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- Nikolai (Mykola) Gogol was a Russian humorist, dramatist, and novelist of Ukrainian origin. His ancestors were bearing the name of Gogol-Janovsky and claimed belonging to the upper class Polish Szlachta. Gogol's father, a Ukrainian writer living on his old family estate, had five other children. He died when the Gogol was 15. Young Gogol was fond of the drama class at his high school in Nezhin, Ukraine. He was strongly influenced by his religious mother, as well as by the enchanting beauty of the Ukrainian folklore. He also called himself a "free Cossac".
At age 18 Gogol moved to St. Petersburg, became a student, and later a professor of history at the St. Petersburg University. His short stories, set in St. Petersburg, became a success. His play "Revizor" (1836, The Inspector General) had its premiere in St. Petersburg attended by the Tzar Nickolai I. But it also made him many powerful enemies who hated his satire on the corrupt Russian society. It was his friend Alexander Pushkin who suggested to him the subject for "Revizor". Pushkin also suggested the main idea of "The Dead Souls" (1842), a bitter satirical story of a crook, who was buying the names of dead surfs from various greedy landlords, for a tax-evasion scheme. In his other famous story "Shinel" (1842, The Overcoat) a poor clerk is intimidated both by thieves and by the government. Gogol's discontent against the slavery and social injustices in Russia caused him trouble. He escaped to Europe for 12 years, returning to Russia briefly to publish the 1st part of "The Dead Souls".
His religious beliefs were used by the State-controlled Orthodox Church to place guilt on him and to cause interruption of his literary work. In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. After his return to Russia, he settled in Moscow, where he fell under the control of the fanatical Orthodox priest, Konstantinovskii, who demanded that Gogol quit writing and destroy the manuscript of the 2nd part of "The Dead Souls". Torn by his inner conflict with guilt and being under the pressure from the fanatical priest, Gogol burned his manuscript. He died nine days later in pain without having any food during his last days. In the 1931 excavation of his tomb, his body was found lying face down, which caused suspicion that Gogol was buried alive.
His style involves the elements of the fantastic and grotesque, with the taste for the macabre and absurd, following the tradition of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Fyodor Dostoevsky proclaimed, "We all came out from under his Overcoat", referring to Gogol's influence on Russian writers. Sometimes compared with Franz Kafka, Gogol had such followers, as Yevgeni Zamyatin, Vladimir Nabokov, and Mikhail A. Bulgakov. - Leonid Rakhmanov was born on 28 February 1908 in Kotelnich, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire [now Kirov Oblast, Russia]. He was a writer, known for Baltic Deputy (1937), Mikhaylo Lomonosov (1955) and Television Theater (1953). He died on 24 April 1988 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR [now St. Petersburg, Russia].
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Vladimir Mayakovsky was the leading Russian Futurist poet of the 20th century who created an entirely new form of Russian poetry loosely resembling such modern day rappers as Eminem and Snoop Dogg.
He was born Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky on July 19, 1893, in the town of Bagdadi, Kutaisi province in the Transcaucasian kingdom of Georgia, then part of Russian Empire (now Georgia). He was the last of three children in a Russian-Ukrainian family. His father, Vladimir Mayakovsky, was a Russian Cossack who worked for Imperial Ministry as a forest ranger. His mother, Alexandra Alekseevna, was Ukrainian. Young Mayakovsky grew up in a bilingual environment, his mother spoke Georgian while he learned Russian, and spent his childhood and boyhood attending a grammar school in Kutaisi, Georgia. In 1906, when Mayakovsky was 13, his father died of blood poisoning caused by a finger cut. Young Mayakovsky moved to Moscow with his mother and two sisters.
During his formative years Mayakovsky absorbed multi-cultural influences from Transcaucasia and Russia. From 1906 - 1908 he studied at Moscow Gymnasium, then dropped out and was involved in revolutionary movement with then underground Communist Party of Russia. Because of his association with communists, he was arrested three times, violated the prison rules, and spent over six months in Butyrskaya prison in Moscow. There he wrote his first poems while in a solitary cell in 1909. After his prison term, Mayakovsky refused to join the Communist Party, and for that Vladimir Lenin warranted his communist comrades that they should not trust Mayakovsky and should watch his activities and publications. During the 1910s Mayakovsky emerged as independent thinker and writer. He studied at Stroganov School of Art, then at Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. There he met Futurist artist David Burlyuk, and the two collaborated on several art shows and books.
In 1912, Mayakovsky moved to St. Petersburg, the capital famous for its wealth, cultural diversity, and cosmopolitan lifestyle. There he met Maxim Gorky who was instrumental with his initial steps and introductions. Mayakovsky wrote and directed his first play, a tragedy titled 'Vladimir Mayakovsky', that premiered at a St. Petersburg theatre in 1913. At that time, on a dacha in the Levashovo suburb of St. Petersburg, Mayakovsky met Lilya Brik, the woman who changed his life forever. She became his Muse, lover, and most trusted companion, while her husband, Osip Brik eventually became the publisher of Mayakovsky's most important works. In St. Petersburg Mayakovsky published his passionate poems: 'Cloud in the Trousers' (1915) and 'The Backbone Flute' (1916) alluding to his sexuality and the emerging menage à trois relationship with the Briks.
In the popular literary club "Brodyachaya Sobaka" (aka.. Wandering Dog) Mayakovsky met the aspiring poet Anna Akhmatova, her husband Nikolai Gumilev, and other important figures of the flourishing St. Petersburg cultural scene. Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy, one of the leading writers in St. Petersburg, proclaimed Mayakovsky a genius, and promoted his poetry. However, during the 1914 - 1918, the disastrous First World War, two Russian revolutions, and the following Russian Civil War brought immense destruction, poverty, and instability. Mayakovsky was drafted and served in Petrograd Military Automobile School from 1915 to August 1917. After the Revolution of 1917, he remained in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and was editor of Futurist paper as well as art magazines "Iskusstvo" and other projects.
In 1918 Mayakovsky made his film debut appearing in three silent films made at Neptun studio in St. Petersburg. He appeared as actor co-starring opposite Lilya Brik in Zakovannaya filmoi (1918), which he also wrote, and in Nye dlya deneg radivshisya (1918); both films were directed by Nikandr Turkin. Mayakovsky also co-starred in The Young Lady and the Hooligan (1918), which he also co-directed. At that time his stage-play 'Mystery-Bouffe' (1918) premiered at a St. Petersburg's theatre.
In mid-1919 he moved from St. Petersburg back to Moscow and shared a small room in a communal flat with his friend and lover Lilya Brik. For a while he worked as designer and poet for propaganda publications at ROSTA, the Russian Telegraph Agency. His circle in Moscow included such cultural figures as Osip Brik and Lilya Brik, as well as their friends: artists and filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, and Alexander Rodchenko, writers Boris Pasternak and Viktor Shklovskiy among others. Mayakovsky and Brik published the avant-garde and leftist magazine 'LEF' together with Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov and Sergei Yutkevich, where they opposed the mainstream official Soviet culture. Mayakovsky went to extremes, he called to trash all history and traditional culture, such as the 19th century writers Alexander Pushkin and Lev Tolstoy, as well as classical art. He also opposed the dull official "proletariat" propaganda and conformist Soviet mass-culture. His satirical plays 'Klop' (aka.. Bedbug) and 'Banya' (aka.. Bath) were staged by director Vsevolod Meyerhold, but soon were banned. Mayakovsky actively contributed to the emerging Russian-Soviet film industry as a writer, actor, and film director. He also co-wrote scenario for Lilya Brik's film Yevrei na zemle (1927).
During the 1920s, Mayakovsky traveled extensively in Europe and America, and amassed a significant cosmopolitan experience. In Paris he visited the studios of Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger. In America Mayakovsky fathered a daughter, Patricia Tompson, form his relationship with Russian-American émigré Elli Jones (Elisaveta Petrovna). In Europe he had a relationship with another Russian emigrant actress. At that time he learned that most Russian writers and poets, such as Anastasiya Tsvetaeva, can not make money in the West. Back in Russia, he was so successful that he bought himself a new Renault car and hired a private chauffeur, comrade Gamazin, who was also a secret informant for Soviet Security agency.
By the late-1920s Mayakovsky emerged as a popular and influential figure in Soviet culture and politics; he was a poet, an artist, an actor, a writer, director and public speaker. His highly electrifying public performances often irritated the Soviet officials. Mayakovsky applied his untamed genius in almost every aspect of cultural and political life, and eventually became a much higher and bigger figure than the Soviet officialdom could tolerate. His non-conformist and non-Marxist position became a problem. For that reason he was under constant surveillance by the Soviet authorities.
Intellectuals regarded Mayakovsky for breaking all rules and traditions in literature, art and public life, and for exploding with his bold and highly original style of poetry. He was known for his passionate and intense public performances. He was also known for his hectic relationships with women. His personal life remained unstable for many years, as he was torn between several women in his life. On April 14, 1930, Mayakovsky was found dead, and his death was accompanied by a letter with a rather sarcastic message. The Soviet officials announced that Mayakovsky shot himself directly in his heart, because of his breakup with actress Veronika Polonskaya. Ten days after Mayakovsky's death the criminal investigator of the Mayakovsky's case was also shot dead.
Mayakovsky was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. Lilya Brik and her husband Osip Brik inherited the writer's archive. In 1935, five years after the death of Mayakovsky, Lily Brik wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin expressing her idea to publish the collected works of Mayakovsky. Stalin approved the Brik's idea, and ordered that Soviet publishers print collections of "revolutionary" poetry by Mayakovsky. Upon Stalin's instruction, Mayakovsky's "revolutionary" poetry was included in the Soviet school curriculum and reissued in massive printings.
