Alexander Galich (Russian: Алекса́ндр Арка́дьевич) (October 1918 – 15 December 1977) was a Russian poet, screenwriter, playwright, singer-songwriter, and dissident. In the late 1950s he started to write songs and sing them accompanying himself on his guitar. Influenced by the Russian city romance tradition and the art of Alexander Vertinsky, Galich developed his own voice within the genre. He practically single-handedly created the genre of "bard song". Many of his songs spoke of the Second World War and the lives of concentration camp inmates—subjects which Vladimir Vysotsky also began tackling at around the same time. They became popular with the public and were made available via magnitizdat. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Alexander+Galich">Read more on Last.fm</a>. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.