Already in the post-Soviet era, Mikhail Tanich founded the Lesopoval group.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
Mikhail Tanich began his memoir with the following epigraph: “Life is a disgusting thing, but nothing better has occurred to them.” He himself composed this somber phrase. And he had reasons for it. When he was a child, his father was arrested and shot, and soon his mother was imprisoned. In the mid-1940s, after the war, when it seemed that a thousand avenues were open to him, he was suddenly arrested. The reason was absurd: Tanich carelessly praised the quality of German highways and Telefunken radios. This was enough to make him an “enemy of the people.” During the investigation they did not beat him, but tormented him with insomnia. And then they gave me six years, although the prosecutor asked for five…
Paradoxically, in the same memoir Tanich writes: “I still consider my life to be happy. If we cut off all the branches of the detail, what remains is: he came out of the war alive and approximately intact, once. He left prison alive and apparently healthy: two. He has been married for forty-four years to a dear and beautiful woman. This isn’t three, it’s three-four-five. What more do you need to complain and create a tragedy with those little trials that fate has put you through?…”
“IT’S DIFFICULT TO BE CHEKHOV, BUT YOU CAN TRY TO BE PUSHKIN!”
He was born in the city of Taganrog, into a Jewish family, and according to documents he bore the surname Tankhilevich. At 19, his father was already deputy director of the Mariupol Cheka and he fell in love with her mother when she brought a package to her father, who had been detained for unknown reasons. The young security agent immediately released this same father, his future father-in-law. And then, in order to marry the girl he loved, he left the Cheka and entered the university. (The future father-in-law somehow didn’t like the security officers after the arrest.)
Mikhail learned to read early, and as soon as he learned to write, he began to compose poetry. Even without knowing that they should be written “in a column,” I scribbled a complete poem about Pavlik Morozov, which took up half a notebook. Then I became interested in Chekhov and Pushkin, and for some reason it seemed to me that it was too difficult to become Chekhov, “but you can try Pushkin!”
Mikhail graduated from school in June 1941 and a year later went to the front. He fought bravely and was awarded the Order of the Red Star and the Order of Glory, III degree. He called his time in the active military “an eleven-month deployment to hell.” I have several particularly vivid memories, for example, how a German plane was shot down and, engulfed in flames, began to fall directly on his head (it fell several tens of meters away)…
Mikhail graduated from school in June 1941 and a year later went to the front. He fought bravely and was awarded the Order of the Red Star and the Order of Glory, III degree.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
Then there was an arrest. Then the village of Svetly Yar, not far from Stalingrad: Tanich began to collaborate in a local newspaper, publishing feuilletons and poems there. Two thin books also appeared. Well, and then there was Moscow, which seemed to the aspiring poet to be a very hospitable city: “It’s a payday at one publishing house or another. 5th – 10th – 15th. In Chistye Prudy I received money from three newspapers for three poems at a time. And how many different publications there are in the capital, free will after the provinces!
Well, over time he started writing lyrics. The first text read: “The girls dance in a circle, / The moonlit river flows, / You, Comrade Malinovsky, / Take them into account.” Then he himself was ashamed of this essay. It was not published. But it caught the attention of composer Jan Frenkel, who quickly composed a simple melody. And Tanich redid the poems, removing the mention of the Minister of Defense and the word “girls.” It turned out: “Girls go to the movies, / Girls know one thing: / Take away their guitars / They won’t care!” The song “Textile Town” was born, which became a great hit…
“BLACK CAT” – EITHER ABOUT THE JEWS OR ABOUT AGRICULTURE
All his life, Tanich dreamed of receiving the title of People’s Artist, but in Soviet times it was impossible to even think about it. Composers were considered second-rate poets, “false, discounted, second-hand.” “May your poems be heard in every house in the morning, beginning with physical exercises, may the girls copy each other like hotcakes and may the soldiers march along the sidewalk with them; do not think too much of yourself: for the figures of high music and poetry, it just so happens that you are a scoundrel from some parallel culture, something between an accordionist, an artist and a crossword puzzle writer for Ogonyok. They gave him the title of people only when he was already an old man…
At the same time, the whole country was really singing their songs. “Black cat”, “A soldier walks through the city”, “Well, what can I tell you about Sakhalin?”, “I will get off at a distant station”, “When my friends are with me”, “Addressed to a friend, run a song”, “We choose, they choose us…”, “For one week, until the second, I will go to Komarovo”… Naturally, he was often criticized. Furthermore, among the critics was, for example, Vladimir Vysotsky, who was outraged by the song “The white light has converged on you like a wedge.” More precisely, the fact that in this song one line is repeated three times. Tanich said offended: “God grant me to write again such a popular song! It was sung by a choir of 170 million people! Those songs are beyond our jurisdiction…”
All his life Tanich dreamed of receiving the title of People’s Artist.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
The song “I look at you like in a mirror”, for which Yuri Antonov wrote the music, was torn apart at the artistic council, both the lyrics and the melody. (“The heart attack happened later,” Tanich noted wistfully.) Finally, they sprayed the unfortunate “Black Cat” with streams of poison. Some saw in it an allegory for the persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union. Others even claimed that the song was “about farming” and was therefore “forbidden” (Tanich did not understand what he meant until the end of his life).
