Юрий Пржепюрко · CC BY-SA 4.0

A Soviet screenwriter and playwright who reinvented himself as the founder of 'bard song,' a genre of sung, socially pointed verse he built out of Russian romance traditions after censors banned his play for its portrayal of Jews during the war. His recordings circulated underground across the USSR despite his expulsion from the writers' and filmmakers' unions, and he was forced into exile in 1974; he was found dead in his Paris apartment in 1977, officially by accident, though his daughter has long argued the KGB was responsible.