Vladimir Mayakovsky was depicted in the film Mayakovsky itskeboda ase... (1958) by director Konstantine Pipinashvili, based on the autobiographical book "Ya -sam" (aka.. I-myself).- Konstantin Paustovsky was born on 31 May 1892 in Moscow, Russia. He was a writer, known for Kara-bugaz (1935), Severnaya povest (1960) and Lermontov (1943). He died on 14 July 1968 in Moscow, Russia.
- Vsevolod Vishnevskiy was born on 21 December 1900 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire [now Russia]. He was a writer, known for We Are from Kronstadt (1936), Pervaya konnaya (1941) and Optimisticheskaya tragediya (1963). He died on 28 February 1951 in Moscow, USSR [now Russia].
- Leonid Andreev was born on August 21, 1871 in Orel, Russia. His father, named Nikolai Ivanovich Andreev, was a member of the provincial Russian Nobility and worked as a land inspector for the government. His mother, Named Anastasia Nikolaevna Andreeva (Pazkovska) belonged to the Polish Nobility. Andreev graduated from the Orel Gymnasium, went to study law at the St. Petersburg University, and graduated from the Moscow University. His work as a crime reporter for "Moscovski Vestnik" (Moscow daily paper) provided material for his stories. He was fond of reading Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lev Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov. He also red then popular Friedrich Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. After the death of his father and a painful first love experience in 1894 he was depressed and tried to shoot himself in a suicide attempt. He survived and worked hard to support his mother and his two sisters and two younger brothers. He successfully passed the Russian Law Bar in 1897 and practiced law as an attorney for five years from 1897-1902.
Andreev published his first story "Bargamot and Garaska" in 1898. It was noticed by Maxim Gorky, who promoted Andreev to the circle of writers and publishers, called Znanie (Knowledge). In 1901 his first book of stories was published by Znanie. His story "Bezdna" (Abyss, 1902), about a teenager's experience with a prostitute ending in her murder and his suicide, was attacked by Lev Tolstoy. But Andreev became an instant celebrity in Russia. After his anti-war story "Krasny Smekh" (Red Laughter, 1904), written during the Russian-Japanese war, he got involved with anti-Czar revolutionaries. Andreev was arrested and jailed by the Czar's secret service in 1905, after that he emigrated to Europe and lived in Capri, Italy as a guest of Maxim Gorky. While developing his expressionist style, Andreev wrote a bluntly realistic anti-war story "Rasskaz o semi poveshennykh" (A Story About the Seven Hung, 1909) and a realist novel "Sashka Zhegulev" (1911). After the war and the first Russian revolution of 1905, Andreev was writing a play every year. His plays were staged at the Moscow Art Theatre and theatres in Vienna, Berlin, Odessa and Kazan by directors Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Vsevolod Meyerhold among others. His best plays "Anathema", "Tsar-Golod" (Czar-hunger), "Samson v okovakh" (Samson in Handcuffs, 1914) were banned by Russian censorship under the Czar. Andreev built a big villa in Kuokkala, Finland, where many Russian intellectuals lived, just 50 km. West of St. Petersburg. He was a regular member of the circle of Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy and maintained friendship with Maxim Gorky. Leonid Andreev also was a friend of writers Aleksandr Kuprin, Vladimir Korolenko, Ivan Bunin, Vikenti Veresaev, and singer Feodor Chaliapin Sr.. During WWI he was a strong critic of German aggression. In 1917 he opposed the Bolshevik Revolution.
Leonid Andreev was the founder of the Russian Expressionism in literature. He modernized his style through experiments with spiritualism, symbolism, eroticism and mysticism, and also studied a range of occult and religious traditions. His literary parallel was the American writer H.P. Lovecraft. Andreev remained in his villa in Finland after it's separation from Russia during the Russian revolution of 1917. He was a staunch critic of the Soviet communism and wrote powerful articles about the atrocities of communists in Russia. He died on September 12, 1919, at his home in Kuokkala, Finland, at the age of 48. Some mystery was haunting his burial; his grave in Finland was later on the Soviet territory since WWII. His magnificent villa was destroyed. In 1957 Leonid Andreev's remains were exhumed and moved to the prestigious "Poet's Alley" at the "Literatorskie Mostki" (Literary burials) near the graves of Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, Nikolai Leskov and other Russian cultural luminaries at the Volkovo Cemetery in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). - Semyon Zlotnikov is known for Television Theater (1953) and Kuda ischez Fomenko? (1981).
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- Vladimir Odoevskiy is known for The Box with a Secret (1976).
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Yuri Karlovich Olesha was born on March 3, 1899, in Elizavetgrad, Russian Empire (now Kirovograd, Ukraine). His father, named Karl Olesha, belonged to Polish Shlachta and was a government officer. His mother was a devoted Catholic. In 1902 the family moved to Odessa. There young Olesha went to a Classical Gymnazium from which he graduated in 1916. In 1915-1916 he published his early poems. From 1917-1919 he studied at the Law Department of Novorossiisky University in Odessa. At that time he joined the Odessa group of writers, which included Isaak Babel, Ilya Ilf, Eduard Bagritsky, Yevgeni Petrov, and Valentin Kataev. Olesha briefly served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. In 1921 he moved to Kharkov, and his parents emigrated to Poland.
In 1922 Olesha settled in Moscow. He wrote for 'Gudok' newspaper, where his colleagues were such writers as Mikhail A. Bulgakov, Ilya Ilf, Yevgeni Petrov, Isaak Babel, and Valentin Katayev. Olesha gained recognition among writers as a master of metaphoric writing. He was penned "the king of metaphor" for his talent of hiding a deeper meaning between the innocent lines. Olesha himself admitted the influence of Lev Tolstoy, Herbert G. Wells, and Robert Louis Stevenson on his writing style. In 1924 Olesha wrote what became his best known novel - 'Tri tolstyaka' (The Three Fat Men). In was dedicated to his wife Olga Gustavovna Suok. One of the characters in the novel, a beautiful lady, was also named Suok. Olesha could not publish his novel for four years until 1928, and then he was criticized for the lack of revolutionary propaganda. However, with the support from the most influential critic Anatoli Lunacharsky, who was also the Comissar of Culture in the Soviet government, Olesha was commissioned to make an adaptation of his novel into a play. It was staged by Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko at the Moscow Art Theatre.
Olesha gained a high artistic reputation for his novel 'Zavist' (Envy). It was published in 1927, in a Moscow magazine. Olesha brilliantly criticized the loss of civilized values in the Soviet Union. His satirical metaphor of a sausage, as one of the important values in the Soviet life, became a prophecy in a time of hunger and social degradation under dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Olesha made a stage adaptation of the novel titled 'A Conspirasy of Feelings', but it was banned. In 1930 Olesha wrote a political play 'Spisok blagodeianii' (A List of Good Acts). It was a metaphoric description of terror and social destruction in the Soviet Union. Vsevolod Meyerhold began rehearsals of the play, but it was banned. In 1934 Olesha wrote a speech to the Union of Soviet Writers expressing his opposition to restrictions and censorship in the rapidly degrading society.
In 1936 Olesha was condemned by the official Soviet literary establishment. All his writings were banned, all his plays were canceled, and he was made an outcast. In fear of being arrested Olesha ceased writing serious literary works. "The ruling anti-artistic gang does not need literature of any aesthetic value", explained Olesha in a letter to his wife. He withdrew from public life and turned to writing a diary which became a remarkable document of his experience under the totalitarian regime. Meanwhile, many of his fellow writers and cultural figures were executed. Russia lost such men as Isaak Babel, Vladimir Narbut, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Osip Mandelstam, and many other intellectuals. Olesha suffered from a loss of income and had to take any literary job for survival.
During the 1930's Olesha worked as a part-time screenwriter. He co-wrote scripts for 'Strogiy yunosha' (1934), 'Oshibka inzhenera Kochina' (1939), and 'Bolotnye soldaty' (aka.. Concentration Camp 1939). During the Second World War Olesha was evacuated to Ashkhabad, where he worked with the evacuated Odessa Film Studio. After WWII his writings were under the ban that lasted until the death of Joseph Stalin. In 1956 the ban was lifted because of the political "Thaw" that was initiated by Nikita Khrushchev. Olesha's collected works were published in 1956. By that time he was already a different man. For many years he suffered from humiliation and abuse by Soviet officials that caused him much emotional pain and led to a clinical depression. Yuri Olesha died of a heart attack on May 10, 1960, in Moscow. His diaries were published posthumously under the title 'No Day Without a Line'.
Olesha's books were translated in seventeen languages and sold millions of copies around the world. His novel 'Tri tolstyaka' (The Three fat Men) was adapted into a popular animation in 1963, and also into an even more popular feature film by director 'Aleksei Batalov' in 1966.- Yuri Nikolaevich Tynyanov was born on October 18, 1894, in Rezhitsa, Vitebsk province, Russian Empire (now Rezekne, Latvia). His father, named Nikolai Tynyanov, was a Medical Doctor. From 1904-1912 Tynyanov studied at Pskov Classical Gymnasium, where his younger school-mate was Veniamin Kaverin. In 1916 Tynyanov married Kaverin's sister, Elena Silber. From 1912-1918 Tynyanov studied at St. Peterburg University, then carried post-graduate research on Fyodor Dostoevsky and Nikolay Gogol. From 1921-1931 Tynyanov was professor of Russian literature at the Institute of History of Arts. He also was among leading literary critics in Russia.
In 1922 Tynyanov took patronage over the literary group Serapionovy Bratya (The Serapion Brothers). The group was initiated by Yevgeni Zamyatin who professed that "true literature can be created only by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics" at his literary seminars with aspiring writers. They took their name from the story of E.T.A.Hoffmann titled 'Serapion Brothers', about artistic freedom. The group included Mikhail Zoschenko, Lev Lunts, Viktor Shklovskiy, Nikolai Tikhonov, Mikhail Slonimsky, Vsevolod Ivanov, and Veniamin Kaverin.They also attended seminars of Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy. They lived in the famous artistic community known as 'Dom Iskusstv' (House of Arts) in a former aristocratic palace on the Nevsky Prospect in St. Petersburg. The writers of the group were non-conformists and were in opposition to the official Soviet literature. Their leader Yevgeni Zamyatin fearlessly criticized Soviet policy of "Red Terror" and intimidation of intellectuals under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.
