MOSCOW Russia honored one of its favorite sons, the singer, poet and playwright Bulat Okudzhava, Saturday, with President Vladimir Putin sending a message to an international festival marking the fourth anniversary of his death.

The one-day event included an auction to raise money for a memorial to the singer, a street concert in his beloved Arbat thoroughfare, and a theater concert with the participation of singers from a dozen countries.

Hundreds of Okudzhava admirers packed into the Vakhtangov Theater on the Arbat to listen to singers from countries ranging from Japan to Cuba and from Sweden to Italy perform some of the hundreds of songs that he wrote and sang.

Outside in the street, fans who could not afford the entry fee -- the cheapest tickets cost 500 rubles (18 dollars), a hefty sum for the average Russian -- listened or sang along to his songs as they were performed on an improvised stage.

Okudzhava, whose songs, poems, novels and plays provided a major contribution to the literature of dissent in the Soviet Union from the 1950s onwards, died in Paris on June 12 -- Russia's Independence Day -- in 1997.

Putin noted that Okudzhava's work formed a "fine blend of wisdom, nobility and respect for mankind."

He used "simple and sincere words to express our deepest and highest feelings, singing of love, friendship and hope... his words will always remain in our hearts," the president said.

The festival, which organizers intend to become an annual event, has received backing from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

UNESCO has paid for singers from countries as diverse as Japan, Germany and the United States to travel to Moscow to perform Okudzhava's songs.

"It was very difficult to organize this first festival and that's why it will only be for one day this time round. But there will be a lot going on," spokeswoman Yulia Yarmarkovich said.

According to AFP, several leading artists donated paintings and sculptures for the auction, at which a variety of objects ranging from a guitar and a hockey shirt came under the hammer.

The proceeds are intended to pay for an Okudzhava Museum at the singer's dacha at Peredelkino, west of Moscow, and a statue of him on the Arbat, a historic thoroughfare that Okudzhava often celebrated in song and is now Moscow's trendiest street.

Okudzhava would have appreciated the irony of Kremlin officials attending a concert dedicated to his memory: His Georgian father was shot in 1937 at the height of the Stalinist repression, and his Armenian mother was sent to a labor camp as the wife of "an enemy of the people."

He began writing poems at 18, after his war service, and after a few years decided to set the words to music, delivering them to a simple guitar backing.

In the 1960s, as tape recorders became more easily available, tapes of Okudzhava's private readings and performances circulated from hand to hand, like those of his fellow "bard" Vladimir Vysotsky.

Recordings of his gentle, lilting songs, a total contrast to Vysotsky's rasping satire, have been published abroad, and several of his written works have been translated into foreign languages.