Vadim Alekseyevich Kozin was a Russian tenor, songwriter, and an openly homosexual man until 1934 when male homosexuality became a crime in USSR.
Vadim Alekseyevich Kozin was born the son of a merchant in Saint Petersburg to Alexei Gavrilovich Kozin and Vera Ilinskaya in 1903. His mother was of Romani heritage and often sang in the local gypsy choir. Their house was frequently full of musicians, exposing Vadim to tradition from an early age.
He began to sing professionally in the 1920s, and gained success almost immediately. In the 1930s he moved to Moscow and began playing with the accompanist David Ashkenazi.
During World War II he served in the entertainment brigade and sang for Soviet troops.
In 1944, shortly before the birthday of Stalin, the police chief Lavrenty Beria called him up and asked why his songs didn't involve Stalin. Kozin famously replied that songs about Stalin were not suited for tenor voices. In late 1944, Kozin was sentenced to five years in jail as part of the repression campaign against prominent Soviet performers and was sent to the Magadan labour camps because of his homosexuality.