal trials, one for a car wreck he had caused some months earlier, and one for an alleged conspiracy to sell unauthorized concert tickets (he eventually received a suspended sentence and a probation in the first case, and the charges in the second were dismissed, although several of his co-defendants were found guilty).

One of the stage managers recalls that he looked visibly unhealthy ("gray-faced", as she puts it) and complained of not feeling too good, while another says she was surprised by his request for champagne before the start of the show, as he had always been known for completely abstaining from drink before his concerts.

From around 21 July, several of his close friends were on a round-the-clock watch at his apartment, carefully monitoring his alcohol intake and hoping against all odds that his drug dependency would soon be overcome and they would then be able to bring him back from the brink.

The effects of drug withdrawal were clearly getting the better of him, as he got increasingly restless, moaned and screamed in pain, and at times fell into memory lapses, failing to recognize at first some of his visitors, including his son Arkadiy.

At one point, Vysotsky's personal physician A. Fedotov (the same doctor who had brought him back from clinical death a year earlier in Uzbekistan) attempted to sedate him, inadvertently causing asphyxiation from which he was barely saved.

On 24 July, Vysotsky told his mother that he thought he was going to die that day, and then made similar remarks to a few of the friends present at the apartment, who begged him to stop such talk and keep his spirits up.

Fedotov awoke in the early hours of 25 July to an unusual silence and found Vysotsky dead in his bed with his eyes wide open, apparently of a myocardial infarction, as he later certified.

Due to illegal (i.e. non-state-sanctioned) sales of tickets and other underground methods, these concerts pulled in sums of money unimaginable in Soviet times, when almost everyone received nearly the same small salary.

[99] For 10 years the two maintained a long-distance relationship as Marina compromised her career in France to spend more time in Moscow, and Vladimir's friends pulled strings for him to be allowed to travel abroad to stay with his wife.

[citation needed] Marina eventually joined the Communist Party of France, which essentially gave her an unlimited-entry visa into the Soviet Union, and provided Vladimir with some immunity against prosecution by the government, which was becoming weary of his covertly anti-Soviet lyrics and his odds-defying popularity with the masses.

Despite some opposition from the conservatives (Yegor Ligachev was the latter's political leader, Stanislav Kunyaev of Nash Sovremennik represented its literary flank) Vysotsky was rewarded posthumously with the USSR State Prize.

[105] Two brothers and singers from Finland, Mika and Turkka Mali, over the course of their more than 30-year musical career, have translated into Finnish, recorded and on numerous occasions publicly performed songs of Vladimir Vysotsky.

Since then the museum has collected over 19,500 exhibits from different countries and currently holds Vladimir Vysotsky' personal items, autographs, drawings, letters, photographs and a large library containing unique film footage, vinyl records, CDs and DVDs.

[107][108] Also in 1989 another important book of memoirs was published in the USSR, providing a bulk of priceless material for the host of future biographers, Alla Demidova's Vladimir Vysotsky, the One I Know and Love.

Vysotsky accompanied himself on a Russian seven-string guitar, with a raspy voice singing ballads of love, peace, war, everyday Soviet life and of the human condition.

Following his first solo concerts at the Leningrad Nuclear Physics Institute, he published a note for his fans with the words: "Now that you've heard all these songs, please, don't you make a mistake of mixing me with my characters, I am not like them at all.