Musicians - Vadim Kozin

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	Musicians - Vadim Kozin

Vadim Kozin (Вадим Козин) (March 21, 1903 – December 19, 1994) was a great Russian tenor singer.

Vadim Alexeych Kozin was born the son of a merchant in Saint Petersburg to Alexei Gavrilovich Kozin and Vera Ilinskaya in 1903. His mother was a gypsy and often sang in the local gypsy choir. Their house was frequently full of musicians, exposing Vadim to tradition from an early age.

He began to sing professionally in the 1920s, and gained success almost immediately. In the 1930s he moved to Moscow and began playing with the accompanist Dmitri Ashkenazi.

During WWII he served in the entertainment brigade and sang for the Russian troops.

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 sentenced to 5 years in jail as part of the repression campaign against prominent Soviet performers and was sent to Magadan.

His prison sentence deeply traumatized Kozin, leading to the cessation of his singing career. He even began burning his own records, to the point where his friends were forced to hide their own copies from him in order to preserve them. He remained in Magadan for some years after his release, unwilling to reappear in the public eye.

In 1959 Kozin resumed his singing career and once again began to tour Russia.

The Soviet government never officially rehabilitated him. and his 90th birthday was celebrated in private among friends in Magadan. He died at the age of 91 in 1994.

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