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Metropol'
The Metropol' Almanac is a collection of uncensored texts by famous writers, self published in Samizdat in Moscow in December 1978. The collection was organized by Vasily Aksyonov, and counted with contributions from a number of Soviet writers, such as Fazil Iskander, Andrei Bitov, Andrei Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina and Vladimir Vysotsky, and one contribution from abroad, made by John Updike. Copies of the almanac was smuggled to the US, and a facsimile edition was published in 1979 by Ardis Publishing. A translation to English was published by Random House, while one in French was prepared by Gallimard. History of the Almanac Creation of the Metropol' Almanac The essence of the project was to place in a collection of works rejected by Soviet publishers. Not all poets and prose writers approached by the compilers of "Metropol" agreed to transfer their poems and prose to the almanac; for example, Yuri Trifonov and Bulat Okudzhava refused to participate for various reaso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bella Akhmadulina
Izabella Akhatovna Akhmadulina (, ; 10 April 1937 – 29 November 2010) was a Soviet Union, Soviet and Russian poet, short story writer, and translator, known for her apolitical writing stance. She was part of the Russian New Wave literary movement. She was cited by Joseph Brodsky as the best living poet in the Russian language. She is known in Russia as "the voice of the epoch". Despite the aforementioned apolitical stance of her writing, Akhmadulina was often critical of authorities in the Soviet Union, and spoke out in favour of others, including Nobel laureates Boris Pasternak, Andrei Sakharov, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. She was known to international audiences via her travels abroad during the Khrushchev Thaw, during which she made appearances in sold-out stadiums. Upon her death in 2010 at the age of 73, President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev hailed her poetry as a "classic of Russian literature." ''The New York Times'' said Akhmadulina was "always recognized as one of the S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semyon Lipkin
Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin () (6 September 1911 – 31 March 2003) was a Russian writer, poet, and literary translator. Lipkin's work gained wider recognition after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was supported by his wife, poet Inna Lisnyanskaya. Lipkin was a close friend of Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Lipkin's poetry explores themes of history and philosophy. His poems reference his Jewish heritage and the Bible, and draw on his experiences in World War II and the Great Purge. Lipkin's opposition to the Soviet regime became public in 1979-1980 when he contributed to the uncensored almanac " Metropol." Subsequently, he and Lisnyanskaya left the Union of Soviet Writers. Early years Lipkin was born in Odessa to Israel and Rosalia Lipkin on September 6, 1911. He was of Jewish ethnicity. His father, a tailor, was active in the Menshevik movement. Lipkin's early education included Hebrew and Torah instruction. His education was interrupted by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friedrich Gorenstein
Friedrich Gorenstein (, tr. ; 18 March 1932 – 2 March 2002) was a Ukrainian Jewish author and screenwriter. His works primarily deal with Stalinism, anti-Semitism, and the philosophical-religious view of a peaceful coexistence between Jews and Christians. Biography Gorenstein was born in a family of Ukrainian Jews, his father, Naum Isaevich Gorenstein (1902—1937), was a professor of political economy. His mother, Enna Abramovna Prilutskaya, was an educator. During the Stalinist repressions, his father was arrested in 1935 and sent to GULAG. He was shot in 1937 after trying to escape. After the arrest of his father, his mother changed Friedrich’s name to (Felix Prilutsky). He later regained his original name. His mother was the director of a home for juvenile offenders in Berdichev, Ukraine. During the Nazi invasion of 1941, he and his mother were evacuated to Orenburg in the Urals. His mother died of tuberculosis in 1943 in Orenburg. Friedrich was placed in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vladimir Vysotsky
Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (25 January 193825 July 1980) was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor who had an immense and enduring effect on Soviet culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often-humorous street jargon. He was also a prominent stage- and screen-actor. Though the official Soviet cultural establishment largely ignored his work, he was remarkably popular during his lifetime and has exerted significant influence on many of Russia's musicians and actors. Early life Vysotsky was born on 25 January 1938, at the 3rd Meshchanskaya Street (61/2) maternity hospital in Moscow. His father was Semyon Vladimirovich (Volfovich) Vysotsky, a Jewish man who came originally from Kiev. His mother, Nina Maksimovna Vysotsky (née Seryogina), was Russian, and worked as a German translator. The family lived in a communal flat at No. 126, 1st Meshchanskaya Street. Vladimir's theatrical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yuz Aleshkovsky
Iosif Efimovich Aleshkovsky (), known as Yuz Aleshkovsky () (September 21, 1929 – March 21, 2022) was a modern Russian writer, poet, screenwriter, and bard, namely performer of his own songs. Biography Yuz Aleshkovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk, Suberia in 1929, when his Russian Jewish family resided there briefly for his father's business. Three months later his family returned to Moscow. His high school studies were interrupted due to his family's evacuation during the Second World War. In 1949 Aleshkovsky was drafted into the Soviet Navy, but because of breaking the disciplinary code, he had to serve four years in jail (1950–1953). After serving the term, Aleshkovsky moved back to Moscow and began writing books for children. Aleshkovsky also wrote songs and performed them. Some, especially "Товарищ Сталин, вы большой ученый" () and "Окурочек" (Little cigarette butt), became extremely popular in the Soviet Union and are considered folk clas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viktor Yerofeyev
