This is how Joseph Kobzon will remain with us: an unforgettable voice, an extraordinary personality who preserved the best of the Soviet era on stage and in life. He was not even 11 years old when he sang in front of Stalin himself. “This is how my career began. I was still small and didn’t really understand what “the leader of all nations” was... He was called Joseph. And my mother named me Joseph.” This book is about how the great People’s Artist was born and formed, a tribute to our grateful memory of the legendary man, without whom it is impossible to imagine the life of the country in the last sixty years. A personality on stage and in life, he was a rare performer for whom music is secondary, but the meaning of what is performed is primary. “The essence of real art is to give you goosebumps,” he said. And indeed, his soulful baritone plunged the soul into awe akin to the sacred. How he lived and worked, how he loved and what he hated, how he participated in business and politics, how he followed the dictates of his heart towards mortal danger - in the new book by Sophia Benois.