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The genre originated in the early twentieth century, before the Soviet Union even existed. The songs glorified life outside the law and broke with the structures and rules of the old Russian society. In the 30s, new songs emerged in the camps of the Gulag, which were about innocent people who were sent to labor camps. During the period of political thaw under Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev (1894-1974), a lot of these prisoners were released. They brought their songs with them, and bards as Aleksandr Moiseevich Gorodnitsky (°1933) picked them up and started to sing them. This gave a broader meaning to the term
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