Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava

Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava – a Soviet and Russian poet, prose writer, screenwriter, singer, bard, and composer. Bulat Okudzhava was born in Moscow into a family that worked in party organizations. In 1937 his parents were repressed: his father was executed, and his mother was exiled. After his parents' arrest, Bulat lived with his grandmother. In 1940 he moved to relatives in Tbilisi, and in 1942 he volunteered to go to the front of the Great Patriotic War. After the war Okudzhava enrolled at Tbilisi State University, after which he worked as a teacher in a rural school in the Kaluga region and in the city of Kaluga.

 

In 1955, after his mother's release, he joined the CPSU. In 1956 he returned to Moscow and began a career as a singer-songwriter. In Moscow he worked at the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house, Literaturnaya Gazeta and the literary association Magistral. In 1961 he debuted as a prose writer with the novella "Be Healthy, Schoolboy". In 1962 he joined the Union of Soviet Writers. In 1990 Okudzhava left the CPSU and became actively involved in Russia's political life. He was a member of the pardons commission under the President of the Russian Federation and signed the "Letter of 42" in 1993. Bulat Okudzhava died on June 12, 1997 in Paris and was buried in Moscow at Vagankovo Cemetery.