Short answers, pulled from the story.
In the Soviet Union, bard referred to singer-songwriters who wrote and performed their own songs outside the official state cultural establishment, starting in the early 1960s. The style is also called author song, avtorskaya pesnya, or bard song, bardovskaya pesnya, because the performers wrote their own material.
Bard poetry splits roughly into two main genres, tourist song and political song, alongside smaller recognized strands such as outlaw song and pirate song. Tourist songs centered on camping and outdoor adventure, while political songs expressed protest against the Soviet way of life.
Bards were rarely permitted to record because many of their songs carried political content. Instead, their music spread through magnitizdat, amateur recordings copied from live concerts and passed from listener to listener.
Alexander Galich was eventually forced to emigrate after suffering KGB persecution, and owning a tape of his songs could mean a prison term. Yuliy Kim, another bard, also suffered persecution from the KGB.
Yuri Vizbor and Alexander Gorodnitsky composed many of the best-known tourist songs, drawing on their own experience in sports like alpinism, kayaking, and sailing. Vladimir Vysotsky also wrote sea songs, and Brigantine, written by Pavel Kogan, remains a popular pirate song at author song concerts today.
The Grushinsky festival traces its origins to gatherings of tourist song fans and now includes songs from every bard genre. It grew out of the same underground scene of amateur song clubs, known as KSP, that flourished at Soviet factories, kolkhozes, and universities.