Already in the post-Soviet era he founded the group Lesopoval, which became his main project in recent years. Tanich himself said that the songs of “Lesopoval” matured in him during his imprisonment, when he communicated closely “with thieves, swindlers, bribers and rapists.”
Widow of the poet Mikhail Tanich Lidiya Kozlova-Tanich
Photo: Boris KUDRYAVOV
“I COULD CALL MY WIFE MUSA, BUT PATHOS IS STRANGE TO ME”
Well, as for the woman with whom Tanich spent his entire life, he met her at a party in the hostel, where he happened to happen. “A girl, who was a small reed, wearing a very metropolitan blue crepe de chine dress and with the most fashionable fabrics, took a seven-string guitar in her hands (…) “And now,” said the girl , “ I will sing you two songs by our poet Mikhail Tanich. “I chose the music myself.” She didn’t know, couldn’t know what kind of uninvited strangers were visiting them that night, that this thirty-year-old man staring at her was “our” Mikhail Tanich, whose poems often filled the local royalty. free newspaper.”
When they married, he was 33 years old and she was 18. They were both poor. Tanich left his first wife (who in no way expected him to come out of prison, like Penelope), taking only a silver cupro-nickel spoon, the book “12 Chairs” and a cross-stitch thinking pillow. The young wife also had nothing in her heart. For a long time it was not possible to acquire basic furniture. But “we all gradually made money, love helped create it,” she said. And about her he wrote: “As someone said about Pushkin, I will say about her: “She is my everything!” She is my daughter, I raised her from nothing, from scratch. She is my mother, I often listen to her sensible advice. We have been everywhere in the world, we have been together. Everything I wrote was dedicated to her and was read by her first. We, in essence, have not been separated during these 44 years. They changed cities and apartments, hung wallpaper and raised children. I call her “Lyuba” and many people think that she is actually Lyuba and not Lida. I could, as journalists do, call her my muse, but pathos is foreign to me; otherwise, maybe I should photograph myself with a lyre and a loose nail on my pinky finger. In a blanket thrown…”
NOT LA-LA!
“Mirror” (music by Yuri Antonov)
Sometimes I forget about love
But I forget about everything, about loving.
I don’t live without you, I don’t exist,
Even if I live without you.
Chorus
I look at you like in a mirror,
To the point of dizziness
And I see my love in him,
And I think of her.
Let’s not see the little ones
In a mirror image
Love lasts a long time.
And life is even longer.
In the distance I hear, I dream,
Your voice, fly, nothing!
And nothing compares to love,
Not even the stars are above love!
Chorus
And when I say goodbye
And I caress your palm, with love,
Don’t believe it, I’m the one who comes back
I go from you to you.
Chorus
“Black Cat” (music by Yuri Saulsky)
Once upon a time there was a black cat around the corner.
And the whole house hated the cat
But the song isn’t about that at all.
How people didn’t get along with cats.
They say you’ll be out of luck.
If a black cat crosses the street,
Meanwhile, on the contrary,
Only a black cat is unlucky!
There is bustle in the courtyard all day.
They get the cat out of the way.
But the song isn’t about that at all.
How the cat was searching the yard!
Even with your cat a mile away
I had to meet a cat.
But the song isn’t about that at all.
How the cat purred with the cat.
Poor cat from whiskers to tail
It was blacker than blackness itself!
And the song in general is about
What a shame to be a black cat!
They say you’ll be out of luck.
If a black cat crosses the street,
Meanwhile, on the contrary,
Only a black cat is unlucky!
“I will get off at a distant station…” (music by Vladimir Shainsky)
I’ll get off at the far station.
Waist-high grass
And it’s good, alone with the past,
Walk through the fields
Without worrying about anything,
Along Vasilkova
Blue silence.
I’ll get off at the far station.
It smells like honey
I will drink living water from the tap.
Everything here is mine.
And we, and we come from here.
And cornflowers,
Both me and the poplars.
I’ll get off at the far station
Necessary
From a high branch
I will examine my childhood.
leave me again,
Allow me, my dear land,
be dedicated
In this silence.
I’ll get off at the farthest station.
Waist-high grass
I will go to the grass
As in the sea, barefoot,
And without me the complete opposite
Fast train
It will melt somewhere
In the noise of the city.
