The first complete biography of Alexander Galich (1918–1977), the most civic poet of the second half of the 20th century. The author traces in detail the unusual path of his hero - from a relatively successful and prosperous playwright to a fierce denouncer of the existing regime. Numerous little-known testimonies from contemporaries are put into circulation, as well as unique documents and materials from Galich’s personal collections in the Russian State Archive of Literature, previously inaccessible to researchers. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the poet’s relationship with the Soviet authorities - the KGB, the CPSU Central Committee, the Komsomol Central Committee, etc.