Mikhail Tanich prefaced his book of memoirs with the following epigraph: “Life is a disgusting thing, but they haven’t come up with anything better.” He himself composed this bleak phrase. And he had reasons for this. When he was a child, his father was arrested and shot, and soon his mother was imprisoned. In the mid-40s, after the war, when it seemed that a thousand roads were open to him, he was suddenly arrested. The reason was absurd: Tanich carelessly praised the quality of German autobahns and Telefunken radios. This was enough to become an “enemy of the people.” During the investigation they did not beat him, but they tormented him with insomnia. And then they gave me six years, although the prosecutor asked for five…

Paradoxically, in the same memoirs Tanich writes: “I still consider my life happy. If you cut off all the branches of detail, what remains is: he came from the war alive and approximately intact – once. Came from prison alive and apparently healthy – two. Married for forty-four years to a beloved and beautiful woman. This is not three, this is three-four-five. What else do you need to complain and create a tragedy out of those small trials that fate has put you through?..”

“IT’S DIFFICULT TO BECOME A CHEKHOV, BUT YOU CAN TRY TO BE A PUSHKIN!”

He was born in the city of Taganrog, into a Jewish family, and according to documents bore the surname Tankhilevich. At the age of 19, his father was already the deputy head of the Mariupol Cheka, and fell in love with his mother when she brought a parcel to her father, who had been arrested for unknown reasons. The young security officer immediately released this very father, his future father-in-law. And then, in order to marry the girl he loved, he left the Cheka and entered college. (The future father-in-law somehow did not 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. Still not knowing that they were supposed to be written down “in a column,” I scribbled out a whole poem about Pavlik Morozov, which took up half a notebook. Then I became interested in Chekhov and Pushkin, and for some reason it seemed that it was too difficult to become Chekhov, “but you can try Pushkin!”

Mikhail graduated from school in June 1941, and a year later he went to the front. He fought bravely and received the Order of the Red Star and the Order of Glory, III degree. He called his stay in the active army “an eleven-month deployment to hell.” I have several particularly vivid memories, for example, how a German plane was shot down, and it, engulfed in flames, began to fall directly on his head (fell several tens of meters away)…

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 a very hospitable city: “It’s a pay day in one or another publishing house. 5th – 10th – 15th. On Chistye Prudy, I received money from three newspapers for three poems at once. And how many different publications there are in the capital – free will after the provinces!

Well, eventually he started writing lyrics. The very first text was: “The girls are dancing in a round dance, / The moonlit river is flowing, / You, Comrade Malinovsky, / Take them into account.” Then he himself was ashamed of this essay. It was not published. But it caught the eye of composer Jan Frenkel, who quickly composed a simple melody. And Tanich remade the poems for it, 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 big 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 this was impossible to even think about. Songwriters were considered second-class poets, “fake, discounted, second-hand.” “Let your poems be heard in every house in the morning, starting with physical exercises, let the girls copy them from each other like hot cakes, and let the soldiers march along the pavement with them – don’t think too much about yourself: for figures of high Music and Poetry, it just so happens, you are a scoundrel from some parallel culture, something between an accordion-player and an entertainer and a writer of crossword puzzles for Ogonyok. He was given the title of people only when he was already an old man…

At the same time, the whole country really sang his songs. “Black cat”, “A soldier is walking through the city”, “Well, what can I tell you about Sakhalin?”, “I’ll get off at a distant station”, “When my friends are with me”, “Addressed to a friend, a song goes around”, “We choose , they choose us…”, “For a week, until the second, I will go to Komarovo”… Naturally, he was often criticized. Moreover, 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 offendedly: “God grant me to write such a popular song again! It was sung by a 170 million strong choir! Such songs are beyond our jurisdiction…”

The song “I look at you like in a mirror,” for which Yuri Antonov wrote the music, was torn to smithereens at the artistic council, both the words and the melody. (“The heart attack happened later,” Tanich noted melancholy). Finally, they doused the unfortunate “Black Cat” with streams of poison. Some saw in it an allegory of the persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union. Others even stated that the song was “about agriculture” and therefore it was “forbidden” (what was meant, Tanich did not understand until the end of his life).

Already in post-Soviet times, he founded the Lesopoval group, which became his main project in recent years. Tanich himself said that the songs of “Lesopoval” matured in him during his imprisonment, when he closely communicated “with thieves, swindlers, bribe-takers and rapists.”

“I COULD CALL MY WIFE A MUSE, BUT PATHOS IS ALIEN 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 dropped in by chance. “One girl, she was a little reed, in a blue, very metropolitan crepe de Chine dress with the most fashionable weaves, 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 it was that visited them that evening, that this thirty-year-old man who stared at her was “our” Mikhail Tanich, whose poems often filled the local royalty-free newspaper.”

When they got married, he was 33 and she was 18. Both were poor. Tanich left his first wife (who was by no means expecting him out of prison, like Penelope), taking with him only a cupronickel silver teaspoon, the book “12 Chairs” and a cross-stitched thought 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 he wrote about her: “As someone said about Pushkin, I’ll 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. Everywhere in the world we have been, 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 alien to me – otherwise, perhaps, I should be photographed with a lyre and a loose nail on my little finger. In a thrown blanket…”

NO LA-LA!

“Mirror” (music by Yuri Antonov)

Sometimes I forget about love

But I forget about everything, 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 about her.

Let’s not see the small ones

In a mirror image

Love lasts a long time

And life is even longer.

In the distant distance I hear, dream,

Your voice, fly, swim!

And nothing compares to love,

Even the stars are not above love!

Chorus

And when I say goodbye to you

And I stroke your palm, lovingly,

Don’t believe it, it’s me coming 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 is not about that at all

How people didn’t get along with cats.

They say you won’t have any luck

If a black cat crosses the road,

In the meantime, on the contrary,

Only a black cat is unlucky!

There’s bustle in the yard all day –

They drive the cat out of the way,

But the song is not about that at all

How the yard hunted for the cat!

Even with your cat a mile away

I had to meet a cat.

But the song is not about that at all

How the cat purred with the cat.

Poor cat from whiskers to tail

Was blacker than blackness itself!

And the song in general is about

What a shame it is to be a black cat!

They say you won’t have any luck

If a black cat crosses the road,

In the meantime, on the contrary,

Only a black cat is unlucky!

“I’ll get off at the distant station…” (music by Vladimir Shainsky)

I’ll get off at the distant station –

Waist-deep grass

And it’s good, alone with the past,

Wander in the fields

Without worrying about anything,

Along Vasilkova

Blue silence.

I’ll get off at the distant station –

Smells like honey

I’ll drink living water from the crane.

Everything here is mine

And we, and we come from here –

And cornflowers,

Both me and the poplars.

I’ll get off at the distant station,

Necessary

From a high branch

I’ll look into my childhood.

Let me again,

Allow me, my dear land,

Be dedicated

Into this silence.

I’ll get off at the farthest station

Waist-deep grass

I’ll go into the grass

Like in the sea, barefoot,

And without me the opposite

Fast train

Will melt somewhere

In the noise of the city.