created from Tanich's experience in these Siberian camps. Together, Mikhail Tanich and Sergey Korzhukov wrote the early songs of Lesopoval. In 1994, Sergey Korzhukov died at the age of 35 after falling from the balcony of his house, but he was still listed as a co-author of all the songs through the 1996 album "New Lineup" (Новый состав.) After the death of Sergey Korzhukov, many other writers and singers helped write the music for the songs, including Aleksandr Fedorkov. In 2008, Tanich died in the hospital from kidney disease. Until his death, Mikhail Tanich continued to write the lyrics for all the Lesopoval songs, including the latest album - "Our life," (Наша Жизнь) which was produced and released after his death. In his honor, the group performed in the Kremlin to memorialize his death. Musical style The music of Lesopoval places great importance on lyrical content, which tends to focus on freedom, labor camps, criminal life, and occasionally other topics such as peace and love. Mikhail Tanich has stated that his six years in the Russian labor camps gave him an inside perspective of all kinds of criminal life, and that his goal was to find the good in all sorts of criminals. Mikhail Tanich was a political prisoner, but he came to sympathize with many of the other prisoners who were serving in the camps, some who were falsely accused and some who were there for petty crimes. He has stated that Chanson music "blossomed wildly in Soviet times when the entire country was in camps, when these zones, barbed wire, guard towers with guards and machine guns, were everywhere," and he has said that he feels that everyone in Russia is in some way connected to the camps and to criminal life. In his songs, Mikhail Tanich often touches on universal themes of Soviet life, focusing on criminal elements (the camps, the buses that took people to camp, the life of ex-convicts, etc.) Some of his songs also deal with the political themes of the Soviet era, often with a humorous take. For example, the song "Tax" focuses on the tax on childlessness imposed during the Soviet Union, which was a 6% tax on every adult who did not have a child. The hero of the song laments that he is forced to pay this tax while doing time in jail, yet the prison guards refuse to provide