Yuliy Kim

Yuliy Kim is a Russian bard, poet and composer whose songs appear in many Soviet films and who has lived in Israel since 1998.

born 1936Songs for Soviet filmsRussian bard songsSoviet dissident movement

Born: 23 December 1936, Moscow
Occupation: poet, composer, songwriter, singer-songwriter
Education: Moscow Pedagogical State University

Yuliy Kim was born in 1936 in Moscow

Kim was born in Moscow in 1936. His father, a journalist of Korean descent, was executed during the Great Purge. His mother, a teacher, was sent to a labor camp and exile, and the family later lived in Maloyaroslavets and then Turkmenistan.

He returned to Moscow in 1954 to study at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute and graduated in history and philology in 1959. As a student he began writing poems and setting them to music. He then taught for 3 years in a village in Kamchatka, and the sea became a main theme of his songs.

Back in Moscow he worked as a teacher and took part in the Soviet dissident movement, which cost him his job in 1968. He then wrote songs for plays and films and published plays under the pseudonym Yu. Mikhailov until 1986. Barred from concerts, he kept performing underground.

With glasnost he could perform legally, and he later toured Russia, Europe and the United States. He married Irina Yakir in 1966, and they immigrated to Israel in 1998. After her death in 1999 he married Lidia Lugovaya, and he divides his time between Jerusalem and Moscow.