Tynyanov's best known work is 'Poruchik Kizhe' (Lieutenant Kije). It is a satire on Russian-Soviet bureaucracy, set in the reign of Emperor Paul I. A non-existent Lieutenant Kije is created by a bureaucratic error and maintains existence as a file, while a real Lieutenant Sinyukhaev was "killed" in the file, and the Emperor had signed it. Kije is treated with attention in the file, though nobody ever saw him. Kije has a love affair; is sent to Siberia and brought back; marries and has children; makes a career and receives land and possessions; retires as a decorated General and receives a State Funeral when he "dies" - all in the file. All by the Emperor's command. Tynyanov collaborated with directors Grigoriy Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg in their film adaptation of 'Shinel' (The Overcoat) by Nikolay Gogol, and on the original production of 'C.V.D.'. Tynyanov also wrote important critical works on Alexander Pushkin and other Russian writers. He died on December 20, 1943, in Moscow, and was laid to rest in Vagankovo Cemetery in Moscow, Russia. - Aleksandr Ostrovskiy was born on 12 April 1823 in Moscow, Russian Empire [now Russia]. He was a writer, known for Zhenitba Balzaminova (1964), Without Dowry (1937) and The Busy Inn (1916). He was married to Maria Wassiljewna Vasilieva and Agafja Iwanowna. He died on 14 June 1886 in Shchelykovo, Kostroma Governorate, Russian Empire [now Kostroma Oblast, Russia].
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899, the eldest of five children in a wealthy aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia. His grandfather was a Justice Minister to the Czar Alexander II. His father, named Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was a liberal political leader, the editor of a liberal newspaper, and was a friend of Sergei Diaghilev. His mother, named Elena Ivanovna (née Rukavishnikov), was the daughter of the wealthiest Russian goldmine owner.
Nabokov's family was trilingual. As a child he was already reading foreign writers Edgar Allan Poe, Gustave Flaubert, and the Russians Lev Tolstoy, Nikolay Gogol, and Anton Chekhov. He excelled in languages and literature, as well, as in soccer, tennis and chess. He was inspired by his father's studies in lepidoptery from the age of 7, and spent summers collecting butterflies in the family estate of Vyra, near St. Petersburg. He graduated from the most advanced and prestigious Tenishev School in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Nabokov's father was the Secretary of the Russian Provisional Government, when he was arrested during the Russian revolution of October, 1917, and the family estate was confiscated by the communists. The Nabokov family emigrated to London and then to Berlin. There Nabokov's father was murdered at a political meeting while shielding his opponent from assassins. The painful memory of his father's violent death would echo in many of Nabokov's writings. In 1923 Nabokov graduated with honors from Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied zoology and literature. He worked as a translator and tutor in Europe for 18 years. In 1925 he married Vera Evseevna Slonim, from a Russian-Jewish family, and their son Dimitri was born in 1934.
Traumatized by the death of his father and the loss of his home country, Nabokov expressed himself in writing. His novel 'The Luzhin Defence' (1930) is alluding to his own story of emigration and the sense of loss. In 1937 his father's killer was released by Adolf Hitler, and Nabokov had to move to Paris. Three years later he fled from the advancing German Armies to the United States, with his wife and son. In 1940 he crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the Champlain, where he had a first class cabin, paid with the money from the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. In 1945 Nabokov became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He taught literature at Cornell University and worked as entomologist at Harvard University, becoming a distinguished lepidopterist.
He published short stories in the Atlantic and the New Yorker magazines in English, while still writing his memoirs in Russian, and agonizing to switch from Russian to English. It took him 6 years to complete "Lolita" (1955), a controversial story of a pedophile's desire for a 12-year-old girl, who reminds him of the little girl he loved as a boy. The novel was banned in America and the UK until 1958. He later wrote a screenplay for the film Lolita (1962), directed by Stanley Kubrick. Lolita and "Pale Fire" (1962) are his best known novels. In 1964 Nabokov published his four-volume translation of 'Eugene Onegin' by Alexander Pushkin, on which he worked for 10 years. He later made English translations of poems by Mikhail Lermontov and Fyodor Tyutchev. His own later works: the artfully constructed 'Ada' (1969), 'Transparent Things' (1972), and the autobiographic 'Look at the Harlequins' (1975), were translated into Russian by his son Dimitri. Nabokov also published scholarly works on Nikolay Gogol, James Joyce and Franz Kafka.
In 1960 Nabokov moved to Switzerland and made his home at the Montreux Palace Hotel. From there he frequently traveled to Milan, Italy, where his son Dimitri Nabokov was an opera singer at the La Scala. Nabokov's main hobby was his immense collection of rare butterflies which grew to a museum-quality with his many entomological expeditions. He never learned to drive a car, and he depended on his wife Vera to drive him around. Nabokov's individualism manifested in his ironic rejection of any mass-psychology, especially Marxism, Freudism, etc. He never used telephones, thus preventing any outside influence over his way of life. He had a rare gift of synaesthesia, cognate with that of composer Alexander Scriabin and artist Wassily Kandinsky. Nabokov also made his name in chess by composing chess problems.
Vladimir Nabokov died on July 2, 1977, in Montreux Palace Hotel, and was laid to rest in the Clarens Cemetery, Montreux, Switzerland. His wife and muse, Vera Slonim, died in 1993, and was laid to rest with Nabokov. The family mansion of Nabokov's in St. Petersburg, Russia is now a Nabokov's Museum. His first collection of butterflies is now part of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. His last and most valuable butterfly collection was bequeathed to the Zoology Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.- Lyudmila Razumovskaya is known for Escalade (2011), Dear Yelena Sergeyevna (1988) and Brodyachiy avtobus (1990).
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Born to noble parents (his father Sergei was a retired major, and his mother, Nadezhda, was the granddaughter of an ennobled Ethiopian general) on the 26th of May, 1799 in Moscow, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin became involved with a liberal underground revolutionary group that saw him exiled to the Caucasus.
He spent most of his time there writing poetry and novels. In 1826 Pushkin was pardoned by the Tsar and allowed to return home after six years of exile. He married Natalia Goncharova, whose coquettish behavior led to her husband challenging an admirer of hers to a duel in January 1837. Though both were wounded, only Pushkin died two days later from his injuries.- Writer
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Mikhail Lermontov was born in 1814 into an aristocratic Russian family and grew up in a trilingual environment. His ancestor was the Scottish Knight George Lermont, who came to Russia in 1613 and served the Tsar. Lermontov's grandmother hired a Frenchman, named Jean, who became a servant to the young poet. In addition his nanny was German. His mother died when he was 2 years old, and his grandmother took him away from his father. Lermontov graduated from a boarding school for the sons of the nobility in Moscow, where he studied English literature.
At age 14 he wrote "The prisoner of the Caucasus" and other early poems in the vein of Lord Byron and Shelly. From 1828-32 he studied at Moscow University. From 1832-34 he was a cadet at the Emperor's School of Cavalry Guards in St. Petersburg, from which he graduated as an Officer of the Imperial Cavalry Guards. At that time her wrote "Borodino", dedicated to the 1812 victory over Napoleon.
Lermontov was stunned by the duel and death of Alexander Pushkin and accused the autocratic Tsar Nicholas I and his "greedy throng around the Throne" in the "murder of the Genius". Arrested and exiled to the war in the mountains of Caucasus, he distinguished himself in battles and returned to the capital of St. Petersburg as a celebrity. His disillusionment in the aristocratic milieu, and his indignant observations of the Metropolitan vanity fair, occasioned his drama, "Masquerade".
His duel with a French diplomat led to his second exile to the war in the Caucasus. In 1839 he finished his first and only novel "A Hero of Our Time" with a prophetic rendition of a duel which paralleled the end of his own life in July 1841. That duel was possibly the work of the Tsar's conspiracy against yet another rebellious genius. Lermontov's dexterous command of language shines in such masterpieces as "The Cliff", "Prophet", "The Dream". His sacrilegious "Demon", about an angel who falls in love with a mortal woman, inspired Anton Rubinstein on writing a lush opera. Boris Pasternak was influenced by Lermontov's mellifluent lines, and Vladimir Nabokov imitated the structural patterns of "The Hero of Our Time".- Writer
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Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828, in his ancestral estate Yasnaya Polyana, South of Moscow, Russia. He was the fourth of five children in a wealthy family of Russian landed Gentry. His parents died when he was a child, and he was brought up by his elder brothers and relatives.
Leo Tolstoy studied languages and law at Kazan University for three years. He was dissatisfied with the school and left Kazan without a degree, returned to his estate and educated himself independently. In 1848 he moved to the capital, St. Petersburg, and there passed two tests for a law degree. He was abruptly called to return to his estate near Moscow, where he inherited 4000 acres of land and 350 serfs. There Tolstoy built a school for his serfs, and acted as a teacher. He briefly went to a Medical School in Moscow, but lost a fortune in gambling, and was pulled out by his brother. He took military training, became an Army officer, and moved to the Caucasus, where he lived a simple life for three years with Cossacs. There he wrote his first novel - "Childhood" (1852), it became a success. With writing "Boyhood" (1854) and "Youth" (1857) he concluded the autobiographical trilogy. In the Crimean War (1854-55) Tolstoy served as artillery commander in the Battle of Sevastopol, and was decorated for his courage. Between the battles he wrote three stories titled "Sevastopol Sketches", that won him wide attention, and a complement from the Czar Aleksandr II.