Viktor Vladimirovich Yerofeyev (, also transliterated as Erofeyev; born 19 September 1947 in Moscow) is a Russian writer. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine he fled to Germany. Early life and education As son of a high-ranking Soviet diplomat Vladimir Yerofeyev, he spent some of his childhood in Paris, which accounts for why much of his work has been translated from Russian into French, while comparatively little has been translated into English. His father, who was the interpreter for Stalin in the late 1940s, wrote a book of memories; his brother is a curator at the Tretyakov Gallery. Erofeyev graduated from Moscow State University in 1970, where he studied literature and languages. He then did post-graduate work at the Institute for World Literature in Moscow, where he completed his post-graduate work in 1973 and received his kandidat degree in 1975 for his thesis on Fyodor Dostoyevsky and French existentialism. Erofeyev's work often contains pastiches of Dostoyevsky' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vasily Aksyonov
Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov ( rus, Васи́лий Па́влович Аксёнов, p=vɐˈsʲilʲɪj ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ɐˈksʲɵnəf; August 20, 1932 – July 6, 2009) was a Soviet and Russian novelist. He became known in the West as the author of ''The Burn'' (''Ожог'', ''Ozhog'', from 1975) and of '' Generations of Winter'' (''Московская сага'', ''Moskovskaya Saga'', from 1992), a family saga following three generations of the Gradov family between 1925 and 1953. Early life Vasily Aksyonov was born to Pavel Aksyonov and Yevgenia Ginzburg in Kazan, USSR on August 20, 1932. His mother, Yevgenia Ginzburg, was a successful journalist and educator and his father, Pavel Aksyonov, had a high position in the administration of Kazan. Both parents "were prominent communists." In 1937, however, both were arrested and tried for her alleged connection to Trotskyists. They were both sent to the Gulag and then into exile, and "each served 18 years, but remarkably survive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inna Lisnyanskaya
Inna Lisnyanskaya or Inna Lisnianskaya (; 19282014) was a Jewish-Russian poet from USSR, later Russia. Her most creative period of writing occurred in the village for poets and writers of Peredelkino near Moscow, where she lived with her husband and co-worker, Semyon Lipkin. Her daughter Elena Makarova is also a well-known writer. She was a recipient of the Solzhenitsyn Prize and Russia's Poet Prize. Biography Lisnyanskaya was born in 1928, in Baku, Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, to a Jewish father and Armenian mother. Her Armenian grandmother baptized her in Armenian Orthodoxy when she was a child. Lisnyanskaya grew up in Baku, in a house where three languages were present: Yiddish, Russian and Armenian. In 2000, she said to Maxim D. Shrayer, editor of Jewish-Russian anthology, that in 1944, when it became known about the Holocaust, she officially claimed that she was of Jewish ethnicity, to protest the fascist murder of Jewish people; she believed in Jesus Christ as wel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samizdat
Samizdat (, , ) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual reproduction was widespread, because printed texts could be traced back to the source. This was a grassroots practice used to evade official Soviet censorship. Name origin and variations Etymologically, the word ''samizdat'' derives from ''sam'' ( 'self, by oneself') and ''izdat'' (, an abbreviation of , 'publishing house'), and thus means 'self-published'. Ukrainian has a similar term: ''samvydav'' (самвидав), from ''sam'' 'self' and ''vydavnytstvo'' 'publishing house'. The Russian poet Nikolay Glazkov coined a version of the term as a pun in the 1940s when he typed copies of his poems and included the note ''Samsebyaizdat'' (Самсебяиздат, "Myself by Myself Publishers") on the front page. ''Tamizdat'' refers to lit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1978 In The Soviet Union
The following lists events that happened during 1978 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Incumbents * General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: Leonid Brezhnev * Premier of the Soviet Union: Alexei Kosygin * Chairman of the Russian SFSR: Mikhail Solomentsev Events January *24 January – The Kosmos 954 ends its mission February March April *14 April – 1978 Georgian demonstrations *20 April – The Soviet Air Force shoots down Korean Air Lines Flight 902, a civilian airliner That flew into Soviet airspace. *25 April – 18th Komsomol Congress May June * 21 June – 1978 Iranian Chinook shootdown: 2 Boeing CH-47 Chinook belonging to the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces strayed into Soviet airspace over the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic during a training mission, resulting in the Shootdown of both aircraft by the Soviet Air Forces. July September * 28 September – one of the last Forest Brother guerilla movement fighter August Sabbe wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1978 Books
Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd government). * January 6 – The Holy Crown of Hungary (also known as Stephen of Hungary Crown) is returned to Hungary from the United States, where it was held since World War II. * January 10 – Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, a critic of the Nicaraguan government, is assassinated; riots erupt against Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Somoza's government. * January 13 – Former American Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a Democrat, dies of cancer in Waverly, Minnesota, at the age of 66. * January 18 – The European Court of Human Rights finds the British government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture. * January 22 – Ethiopia declares the ambassador of West Germany ''persona non grata''. * January 24 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arkady Arkanov
Arkady Mikhailovich Arkanov (; 7 June 1933 – 22 March 2015) was a Russian writer, doctor, playwright and stand-up comedian. Biography Arkanov was born Arkady Mikhailovich Steinbock in Kyiv, USSR. At the onset of World War II in 1941, he was evacuated to Siberia, together with his mother and younger brother. In April 1943, the family was reunited with their father in Moscow. In 1957, Arkanov graduated from the I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University and, before becoming a writer, worked as a family doctor. Between 1963 and 1967, he was a satirist at the journal ''Yunost''. In 1966, he changed his last name, and in 1968 became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers. In the 1960s–70s, he collaborated with Grigori Gorin, with whom he wrote several plays for the Moscow Theater of Satire. Arkanov's first marriage was to Maya Kristalinskaya, a singer in 1967. After their divorce, Arkanov married Yevgeniya Morozova. He had a son, Vasily Arkadievich Arkanov (born 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
