The birth name of Alexandre Galich is Александр Аронович Гинзбург (Aleksandr Aronovich Ginzburg). He adopted his pen name, Александр Аркадьевич Галич (Alexander Arkadyevich Galich), in 1946.
He was the brother of cameraman Valeri Ginzburg.
He was born on October 19, 1918, in Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk) into a family of Jewish intellectuals. His father, Aron Samoylovich, was an economist; his mother, Fanny Borisovna Veksler, worked at a conservatory.
In 1920, the Galich family moved to Sevastopol, from where it was in principle possible to emigrate. However, Galich’s parents refused to leave Russia. Instead of going to Europe, they moved in 1923 to Moscow, where they settled in the Venevitinov house on Krivokolenny Lane. It was in this house that Pushkin first read his tragedy Boris Godunov.
After completing the ninth grade, Galich was admitted almost simultaneously to the Gorky Literature Institute and to Stanislavski’s Opera and Drama Studio. However, studying in both places at once proved difficult, and he had to leave the Literature Institute. Three years later, he also left the Stanislavski Studio and joined the studio-theatre of A. Arbuzov and V. Pluchek (1939).
In February 1940, his workshop made its debut with the play The City at Dawn (Город на заре), a collectively authored piece. Galich was one of the songwriters for the production. This marked his debut in dramaturgy.
When the war broke out, Galich was conscripted. However, a medical commission discovered a congenital heart defect, and he was declared unfit for service. He then joined a geological exploration mission and went south. In Grozny, he found himself working in a theater until December 1941. From there, Galich went to Tashkent, where Arbuzov had begun forming a troupe with his former students.
In the early period of his work, Galich wrote plays such as The Call of Taimyr (Вас вызывает Таймыр) (in collaboration with K. Isaev), The Paths We Choose (Пути, которые мы выбираем), Under a Lucky Star (Под счастливой звездой), Military March (Походный марш), An Hour Before Dawn (За час до рассвета), The Ship Called “Eaglet” (Пароход зовут „Орлёнок“), Does a Man Need Much(Много ли человеку надо), as well as film scripts including True Friends (Верные друзья) (with K. Isaev), To the Seven Winds (На семи ветрах), Give Me the Complaint Book (Дайте жалобную книгу), The Night of Farewell (Третья молодость), and The Running on Waves (Бегущая по волнам).
In the late 1950s, Galich began composing and performing songs, accompanying himself on the guitar. Distancing himself from the tradition of romances and from the style of A. N. Vertinsky, Galich became one of the most prominent representatives of the Russian author’s song (alongside V. S. Vysotsky and B. Sh. Okudzhava), who would soon be known as Russian bards and, with the advent of tape recorders, gained tremendous popularity. Within this genre, Galich developed his own distinctive style. His early songs—Lenochka (Леночка) (1959), About Painters, the Stoker, and the Theory of Relativity (Про маляров, истопника и теорию относительности) (1962), and The Laws of Nature (Закон природы) (1962)—while relatively harmless politically, sharply contrasted with official Soviet aesthetics.
Thus, a turning point occurred in Galich’s work. This break, in the career of a fairly well-regarded Soviet author, was cemented when the premiere of his play Sailor’s Silence (Матросская Тишина), intended to open the Sovremennik Theatre, was canceled. The play, ready for performance, was banned on the grounds that its portrayal of the role of Jews during World War II was distorted. Galich later described this episode in his novella The General Rehearsal (Генеральная репетиция).
His songs became increasingly profound and politically sharp, leading to open conflict with the authorities. Galich was banned from public performances. He was no longer published, and he was forbidden to release records. He was listened to in small private gatherings, in apartments. His songs circulated hand to hand on tape recordings. Despite the ban, he remained popular, famous, and loved. This very popularity became the pretext for his eventual expulsion from the Union of Writers and the Union of Cinematographers. In 1969, the Possev publishing house released a collection of his songs.
In 1971, Galich was expelled from the Union of Writers of the USSR, of which he had been a member since 1955 (his song From My Trifling Misfortune (От беды моей пустяковой) is dedicated to this event), and in 1972 from the Union of Cinematographers, which he had joined in 1958. After that, he was effectively driven into poverty (having previously been accustomed to comfort). He was no longer employed and had no means of earning a living.
At first, Galich sold rare books from his extensive library, then began earning a living as a ghostwriter, editing other people’s scripts. However, money remained scarce, as he had to support not only himself and his wife, but also their respective mothers and the family of his illegitimate son Grisha, born in 1967. In 1972, after a third heart attack, Galich was granted a second-class disability pension of 54 rubles per month. Although repeatedly urged to do so, he stubbornly refused to leave the country of his own accord.
In 1974, he was forced to emigrate. On October 22, 1974, a decree of Glavlit (the Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press), in agreement with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, banned the publication of all his previous works in the USSR. His first refuge abroad was Norway; he then moved to Munich, where he worked for some time at Radio Svoboda (“Radio Liberty”). Finally, Galich settled in Paris, where he died tragically on December 15, 1977, from an electric shock caused by a radio.
There is a version suggesting that his death was in fact an assassination, but opinions differ widely as to who might have been responsible: according to some, Galich was killed by KGB agents in retaliation for his anti-Soviet activities; according to others, CIA agents were responsible, allegedly fearing that, overcome by nostalgia, he might return to the Soviet Union and thereby undermine the image of the dissident movement. Meanwhile, Galich’s acquaintances in Paris (Vladimir Maksimov and Vassily Betaki) stated that his death was accidental.
Galich is buried near Paris, at the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois cemetery.