After the war, Tolstoy returned to St. Petersburg, where he enjoyed the friendship of Ivan Turgenev, Nikolai A. Nekrasov, Ivan Goncharov, and other writers. On his trips to Europe, he had discussions with Gertsen in London, and attended Darwin's lectures. In Brussels he had meetings with philosophers Prudhon and Lelewel. Tolstoy undertook a research of schools in Europe, and later he built and organized over 20 schools for poor people in Russia. At that time the secret police began surveillance, and searched his home. In 1862 he married Sofia Andreevna Bers, and fathered 13 children with his wife. Four of their babies died, and the couple raised the remaining nine children. His wife was also his literary secretary, and also contributed to his best works, "War and Peace" (1863-69) and "Anna Karenina" (1873-77). In his "Confession" (1879) Tolstoy revealed his own version of Christianity, blended with socialism, that won him many followers. Tolstoyan communities sprang up in America and Europe, and he assisted the Russian non-Orthodox Christians (Dukhobors) in migrating to USA and Canada. He split from aristocratic class and developed an ascetic lifestyle, becoming a vegetarian, and a farmer. He sponsored and organized free meals for the poor. He transfered his copyright on all of his writings after 1880 to public domain. In his later age Tolstoy was pursuing the path of a wandering ascetic. He corresponded with Mohandas K. Gandhi, who was directly influenced by Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God is Within You" (1894), which was praised by many nonviolent movements.
In 1900 Tolstoy criticized the Tsar's government in a series of publications, calling for separation of Chuch and State. Tsar Nicholas II retaliated through the Church, by expulsion of Tolstoy from Orthodox Cristianity as a "heretic". He fell ill, and suffered from a severe depression; he was suicidal and even had to eliminate all hunting guns from his home, because of his suicidal mode. He was treated by the famous doctor Dahl, and was visited by composer Sergei Rachmaninoff and basso Feodor Chaliapin Sr., who performed for Tolstoy on many occasions. Later he went to convalesce in Yalta, in Crimea, where he spent time with Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. Tolstoy was an obvious candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but was initially omitted by the Nobel Committee for his views. The omission caused a strong response from a group of Swedish writers and artists. They sent an address to Tolstoy, but the writer answered by declining any future prize nomination.
In 1902 Tolstoy wrote a letter to the Tsar, calling for social justice, to prevent a civil war, and in 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, Tolstoy wrote a condemnation of war. The Tsar replied by increasing police surveillance on Tolstoy. In November of 1910 he left his estate, probably taking the path of a wandering ascetic, which he had been pursuing for decades. He left home without explanations and took a train, in which he caught pneumonia, and died at a remote station of Astapovo. He was laid to rest in his estate of Yasnaya Polyana, which was made a Tolstoy National Museum.
His youngest daughter, named Alexandra Tolstoy, was the director of the Tolstoy Museum, and was arrested by the Communists five times. She emigrated from Russia to the United States, where she founded the Tolstoy Foundation. She helped many prominent Russian intellectuals, such as Vladimir Nabokov and Sergei Rachmaninoff among many others.- Aleksei Tolstoy was born on 10 January 1883 in Nikolayevsk, Samara Governorate, Russian Empire [now Pugachyov, Saratov Oblast, Russia]. He was a writer, known for Aelita, the Queen of Mars (1924), Khromoy barin (1929) and Peter the First (1937). He was married to Julia V.Rozhansky, Lyudmila Ilinichna Krestinskaya-Barsheva, Sophia Isaakovna Dymshits and Natalia V. Krandievskaya. He died on 23 February 1945 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia].
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Aleksei Tolstoy was born on 5 September 1817 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire [now Russia]. He was a writer, known for Black Sabbath (1963), Night of the Devils (1972) and Ghouls (2017). He was married to Sophia Andreyevna Miller. He died on 10 October 1875 in Krasny Rog, Chernigov Governorate, Russian Empire [now Bryansk Oblast, Russia].- Writer
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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821, in Moscow, Russia. He was the second of seven children of Mikhail Andreevich and Maria Dostoevsky. His father, a doctor, was a member of the Russian nobility, owned serfs and had a considerable estate near Moscow where he lived with his family. It's believed that he was murdered by his own serfs in revenge for the violence he would commit against them while in drunken rages. As a child Fyodor was traumatized when he witnessed the rape of a young female serf and suffered from epileptic seizures. He was sent to a boarding school, where he studied sciences, languages and literature. He was devastated when his favorite writer, Alexander Pushkin, was killed in a duel in St. Petersburg in 1837. That same year Dostoevsky's mother died, and he moved to St. Petersburg. There he graduated from the Military Engineering Academy, and served in the Tsar's government for a year.
Dostoevsky was active in St. Petersburg literary life; he grew out of his early influence by Nikolay Gogol, translated "Eugenia Grande" by Honoré de Balzac in 1844 and published his own first novel, "Poor Folk", in 1845, and became friends with Ivan Turgenev and Nikolai A. Nekrasov, but it ended abruptly after they criticized his writing. At that time he became indirectly involved in a revolutionary movement, for which he was arrested in 1849, convicted of treason and sentenced to death. His execution was scheduled for a freezing winter day in St. Petersburg, and at the appointed hour he was blindfolded and ordered to stand before the firing squad, waiting to be shot. The execution was called off at the last minute, however, and his sentence was commuted to a prison term and exile in Siberia, where his health declined amid increased epileptic seizures. After serving ten years in prison and exile, he regained his title in the nobility and returned to St. Petersburg with permission from the Tsar. He abandoned his formerly liberal views and became increasingly conservative and religious. That, however, didn't stop him from developing an acute gambling problem, and he accumulated massive gambling debts.
In 1862, after returning from his first major tour of Western Europe, Dostoevsky wrote that "Russia needs to be reformed, by learning the new ideas that are developing in Europe." On his next trip to Europe, in 1863, he spent all of his money on a manipulative woman, A. Suslova, went on a losing gambling spree, returned home flat broke and sank into a depression. At that time he wrote "Notes from Underground" (1864), preceding existentialism in literature. His first wife died in 1864, after six years of a childless marriage, and he adopted her son from her previous marriage. Painful experiences caused him to fall further into depression, but it was during this period that he wrote what many consider his finest work: "Crime and Punishment" (1866).
After completion of "The Gambler" (1867), the 47-year-old Dostoevsky married his loyal friend and literary secretary, 20-year-old Anna Snitkina, and they had four children. His first baby died at three months of age, causing him to sink further into depression and triggering more epileptic seizures. At that time Dostoevsky expressed his disillusionment with the Utopian ideas in his novels "The Idiot" (1868) and "The Devils" (aka "The Possessed") (1871), where the "devils" are destructive people, such as revolutionaries and terrorists. Dostoevsky was the main speaker at the opening of the monument to Alexander Pushkin in 1880, calling Pushkin a "wandering Russian, searching for universal happiness". In his final great novel, "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880), Dostoevsky revealed the components of his own split personality, depicted in four main characters; humble monk Alyosha, compulsive gambler Dmitri, rebellious intellectual Ivan, and their cynical father Fyodor Karamazov.
Dostoevsky died on February 9, 1881, of a lung hemorrhage caused by emphysema and epileptic seizures. He lived his entire life under the pall of epilepsy, much like the mythical "Sword of Damocles", and was fearless in telling the truth. His writings are an uncanny reflection on his own life - the fate of a genius in Russia.- Writer
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Ivan Turgenev was born into a wealthy landowning family with many serfs, in the city of Oryol in Southern Russia. His father, a cavalry colonel, died when he was 15, and he was raised by his abusive mother, who ruled her 5000 serfs ruthlessly with a whip. He never married, but fathered a daughter with one of their family serfs. Turgenev studied at Universities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Berlin, and later in his life received a Doctorate degree from Oxford. Turgenev lived in Western Europe for most of his life and admired the advancements of the Western civilization. He advocated modernization of Russia and liberation of serfs. In "A Sportsman's Sketches" (1852) he bitterly criticized serfdom, and in "A Nest of Nobles" (1859), and "On the Eve" he focused on the social and political troubles brewing in Russia. In his masterpiece "Fathers and Sons" (1862) Turgenev presented a man of the new generation, an educated and open-minded medical student Basarov, in a conflict with the old generation of 'fathers', who are standing for the ultra-conservative Russia. After being wildly attacked by Russian critics, Turgenev retired in Europe, living in Baden-Baden and Paris where he had a life-long affair with the celebrated singer Pauline Garcia-Viardot. His late stories "First Love", "Asya", "Torrents of Spring", and a collection of "Poetry in Prose" are among the finest in all of the Russian literature. He died in Bougival, near Paris, and was buried in St. Petersburg, Russia. Turgenev's influence may be found in Western literature; in the works of Gustave Flaubert, and also Ernest Hemingway, who regarded "A Sportsman's Sketches" as his favorite book. .- Writer
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Sergei Esenin was born on 3 October 1895 in Konstantinovo, Ryazan Governorate, Russian Empire [now Ryazan Oblast, Russia]. He was a writer, known for Poj pesnyu, poet (1973), The Hollow (2007) and Mongol Shuudan: Moskva (1996). He was married to Sophia Tolstaya, Isadora Duncan, Zinaida Reich and Anna Izryadnova. He died on 28 December 1925 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR [now St. Petersburg, Russia].- Viktor Pelevin was born on 22 November 1962 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]. Viktor is a writer, known for Generation P (2011), The Life of Insects and Mukhamory (2016).
