In the Mirror of Art: Vladimir Vysotskii as a Cultural Phenomenon

The universal social significance of the phenomena of artistic culture has its own specific features. Often it is something standing alone, an "exception to the rule," which nonetheless gives expression to some important tendency in the evolution of literature and art. This has been the case, in particular, with the works of Vladimir Vysotskii, who only a short time ago still seemed to some (and to many even today) as some almost peripheral offshoot of the real artistic process, a kind of "nonsense," having no direct bearing on the social problems and questions bothering us. In light of the lessons of truth, interpreted and experienced by the public under the impact of the recent party congress, the situation is literally changing before our very eyes.