Vadim Kozin (Вадим Козин)

Damnatio memoriae is the Latin phrase literally meaning "condemnation of memory", meaning that a person must not be remembered. It was a form of dishonor that could be passed by the Roman Senate on traitors or others who brought discredit to the Roman State. The intent was to erase the malefactor from history, a task somewhat easier in ancient times, when documentation was limited.

It wasn't too difficult in the 20th century too, as was proven by the Stalin regime: politicians, artists, and other important social figures would disappear after falling out of favor, and so would practically every trace of them. They would be erased from official photos, their life and work would never be mentioned publicly again. One of these people was Vadim Kozin (Вадим Козин). His memory, however, did manage to live on, and that's the reason we're able to present him here today.

Vadim Kozin was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1903. Kozin came from a merchant family that went out of business during the Russian revolution. His mother, Vera, was a singer of gypsy origin and Kozin became the family breadwinner at about 19, when his father died. He got a job as a cinema pianist and began to compose his own gypsy-style ballads.

Kozin began to sing professionally in the 1920s, and gained success almost immediately. Society was more relaxed than it would soon become and Kozin, it seems, lived openly and legally as a gay man - something that remained possible until male homosexuality became a crime in 1934.

With his light, intimate singing style, Kozin was so sought-after by the mid-1930s that mounted policemen held back the crowds from the concert halls. The new Soviet recording companies spotted him as a rising star. The labels on these early shellac discs show Kozin singing with some of the most original musicians of the time - like Boris Krupeshev and his Hawaiian slide-guitar orchestra. In 1937, Kozin took a chance and headed for the capital, Moscow.

He was an instant success. Газовая косынка (The Blue Scarf) was one of his hits from 1937:

Another hit from the same year was Всегда И Везде За Тобою (Always and Everywhere (I Will Follow You)):

From 1938, here's Калитка (The Gate). This version is from a TV transmission from Magadan devoted to the 75th anniversary of Vadim Kozin.

Also from 1938, here's Мой костёр (My Fire Shines In The Fog):

From 1939, here's Маша (Masha):

Also from 1939, here's Жалобно Стонет (Plaintively Moaning):

Here's Дружба (Friendship):

... And here's Забытое танго (Forgotten Tango):

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, popular singers got behind the war effort. They travelled vast distances to starving cities and went right to the battle front. Kozin sang the much-loved classic, The Blue Scarf, and composed a cycle of songs about Leningrad, where two-and-a-half million people were trapped under a bitter siege from 1941. His mother and sisters were still in the city.

Kozin was now so famous that, like the celebrated singer Alexander Vertinsky, he moved into the Metropol hotel to live. He was probably staying at this glamorous address when he heard that his mother and little sister had starved to death in Leningrad.

"Last night I saw my sick mother in my dreams," Kozin would write later. "I feel so sorry for her. A life of suffering, a horrible death. I will never forgive myself that I didn't get them out. Forgive me, my dear mother… Nadia and my little dog Mosechka."

Again and again he would return to their deaths in the few pages of the diary that survive.

In 1944, shortly before the birthday of Stalin, the police chief Lavrenty Beria called him up and asked why his songs didn't involve Stalin. Kozin famously replied that songs about Stalin were not suited for tenor voices. In late 1944, Kozin was arrested.

It seems likely that Kozin was charged with homosexuality and anti-Soviet activity, and sentenced to eight years in the prison city of Magadan, in eastern Siberia, part of an immense region called Kolyma, most of which lies inside the Arctic Circle. Kozin's records were pulled. His photographs disappeared from the shops, his voice from the radio. He simply ceased to exist as a public person. The living conditions there were harsh, and many people died while incarcerated. But when Kozin arrived, Alexandra Gridasova, the wife of the general in charge of Kolyma, was there to meet him. She drove him off in her car, and put him in his own cabin and that saved him.

As Stalin's labour camps were supposed to reform prisoners, camp commanders were encouraged to stage improving musical shows and plays. Rival camp leaders would even compete for the best entertainers. But Alexandra Gridasova had better connections than any of them, and gathered a constellation of stars to entertain the upper ranks of the camp administration.

Kozin's sentence expired in about 1953, the year of Stalin's death. He was forbidden to live again in European Russia, like thousands of ex-convicts, and moved instead into his own one-room apartment in Magadan. He stayed with the theatre troupe, touring immense distances from the Arctic, to the edges of China to the Volga. He sang his greatest hits from the old days for prisoners and guards, herdsmen and miners in railway towns, in factories, and camps.

Kozin was free, but not free. As he wrote in his diary on July 14, 1955: "They say sing. Sing where we tell you to sing. You can sing here, but not there. To which I say - go and [get lost]... Rulers come and go. I will not grovel in front of them and belittle myself. I am not guilty of anything."

In another entry in his diary on September 12, 1955 he describes a city that he's visiting for a concert: "Kemerovo. What a desolate place. Water is in short supply though the river Tom runs nearby. There are shortages of bread! Butter appears very rarely. Big queues form whenever basic foods appear. It's the same in many Siberian cities…There's no doubt that the Soviet Union produces enough food, but the people are not getting it."

When the secret police - by now called the KGB - found and read the diary, Kozin was re-arrested. It was this second arrest that was the point of no return. Before that, he believed he might one day return to Moscow or Leningrad - but then he just stopped. He said, Magadan is where I live now and where I'll die.

This is a 1958 recording. The song is огда проходит молодость (When One Is Young):

This is from 1978. It's called Магаданский ветерок (The Wind Of Magadan):

Kozin remained hidden in Siberia, through the Cold War, through the Brezhnev era. When the Soviet army rolled into Afghanistan in 1979 he was still there.

Then, as the Soviet Union began to heave and split in the 1980s, Kozin suddenly became visible again. Celebrities beat a path to Magadan to meet him, sing with him and have their photograph taken with the frail little old pensioner, a scrawny figure in huge boots and an old sweater stuck with safety pins. He had become the last man standing among a generation of persecuted musicians.

Marc Almond knew nothing of Kozin when he first encountered his music during a concert tour of Russia in 1992. "I had no idea about Russia, or the Soviet Union then," he says. "We went to Siberia and Omsk and Novosibirsk. It was winter and I played in these freezing places with paint peeling off the walls, a ropey piano and one overhead lightbulb. But the audiences were just wonderful. People would come up after the show and give me what they had - a jar of jam or a bunch of flowers, or a cassette. It was magical - it opened up a new world to me."

On one of these cassettes he heard crackly recordings of Vadim Kozin's pure, distinctive tenor. Almond was intrigued, so he included songs from Kozin's repertoire in his 2003 album Heart on Snow. Here he is singing Always and Everywhere (I Will Follow You):

In 2009 he released an album called Orpheus in Exile, which is an album solely consisting of cover versions of songs originally recorded by Vadim Kozin. The album was well received by critics overall. It opens with Boulevards of Magadan:

It also includes Autumn (Осень):

In 1993, the Magadan authorities prepared a magnificent 90th birthday party for Kozin, a grand six-hour concert at the theatre, complete with celebrities flown in from Moscow and St Petersburg on specially chartered aeroplanes. Choirs sang and officials prepared to present birthday gifts to a throne set up on stage.

Kozin had sung on thousands of stages in every corner of the country, under every Soviet government for three generations. He'd sung as rising star, celebrity, prisoner, and pensioner. But this time he decided not to come. He preferred to stay at home, having a little drink with friends, uncompromising to the end.

In the same year, Russia decriminalised homosexuality. Kozin died not long afterwards, at the end of 1994. Born before the Soviet Union, he had witnessed its every permutation and finally outlived it.