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Vladimir Sorokin was born on 7 August 1955 in Bykovo, Ramenskiy rayon, Moskovskaya oblast, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]. He is a writer and actor, known for Kopeyka (2002), 4 (2004) and Target (2011).- Writer
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Sergey Lukyanenko was born on 11 April 1968 in Karatau, Kazakh SSR, USSR [now Kazakhstan]. He is a writer and actor, known for Night Watch (2004), Day Watch (2006) and A Rough Draft (2018).- Born on August 28, 1925 in Batumi, Georgian SSR, Transcaucasian SFSR, USSR (now in Georgia), Arkadiy Natanovich Strugatskiy was a Soviet/Russian sci-fi writer, often writing in collaboration with his younger brother Boris Strugatskiy. Strugatskiys' father Natan Strugatskiy was a Jewish art critic and their mother was a Russian Orthodox teacher. When Arkadiy was a child, the family moved to Leningrad. He was evacuated from the city during the siege of Leningrad in 1942 along with his father, who didn't survive the journey. The following year he was drafted into the Soviet army and went to study at the artillery school in Aktyubinsk. In 1949 he graduated the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow as Japanese and English interpreter. He worked for the military until 1955, when he became a writer instead. In 1958 the Strugatskiy brothers begun their artistic collaboration, which lasted until Arkadiy's death. In 1979, the brothers' best-known novel, "Piknik na obochine" ("Roadside Picnic") was loosely adapted for the screen by Andrei Tarkovsky as Stalker (1979). Arkadiy died on October 12, 1991 in Moscow, USSR (now in Russia). Writings of the Strugatskiys continue to inspire creators of movies (such as Dark Planet (2008)) and video games (such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007) and its sequels).
- Born 1933 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR (now Saint Petersburg in Russia), Boris Natanovich Strugatskiy was a Soviet/Russian sci-fi writer, often writing in collaboration with his older brother Arkadiy Strugatskiy. Strugatskiys' father Natan Strugatskiy was a Jewish art critic and their mother was a Russian Orthodox teacher. Living in Leningrad with his mother, Boris survived the 1941-1944 siege of the city by the Nazi Germany army. In 1955 he graduated astronomy and went on to word as an astronomer and computer engineer. In 1958 the Strugatskiy brothers begun their artistic collaboration, which lasted until Arkadiy's death in 1991. In 1966 Boris quit his job to become a full-time writer and starting form 1972, he taught a speculative fiction writing seminar. In 1979, the brothers' best-known novel, "Piknik na obochine" ("Roadside Picnic") was loosely adapted for the screen by Andrei Tarkovsky as Stalker (1979). After his brother's death, Boris published two more books, which he wrote under a pseudonym. He died on November 19, 2012 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Writings of the Strugatskiys continue to inspire creators of movies (such as Dark Planet (2008)) and video games (such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007) and its sequels).
- Arkadiy Vayner was born on 13 January 1931 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]. He was a writer and actor, known for The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed (1979), Me, gamomdziebeli (1972) and The Victims Have No Grievance (1986). He died on 24 April 2005 in Moscow, Russia.
- Georgiy Vayner was born on 10 February 1938 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]. He was a writer, known for The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed (1979), Me, gamomdziebeli (1972) and The Victims Have No Grievance (1986). He died on 11 June 2009 in New York City, New York, USA.
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Andrey Kivinov was born on 25 November 1961 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR [now St. Petersburg, Russia]. He is a writer and actor, known for Uboynaya sila (2000), Psevdonim dlya geroya (2014) and Lyubov pod prikrytiem (2010).- Writer
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Eduard Topol was born on 8 October 1938 in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, USSR. He is a writer and producer, known for Na krayu stoyu (2008), Novogodniy remont (2019) and Erti nakhvit shekvareba (1975).- Writer
Maksim Gorky is a pseudonym of Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov, who was born into a poor Russian family in Nizhnii Novgorod on Volga river. Gorky lost his father at an early age, he was beaten by his stepfather and became an orphan at age 9, when his mother died. He was brought up by his grandmother, who helped his development as a storyteller.
He was blessed with a brilliant memory, but failed to enter a University of Kazan. At age 19 he survived a suicide attempt, because the bullet missed his heart. After that Gorky traveled on foot for 5 years all over Central Russia, worked as a sailor on a Volga steamboat, then a salesperson, a railway worker, a salt miller, and a lawyer's clerk. At that time he was arrested for his public criticism of the Tsar and social injustices in Russia. He started writing for newspapers and published his first 'Sketches and Stories' in 1890s. Later he wrote an autobiographic book "My Universities" based on impressions from his travels and jobs. Gorky wrote with sympathy about the simple folks, the outcasts, the gypsies, the hobos and dreamers in the context of social decay in the Russian Empire. He became friends with Anton Chekhov and Lev Tolstoy. His play 'The Lower Depths' (1892) was praised by Chekhov and was successfully played in Europe and the United States. His political activism resulted in cancellation of his membership in the Russian Academy. Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the Academy in protest and solidarity with Gorky. He went to live in Europe and America in 1906-13. In America he started his classic novel, 'The Mother', about a Russian Christian woman and her imprisoned son, who both joined revolutionaries under the illusion that revolution follows Christ's messages.
After the Russian revolution in 1917, Gorky criticized Lenin and communists for their "bloody experiments on the Russian people". He wrote, 'Lenin and Trotsky are corrupted with the dirty poison of power. They are disrespectful of human rights, freedom of speech and all other civil liberties". Soon Gorky received a handwritten warning letter from Lenin. Later his friend Nikolai Gumilev, ex-husband of Anna Akhmatova was executed by communists. In 1921 Gorky emigrated to Europe and settled in Capri. He became careful in his critique of communism. In 1932 after a series of brief visits, he returned to Soviet Russia. He was placed in a rich Moscow mansion of the former railroad tycoon Ryabushinsky. His return from the fascist Italy was a victory for Soviet propaganda. He was made the Chairman of the Soviet Writer's Union, and a figurehead of "socialist realism" . After the murder of Kirov in 1934 Gorky was under a house arrest. His son died in 1935. The following year Gorki Gorky died suddenly at the Lenin's dacha in Moscow.- Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko was born July 27, 1853, into the family of a district judge in Zhitomir, Ukraine, Russian Empire. He studied at the St. Petersburg College of Technology, then at the Moscow Academy of Agriculture. In 1876 he was expelled from college for his revolutionary activities, and imprisoned in Kronstadt, St. Petersburg. In 1877-79 he was a student at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. In 1879 he was arrested again on false political accusations and exiled to Siberia, but returned and settled in the city of Perm.
Korolenko published his first stories in 1879, calling for social justice in the Russian Empire. In 1881 he refused to pledge to the new Russian Tsar Alexander III and was sentenced to his second exile in Siberia, where he spent 3 years. After the Siberian exile he was allowed to settle in Nizhni Novgorod on the Volga river. There he got married and had a daughter. His impressions from his life in exile and his life in several provincial cities provided him with rich material for his writings. His story "Makar's Dream" (1885) about the dying peasant's dream of heaven was translated and published in English in 1891, bringing him international recognition. His masterpiece novel "The Blind Musician" (1886) was published in English in 1892, and made him the internationally renown writer.
Korolenko made a trip to United States in 1893, visiting the Chicago World Exibition. There Korolenko met recent immigrants from Russia, which gave him material for the short novel "Without a Language", a story of an uneducated Ukrainian peasant, who struggles in America without ability to speak a word in English. After 1900 Korolenko turned from fiction to journalism. In 1902 Korolenko together with Anton Chekhov resigned from the Russian Academy of Sciences in solidarity with Maxim Gorky. He regarded writers Nikolay Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Nikolai A. Nekrasov, and Lev Tolstoy as his most important influences.
Korolenko was a human rights advocate and a prominent journalist. He took strong public stand against the anti-Semitic Beilis trial and wrote the powerful essay "Call to the Russian People in regard to the blood libel of the Jews" (1911-13). His historic description of the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 was also published in English. During the Russian Revolution and the following Civil War Korolenko opposed to the bloody methods of the communist regime, and called against the terror and destruction. He died in Poltava, Ukraine on December 25, 1921, after being ignored by the communist leaders of that time.
In his story "Paradox", a cripple, born without arms, says, "Man is created for happiness, as a bird for flight." - Lyudmila Petrushevskaya was born on May 26, 1938. The Moscow-born Petrushevskaya is regarded as one of Russia's most prominent contemporary writers, whose writing combines postmodernist trends with the psychological insights and parody touches of writers such as Anton Chekhov. Over the last few decades, she has been one of the most acclaimed contemporary writers at work in Eastern Europe; Publishers Weekly has called her "one of the finest living Russian writers". In 1979, she was co-writer of the scenario for one of the most influential Russian animated films, Tale of Tales. She served as a jury member in the 3rd Open Russian Festival of Animated Film in 1998. In a 1993 interview with Sally Laird, translator of her novella The Time: Night, Petrushevskaya said of her own work, "Russia is a land of women Homers, women who tell their stories orally, just like that, without inventing anything. They're extraordinarily talented storytellers. I'm just a listener among them." Her works include the novels The Time Night (1992) and The Number One, both short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize, and Immortal Love, a collection of short stories and monologues. Since the late 1980th her plays, stories and novels have been published in more than 30 languages. In 2003 she was awarded the Pushkin Prize in Russian literature by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation in Germany. She was awarded the Russian State Prize for arts (2004), the Stanislavsky Award (2005), and the Triumph Prize (2006). A new collection, There Once Lived a Woman who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby, was published in the U.S. by Penguin Books in October 2009 and became a New York Times Book Review bestseller in December 2009. In 2010, it won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection.[3] The first major translation of her work by an American publisher, the stories often contain mystical or allegorical elements which are used to illuminate bleak Soviet and post-Soviet living conditions. The collection of stories has been well reviewed, buttressing Petrushevskaya's reputation in the English-speaking world. An article in Dissent called the collection "a striking introduction to the author's work": "Petrushevskaya's stories could easily be read as bleak grotesques, populated by envious neighbors, selfish adolescents, and parents who overcompensate with exaggerated love. But ultimately, Petrushevskaya's skillful juxtapositions yield glints of light. Resilience and ingenuity thread through the hardship, whether in the form of forgiveness or love. Such traces of humanity are starker-and brighter-because of the darkness that surrounds them." This collection was followed in 2013 by a second English language book, There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself. In her late 60s, Petrushevskaya started a singing career, creating new lyrics for her favorite songs. Since 2008, she has been regularly performing as a singer in Moscow (from nightclubs to major venues such as the Moscow House of Music) and across Russia as well as internationally. Recently, she has begun writing her own songs. Petrushevskaya is also known as a visual artist; her portraits and nudes have been shown in Russia's major museums (Tretyakov Gallery, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, State Museum of Literature) and private galleries.
