ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF

Russian heroes… Do not listen to the West as to who they are. Russian heroes are Russia’s heroes, and the West cannot impose its own “list” on this simple fact... One of such authentic Russian heroes would have turned seventy-five this year, only he died more than three decades ago…

Many years ago already, in 1984 to be exact, I was conducting a seminar at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, in California, and one of my topics raised the question of Who were the real Russian heroes? I warned my audience not to be carried away by what the Western press had to say about this subject, as in this case, like in so many others, reality and propaganda did not always agree with each other.

One of my nominees for the title of an authentic Russian hero was Vladimir Vysotsky, whom my audience did not appear to know, which made my case only the more to the point. Vysotsky, who died in 1980, was what the French call un chansonnier par excellence, poet, composer, musician, singer, performer. He was also an outstanding cinema and theater actor, Shakespeare’s Hamlet being among his most wonderful and forever memorable roles. He was, naturally, also a rebel, living and creating on the edge… One of his most beloved songs tells us about his last wild cart ride as he is being carried by the madly galloping, as if flying, horses along the edge of the precipice, about to take him over the cliff. He knows that this is the end, and he is resigned to his fate. (The ride must have been worth it!) But he pleads with his horses, before they would take him over the cliff, to slow down, to allow him just a little time to stay there, on the very edge---

“Just a little bit more

Let me stay on the edge…”

---not to prolong his life, which he knows is now impossible, but only to finish just this last verse…

Vladimir Vysotsky was much more than any enumeration of his emplois and of his prodigious talents can reveal. He was a living self-expression of Russian soul, a true hero for millions of Russian people, and his place in Russia’s memory is etched in sharp relief forever.

When he died at the age of forty-two, no autopsy was performed. Everybody knew that he had been living on borrowed time, constantly abusing morphine and alcohol. The official announcement of his death was deliberately downplayed, because he died during the 1980 Summer Olympic Games held in Moscow at that time, and the authorities (not just the Soviet authorities, but the IOC officials too) did not want the games to be disrupted by an outpour of public emotion throughout the capital. But the news swept through Moscow like wildfire, anyway. His funeral on July 28, 1980 became a public manifestation of his giant iconic status in Russia. As his wife Russian-born French actress Marina Vlady observed, “I have seen funerals of princes and kings, but I have never seen anything like this.”

Vysotsky’s legacy is not limited to one hundred poems, six hundred songs, and several prosaic works, plus thirty movies, fifteen stage roles, eleven radio shows, etc., etc. His main legacy is a large place in Russia’s memory, where he will always rest as an integral part of Russian history, culture, folklore, legend, and, most importantly, of the Russian Russianness…