Vladimir Dychovichny was born in Moscow in 1911. His father Abram was a construction engineer and a professor, who taught at the Moscow Mining Institute. His mother, Anna, was a dentist.
Vladimir went in his father's footsteps: Upon finishing school, he enrolled in the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute. After graduation, he worked for a time as a geological engineer in various regions of the USSR. However, back in his Institute days, Vladimir had taught dancing, attended a theater studio, and given public readings from the stage, aspiring to become an actor.
In 1939, Vladimir Dychovichny became a contributor to the central satirical magazine Krokodil.
He took part in the Soviet-Finnish "Winter War," performing as a member of a frontline stage ensemble.
Following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War in late June 1941, Vladimir was called up to serve in the Northern Fleet. During his service, Vladimir Dychovichny was a member of various frontline artistic brigades and theaters. Apart from that, he wrote song lyrics and plays.
In early 1942, he wrote the lyrics for the song "Mishka from Odessa," which was set to a tune by the composer Modest Tabachnikov and performed by the famous Odessa-born singer Leonid Utesov (Lazar Weissbein). The song won immense popularity, and has been performed ever since. However, at a session of the Union of Soviet Composers held in April 1942, some of the attendees criticized Dychovichny for "ideological-emotional parochialism" and castigated him with many other ideological slurs that were common at the time. Nevertheless, in early 1944, on the eve of the liberation of Odessa, Soviet airplanes dropped leaflets with the lyrics of this song over the occupied city, to encourage its residents to assist the Red Army.
In 1943, the Leningrad Comedy Theater staged Dychovichny's play Little Brother. He also collaborated with the Moscow Theater of Miniatures, writing for the famous duo of Maria Mironova and Alexander Menaker.
In the course of the war, Vladimir Dychovichny was awarded the Order of the Red Star, and some medals.
In 1946, he became the regular collaborator of the satirical poet Moris Slobodskoy. Together, they wrote musical plays and vaudevilles. The two occasionally came under fire for making fun of Soviet life, writing jokes that were sometimes risqué, and sometimes actually "beyond the pale."
The Dychovichny-Slobodskoy artistic tandem existed for eighteen years. During this time, they worked at the Theater of Literary-Dramatic Parodies, which had been established by the author Viktor Dragunsky, and at the Moscow Music Hall, for which they wrote two top-billed programs.
In parallel, Dychovichny continued to write poems, which went on to become popular songs being performed by Leonid Utesov, Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Maya Kristalinskaya, and other famous singers.
Vladimir Dychovichny died suddenly in Rostov-on-Don in 1963, while working on the stage play "Moscow-Venus, and Then Everywhere…".
Dychovichny was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