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Marina Tsvetaeva was born on 8 October 1892 in Moscow, Russian Empire [now Russia]. She was a writer, known for A Cruel Romance (1984), Aelita, ne pristavay k muzhchinam! (1988) and The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! (1976). She was married to Sergei Efron. She died on 31 August 1941 in Yelabuga, Tatar ASSR, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia].- Polina Zerebcowa is known for Television Theater (1953).
- Mikhail A. Bulgakov was a Russian writer and medical doctor known for big screen adaptations of his books, such as Beg (1971) and Master i Margarita (2006).
He was born Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov on May 15, 1891, in Kiev, Russia (now Kiev, Ukraine). He was the first of six children in the family of a theology professor. His family belonged to the intellectual elite of Kiev. Bulgakov with his brothers took part in the demonstration commemorating the death of Lev Tolstoy. Bulgakov graduated with honors from the Medical School of Kiev University in 1915. He married his classmate Tatiana Lippa, who became his assistant at surgeries and in his Doctor's office. He practiced medicine, specializing in venereal and other infectious diseases from 1915 to 1919.
Bulgakov wrote about his experiences as a doctor in his early works "Notes of a Young Doctor." In 1917-1919, he suffered from an infection that caused him an unbearable painful itch requiring him to take morphine; which he became addicted to, but he managed to overcome the dependency and quit. He joined the anti-communist White Army in the Russian Civil War. After the Civil War, he tried to emigrate from Russia, to reunite with his brother in Paris. But he became trapped in Soviet Russia. Several times he was almost killed by opposing forces on both sides of the Russian Civil War, but soldiers needed doctors, so Bulgakov was left alive. He provided medical help to the Chehchens, Caucasians, Cossacs, Russians, the Whites, the Reds... Bulgakov was the Doctor to all the sick people.
In 1921, Bulgakov moved to Moscow. There he became a writer and made friends with Valentin Kataev, Yuriy Olesha, Ilya Ilf, Yevgeni Petrov, and Konstantin Paustovsky. Later, he met Mikhail Zoschenko, Anna Akhmatova, Viktor Ardov, Sergey Mikhalkov, and Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy. Bulgakov's plays at the Moscow Art Theatre were directed by Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. "Days of the Turbins," about the demise of the White Army, was performed more than 200 times at the Moscow Art Theatre, and also at other Soviet theatres until it was banned.
The play was later restored to the repertoire and at least fifteen performances of this play were attended by Joseph Stalin. Stalin liked the play and later, in his official speeches, he used some of the well-written lines that were spoken from the stage by the Bulgakov's characters. In 1941, after the Nazi invasion in Russia during the Second World War, Joseph Stalin started his first radio address to the people of the Soviet Union with Bulgakov's words from the play, "Brothers and Sisters..."
Bulgakov's political independence was expressed in his article on the death of the first Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin, "He killed a river of people..." wrote Bulgakov in 1924.
Bugakov's own way of life and his witty criticism of the ugly realities of life in the Soviet Union caused him much trouble. In 1925 he released 'Heart of a Dog', a bitter satire about the loss of civilized values in Russia under the Soviet system. Soon after, Bulgakov was interrogated by the Soviet secret service, OGPU. After interrogations, his personal diary and several unfinished works were confiscated by the secret service.
His plays were banned in all theaters, which terminated his income. Being financially broke, he wrote to his brother in Paris about his terrible life and poverty in Moscow. Bulgakov distanced himself from the Proletariat Writer's Union because he refused to write about the peasants and proletariat. He made adaptation of the "Dead Souls" by Nikolay Gogol for the stage; it became a success but was abruptly banned.
He took a risk and wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin with an ultimatum: "Let me out of the Soviet Union, or restore my work at the theaters." On the 18th of April of 1930, Bulgakov received a telephone call from Joseph Stalin. The dictator told the writer to fill an employment application at the Moscow Art Theater. Gradually, Bulgakov's plays were back in the repertoire of the Moscow Art Theatre. But most other theatres were in fear and did not stage any of the Bulgakov's plays for many years.
Joseph Stalin, who was increasingly paranoid, ordered massive extermination of intellectuals during the repressions known as the "Great Terror" (aka.. Great Purge). Many of Bulgakov's friends and colleagues, like Vladimir Mayakovsky, Osip Mandelstam, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoschenko and many others were censored, banned, prosecuted, exiled, imprisoned, executed, found dead, or just disappeared without a trace.
At that time Bulgakov started his masterpiece - "Master and Margarita." It was slowly evolving from the series of chapters, initially titled "The Black Magician" in 1929. That was changed to "The Prince of Darkness" in 1930. Then it was changed again to "The Great Chancellor" in 1934. Finally, the novel was titled as "Master and Margarita" in 1934 and was rewritten and updated constantly until the writer's death in 1940.
While writing the novel, Bulgakov met Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya, who became his wife. She was, in part, the model for Margarita in the novel. Secret service agents were spying on Bulgakov and learned about his new novel. Bulgakov was interrogated again and was ordered to destroy the manuscript under the threat from the government agents. He had to be very cautious. Bulgakov split the manuscript in two parts and destroyed one half in a fire.
Soon, he restored the missing part from memory and continued writing the novel. He was writing the novel in secrecy, hiding its manuscript for many years until his death in 1940. The main character in the novel, Voland, alludes to Stalin, or Beria, or any dictator who plays a semi-god. Voland was modeled after Satan in "Faust" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The novel has many parallels with the Bible and the "Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri. The characters and events in "Master and Margarita" are alluding to Bulgakov's experiences in Moscow under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.
Five days before his death, Bulgakov accepted an unusual promise from his loving wife. She swore to live a humble life and wait as long as it would take for Bulgakov's masterpiece to be published. The original manuscript of "The Master and Margarita" was preserved by Bulgakov's wife, Elena Sergeevna, until its first publication in 1966. It is a Menippean satire, a cross-genre comedy, drama, and fantasy, regarded by many as the best of the 20th century Russian novels.
Mikhail Bulgakov died of a kidney failure, on March 10, 1940, in Moscow. He was laid to rest in the Novodevichy Monastery Cemetery, next to other Russian cultural luminaries. - Writer
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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in 1860, the third of six children to a family of a grocer, in Taganrog, Russia, a southern seaport and resort on the Azov Sea. His father, a 3rd-rank Member of the Merchant's Guild, was a religious fanatic and a tyrant who used his children as slaves. Young Chekhov was a part-time assistant in his father's business and also a singer in a church choir. At age 15, he was abandoned by his bankrupt father and lived alone for 3 years while finishing the Classical Gymnazium in Taganrog. Chekhov obtained a scholarship at the Moscow University Medical School in 1879, from which he graduated in 1884 as a Medical Doctor. He practiced general medicine for about ten years.
While a student, Chekhov published numerous short stories and humorous sketches under a pseudonym. He reserved his real name for serious medical publications, saying "medicine is my wife; literature - a mistress." While a doctor, he kept writing and had success with his first books, and his first play "Ivanov." He gradually decreased his medical practice in favor of writing. Chekhov created his own style based on objectivity, brevity, originality, and compassion. It was different from the mainstream Russian literature's scrupulous analytical depiction of "heroes." Chekhov used a delicate fabric of hints, subtle nuances in dialogs, and precise details. He described his original style as an "objective manner of writing." He avoided stereotyping and instructive political messages in favor of cool comic irony. Praised by writers Lev Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov, he was awarded the Pushkin Prize from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1888.
In 1890, Chekhov made a lengthy journey to Siberia and to the remote prison-island of Sakhalin. There, he surveyed thousands of convicts and conducted research for a dissertation about the life of prisoners. His research grew bigger than a dissertation, and in 1894, he published a detailed social-analytical essay on the Russian penitentiary system in Siberia and the Far East, titled "Island of Sakhalin." Chekhov's valuable research was later used and quoted by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his "Gulag Archipelago." In 1897-1899, Chekhov returned to his medical practice in order to stop the epidemic of cholera.
Chekhov developed special relationship with Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko at the Moscow Art Theater. He emerged as a mature playwright who influenced the modern theater. In the plays "Uncle Vanya," "Three Sisters," "Seagull," and "Cherry Orchard," he mastered the use of understatement, anticlimax, and implied emotion. The leading actress of the Moscow Art Theater, Olga Knipper-Chekhova, became his wife. In 1898, Chekhov moved to his Mediterranean-style home at the Black Sea resort of Yalta in the Crimea. There he was visited by writers Lev Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Ivan Bunin, and artists Konstantin Korovin and Isaac Levitan.- Writer
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Anatoli Lunacharsky was born on 24 November 1875 in Poltava, Russian Empire [now Ukraine]. He was a writer and actor, known for Salamander (1928), Slesar i kantsler (1924) and Congestion (1918). He died on 26 December 1933 in Menton, France.- Writer
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Darya Dontsova is a Russian writer of detective novels, scriptwriter, TV presenter and member of the Union of Writers of Russia.
Since early childhood parents were trying to teach Dontsova music and literature. For a start she was taken to music school and there the headmistress, having listened to the girl, said that "for the first time faced with such a case, when the bear came not on the ear, and sat on her head entirely and sits there until now." Then parents, as a music fan themselves, began to take Dontsova to the conservatory, theater, opera and ballet.
At school, Dontsova, according to her, did not enjoy a special prestige among classmates. She was very good at the humanities and foreign languages, but she was very bad at the mathematical sciences. Even before she went to school, she had two governesses. One was an ethnic German woman, the second - a Frenchwoman, and that is why the two did not speak Russian. So before going to school Dontsova learned to speak German and French well. However, she was more successful in learning German when in 1964 went with her father to Germany,she brought a bunch of detectives, that is why many detective classics - Dick Francis, Rex Stout, Georgette Heyer, James Hadley Chase - Dontsova first read in German.
Due to the fact that her father was a writer, Dontsova all summer vacation spent in Peredelkino.She was a very close friend with Valentin Kataev granddaughter and also she made friends with Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy.- Mariya Semyonova is known for Wolfhound (2006), Requital: Revenge of a Hero (2006) and Molodoy Volkodav (2007).
- Nikolai Leskov was born in 1831, in Gorokhovo, Orel province, Russia. His parents belonged to Russian gentry and owned an estate with serfs. He was a Gymnasium student until the age of 15. In 1846 his father died and a disastrous fire destroyed the family estate and ruined him financially. Leskov served as a court clerk in Orel and in Kiev. In 1853 he married Olga Smirnova; they had two children and separated in 1860. His job at an English firm made him travel to remote regions of Russia, where he also collected the material for his writings.
Leskov absorbed the knowledge of the folk traditions and legends from his childhood. His exposure to vernacular speech of peasants has marked his highly original literary style. His writing career began in St. Petersburg, where he settled in 1861. Leskov published short stories with moderate liberal messages. His travels in Europe strengthened his opposition to the conservatives in Russia. His first novel "Nowhere" (Nekuda, 1864) was written in Prague. Leskov was critical of the Russian Orthodox Church for its rigid conservatism and it's corrupt clerics. His views caused him a loss of many publishing contracts, but Leskov was consistent in his independent position. He joined Lev Tolstoy in a call for separation of Church and State. That caused his dismissal after 10 years of exemplary work for the Imperial Department of Education. At that time he lived in a civil union with Katherina Bubnova. They had a son, Andrei Leskov, who became his biographer, and the keeper of the writer's archive.
Leskov was a master of colloquial Russian. He investigated the dark and mysterious sides of passion in "Lady Makbeth of Mtsensk" (1865). He explored religious piety of an Orthodox monk in "Enchanted Wanderer" (Zacharovanny Strannik, 1873). Leskov made literary portraits of the corrupt and drunk clerics of the Orthodox Church, weird revolutionaries, and terrible social conditions in Russia. His truthfulness triggered attacks on the writer from all parties, and he almost became a literary outcast. His masterpiece "Lefty" (The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea, 1881) was highly regarded by Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekhov, who considered Leskov his teacher. Conservative Russian press labeled Leskov a heretic for his vegetarianism, "organic life philosophy" and "love of the world". He was the disciple of Lev Tolstoy. Leskov died of a rare form of breast cancer that affects men. He was buried at the Volkovo Cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russia. - Writer
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Nikolai A. Nekrasov, one of Russian poetry's most eloquent voices who survived through child abuse and poverty in his youth, became a successful publisher and author of some of the most mellifluent verses about women.
He was born Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov on December 10, 1821, in Nemirov, Yaroslav province, Russia. His father was a Russian Army officer, his mother, Alexandra Zakrevska, was from Warsaw and belonged to Polish Gentry. Young Nekrasov grew up on ancestral estate, Greshnevo, near the Volga River, where he witnessed the hard labor of the Volga boatmen. He was abused by his tyrannical father, who's drunken rages against his serfs and his wife, caused traumatic experience and later affected Nekrasov's writing. Thanks to his mother's love and support, young Nekrasov managed to survive through the traumatic experiences of his childhood and youth. He admired his mother and expressed his love and empathy to all women through his poetry. He studied at the St. Petersburg University, when his father abruptly cut his support. At that time Nekrasov had to live in a shelter for homeless.
His first book of poetry was met with harsh criticism from V. G. Belinsky. Nekrasov was devastated and depressed, he removed all the copies of his failed book from booksellers. He joined the staff of "Otechestvennye Zapiski" (Notes of Fatherland), where his former critic V. G. Belinsky was the principal literary expert. They soon became friends and Nekrasov was promoted to an editing position. He edited the first novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky "Poor Folk" (1845). In 1846 Nekrasov acquired the "Sovremennik" (The Contemporary) magazine, which was originally founded by Alexander Pushkin. From 1846-1866 he was the publisher of "Sovremennik" and made it one the most reputable magazines of the 19th century Russia. In it Nekrasov published his own novels and poems, as well as the works of Ivan Turgenev, Lev Tolstoy, and other Russian writers. In 1866 "Sovremennik" was shut down by the Tsar's government in connection with the political prosecution of its editor Nikolai Chernyshevsky. After that Nekrasov became an independent writer and entered the most productive period in his life.
Nikolai A. Nekrasov's best poems, such as "Russian Women" (1871-72), "Who's Happy in Russia" (1873-76), and "Last Songs" (1877), stand out among the 19th century Russian poetry. Nekrasov was praised by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who compared him to Mikhail Lermontov and Alexander Pushkin. In his later years Nekrasov suffered from chronic bronchitis and its complications; he had to travel to Italy and Arfica for convalescence, but never completely recovered. He died of complications after an unsuccessful cancer surgery on January 8, 1878, in St. Petersburg, and was laid to rest in the Novodevichy Convent Cemetery in St. Petersburg. Nekrasov's home in St. Petersburg, Russia, an important literary club of his time, is now a National Literary Museum.- Alexander Melentjewitsch Volkov was the son of a former Russian sergeant and was born in today's Kazakhstan. His father taught him to read when he was four years old. He graduated from elementary school at the age of 12 at the top of his class and began studying mathematics in Tomsk in 1907. After completing his studies in 1910, he became a teacher first in Kolyvan in the Altai and then in Ust-Kamenogorsk at his former school.
In the 1920s, Volkov became school director in Yaroslavl, and in 1929 deputy head of the Workers' Faculty (Rabfak) in Moscow. At the same time, he passed several mathematics exams at the University of Moscow. From 1933 to 1953 he worked first as a lecturer, then as a lecturer at the chair for higher mathematics at the "State Institute for Non-ferrous Metals and Gold".
From 1917 Volkov also published literary works. In the 1930s he began learning the English language and quickly began translating English as well as French literature into Russian. Volkov made a name for himself primarily as a translator of the works of Jules Verne. The planned translation of Lyman Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" became an independent retelling in which he took many things from the original, left out others and added others. So the story is missing in the porcelain city, but there is an encounter with a cannibal. The Munchkins become different races under the rule of the four witches, who are assigned different colors and characteristics. It was first published in 1939. A revised new edition appeared in 1959, now with the illustrations by Leonid Wladimirsky, which are no less important for the outstanding success.
After the new edition, there was an increasing desire for more stories. Volkov fulfilled these wishes, but now no longer retold any more of Baum's Oz stories, but created his own stories ("Magic Land series"), although he occasionally took over ideas from Baum's works. Already in the first sequel (1963) - "The Cunning Urfin and His Wooden Soldiers" - with the villain Urfin, Volkov created one of the most popular characters in Russian children's literature and one of the most complex villains in children's literature at all. By 1976, a total of five sequels to the original story followed. In the three later volumes, the main character switched from the original protagonist Elli to her younger sister Anne. Both traveled to the magic land mostly from different routes with different companions.
Among other things, what was special about Volkow's work was that the focus was always on an American girl and yet the class-struggle criticism was almost non-existent, although the human adventurers in magic land always fought alongside the simple and oppressed people. This in turn was ruled by witches, wizards and magical figures of their own free will, without there having been a social problem. This also makes Volkov's books something special among Russian children's literature. The success of the series was not only immense in the Soviet Union, but also in Eastern Europe, such as East Germany, the series is extremely popular to this day. In China or Arabia, Volkov's magic world is still far better known than the world created by Baum. - Writer
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Edvard Radzinsky was born on 23 September 1936 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]. He is a writer and director, known for Kazhdyy vecher v odinnadtsat (1969), Eshchyo raz pro lyubov (1968) and Ulitsa Nyutona, dom 1 (1963).- Writer
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Boris Akunin was born on 20 May 1956 in Zestafoni, Georgian SSR, USSR. He is a writer and producer, known for The Spy (2012), The Turkish Gambit (2005) and The Turkish Gambit (2006).- Sergei Dovlatov was born on 3 September 1941 in Ufa, Bashkir ASSR, RSFSR, USSR [now Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia]. He was a writer, known for The End of a Beautiful Epoch (2015), Po pryamoy (1992) and Napisano Sergeyem Dovlatovym (2012). He died on 24 August 1990 in New York City, New York, USA.
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Eduard Limonov was born on 22 February 1943 in Dzerzhinsk, Gorky Oblast, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia]. He was a writer and actor, known for Russkoe (2004), Des Teufels Kinder (2011) and Symphony of Donbass (2015). He was married to Ekaterina Volkova, Nataliya Medvedeva, Yelena Shchapova and Anna Rubinshtein. He died on 17 March 2020 in Moscow, Russia.- Writer
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Ilya Ilf was born Ilya Arnoldovich Fayzilberg on October 15, 1897, in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Odesa, Ukraine). His father, named Arnold Fayzilberg, was a clerk at a bank. In 1913, he graduated from a Technical School. He worked as a clerk, a telephone technician, and had various industrial jobs in Odessa. After the Russian Revolution, he became an accountant and statistician, then joined a satirical magazine 'Sindetikon' and became a journalist. He published his first poems under a female pseudonym.
In 1923, Ilf moved to Moscow and became staff journalist for the 'Gudok'newspaper. There he met such writers, as Mikhail A. Bulgakov and Yuriy Olesha among others. In 1925, he met Yevgeni Petrov, and a year later, they started writing together. Their first novel titled 'Dvenadtsat Stulev' (Twelve Chairs) was published in 1928. Its main character, named Ostap Bender, became a popular synonym for a charming and smooth criminal. The book had instant success with the general public but was bashed by the Soviet critics because it satirized the loss of civility and described degradation of cultural values in the Soviet Union. The book was praised by such writers as Vladimir Mayakovsky and later by Vladimir Nabokov. Their second novel by Ilf and Petrov was 'Zolotoi Telenok' (Golden Calf), published in 1931, in a magazine, then in 1933, as a book. Both novels became best sellers in the Soviet Union. Several film and TV adaptations were made in the Soviet Union by such directors as Leonid Gaidai and Mark Zakharov, among others. In 1970, an American adaptation was made by director Mel Brooks starring Frank Langella as Ostap Bender. The character Ostap Bender was portrayed by such renown Russian actors as Sergey Yurskiy, Archil Gomiashvili, Andrey Mironov, and Oleg Menshikov.
During 1933-1934, Ilf and Petrov traveled across Europe. In 1935, they made a journey by car about the United States, which gave them material for a popular book 'Odnoetazhnaya Amerika' (The One-Story America 1937). Ilya Ilf died of tuberculosis on April 13, 1937. His partner, Yevgeni Petrov, died in a plane crash on July 2, 1942, on a flight from Sevastopol to Moscow.
In 1948, Andrei Zhdanov attacked many Soviet intellectuals and banned the books of Ilf and Petrov among others. The Communist Party ordered their books banned and removed from all public libraries across the Soviet Union. Eight years later, the ban was lifted during the political "Thaw" initiated by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956.- Writer
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Yevgeni Petrov was born Evgeni Petrovich Kataev on November 30, 1902, in Odessa, Russian Empire (Now Odesa, Ukraine). His father, named Petr Kataev, was a teacher. Petrov graduated from Classical Gymnasium in 1920, and became a news correspondent for the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency. From 1921-1923 he was a criminologist and homicide inspector in Odessa. In 1923 Petrov moved to Moscow and became a journalist in a Soviet magazine "Krasny Perets" (Red Pepper). With the help from his brother, Valentin Kataev, who was already a popular writer, Petrov made connections in the Moscow literary milieu.
In 1925 he met Ilya Ilf and a year later they started writing together. Their first novel titled 'Dvenadtsat Stulev' (Twelve Chairs) was published in 1928. It's main character, named Ostap Bender, became a popular synonym for a charming and smooth criminal. The book had instant success with the general public, but was bashed by the Soviet critics, because it satirized the loss of civility and degradation of cultural values in the Soviet Union. The book was praised by such writers as Vladimir Mayakovsky and later by Vladimir Nabokov. Their second novel by Ilf and Petrov was 'Zolotoi Telenok' (Golden Calf), published in 1931, in a magazine, then in 1933, as a book. Both novels became bestsellers in the Soviet Union. Several film and TV adaptations were made in the Soviet Union by such directors as Leonid Gaidai and Mark Zakharov, among others. In 1970, an American adaptation was made by director Mel Brooks starring Frank Langella as Ostap Bender. The character of Ostap Bender was portrayed by such renown Russian actors as Sergey Yurskiy, Archil Gomiashvili, Andrey Mironov, and Oleg Menshikov.
In 1933-1934 Ilf and Petrov traveled across Europe. In 1935 they made a journey by car about the United States, which gave them material for a popular book 'Odnoetazhnaya Amerika' (The One-Storey America 1937). Ilya Ilf died of tuberculosis on April 13, 1937. His partner, Yevgeni Petrov, died in a plane crash on July 2, 1942, on a flight from Sevastopol to Moscow.
In 1948 Andrei Zhdanov attacked many Soviet intellectuals and banned the books of Ilf and Petrov among others. The Communist Party ordered their books banned and removed from all public libraries across the Soviet Union. Eight years later the ban was lifted during the political "Thaw" initiated by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956.- Russian novelist and playwright Valentin Katayev was born in 1897 in the Ukraine, to a middle-class background: his father was a schoolteacher and his grandfather was a general in the Czarist army. He joined the army in 1917 during World War I, was assigned to an artillery unit, and was wounded twice. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 he joined the Bolshevik side, and fought with their forces in the Ukraine against the White Russian army. His innate stubborn streak resulted in several clashes with his superiors about his not being Communist "enough", and at one point he was arrested by the Cheka--the Communist secret police--and spent almost a year in one of their prisons.
In 1922 he moved to Moscow to work, and met a woman whom he married the next year. He worked as a journalist, screenwriter and librettist for several comic operas. At one time he wrote nursery rhymes for children's' books to earn a living. His first novel, "The Embezzlers", was published in 1929, and he wrote several more hit plays, including "Squaring the Circle", a farce that has been performed more than 6,000 times in Europe and the US, and over 1000 times in Russia alone.
He died in Moscow, Russia, on April 12, 1986. - Writer
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Mikhail Sholokhov was a Russian writer who received a Nobel prize for his epic novel 'Tikhiy Don'.
He was born in 1905 into a Cossack family of farmers in Kruzhilin, Veshenskaya, Rostov province in Southern Russia. His high school studies were interrupted by the Russian revolution and the Civil War, in which he fought on the side of the revolutionaries and joined the Red Army. From 1922-24 he lived in Moscow, where he attended "writers seminars" and published his early works: "A Test" and "The Birthmark". In 1924 he married Maria Gromoslavskaya in his native town, and the couple had four children.
His first book, "Donskie Rasskazy" (1925), exposed the bitter divide among the Russian people during and after the Civil War. His epic novel "And Quiet Flows the Don", published in parts during 1928-40, shows the turbulent life of Cossacks during the dramatic events of the Russian revolution and Civil War. The main character, Grigori Melekhov, was based on a historical prototype, 'Kharlampi Ermakov', a Cossack who opposed the Communists and was imprisoned and executed in 1929. Sholokhov's account of the conflict between Cossacks and Communists caused a suspension of publication in 1929, but he managed to get permission from Joseph Stalin to continue the publication. The novel had over 100 million copies in print, translated in 90+ languages worldwide.
Sholokhov was only 22 in 1928, when he delivered the massive manuscript of "Quiet Flows the Don" (book 1) to a Soviet publisher. It took him almost 14 years to complete the novel of four books in 1940. This led to a suggestion by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that Sholokhov used the work of another Cossack writer, Fyodor Kryukov (who died in 1920), for some parts of this epic work.
Sholokhov had a lifelong political career. He was a co-chairman of the Soviet Writers Union from the 1930s to his death in 1984. He traveled in western Europe on several occasions, and also accompanied Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to the US in 1959. He was awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize for Literature for his novels and stories about the Cossacks in Russia, becoming the first and only officially sanctioned Soviet writer to win the honor.
Sholokhov took a hardline position against dissident writers, such as Boris Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Sinyavsky and Daniel. In 1965 he joined the side of Leonid Brezhnev in the restoration of the political image of Joseph Stalin. Such restoration was opposed by such figures as Andrei Sakharov, Valentin Kataev, Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy, Oleg Efremov, and Maya Plisetskaya. Sholokhov remained a hard-liner during the 60s and 70s. In late 70s he suffered from diabetes and had a stroke, and later developed a throat cancer. He was in denial of his medical condition. Shortly before his death he rejected the doctor's advise and interrupted his treatment at the Kremlin Hospital. Instead, he returned to his native village and died there on February 21, 1984.- Aleksandr Kuprin was born on 7 September 1870 in Narovchat, Penza Governorate, Russian Empire [now Penza Oblast, Russia]. He was a writer, known for Trus (1914), Granatovyy braslet (1965) and Sisters of the Gion (1936). He was married to Yelizaveta Maritsovna Geinrikh and Maria Karlovna Davydova. He died on 25 August 1938 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR [now St. Petersburg, Russia].
- Aleksandr Belyaev was born on 16 March 1884 in Smolensk, Russian Empire [now Russia]. He was a writer, known for The Amphibian, Amphibian Man (1961) and Zaveshchaniye professora Douelya (1984). He was married to Margarita Konstantinovna Belyaeva, Vera Belyaeva and Anna Iwanowna Stankevich. He died on 6 January 1942 in Pushkin, Leningrad, USSR.
- Lazar Lagin was born on 4 December 1903 in Vitebsk, Russian Empire [now Belarus]. He was a writer, known for The Flying Carpet (1957), Masters of Russian Animation - Volume 1 (2000) and Zhil-byl Kozyavin (1966). He died on 4 June 1979 in Moscow, USSR [now Russia].
- Aleksandr Vampilov was born on 19 August 1937 in Kutulik, Irkutsk province, USSR [now Russia]. He was a writer, known for Valentina (1981), Farewell in June (2003) and The Elder Son (2006). He died on 17 August 1972 in Lake Baikal, USSR [now Russia].
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Writer and historian. Received a Master's degree in 1965 and a Ph.D. in 1981. Wrote a first science fiction story in 1965. From 1963 worked in the Institute of Oriental Studies. Also worked as an interpreter and a script writer for over 20 movies and cartoons. Up to date he wrote hundreds of novells and short stories, mostly science fiction.- Stepan Zlobin was born on 24 November 1903 in Moscow, Russian Empire [now Russia]. Stepan was a writer, known for Salavat Yulayev (1941). Stepan died on 15 September 1965 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia].
- Fazil Iskander was born on 6 March 1929 in Chegem, SSR Abkhaziya, USSR. He was a writer and actor, known for Rasstanemsya - poka khoroshie (1991), Chegemuri detektivi (1986) and Malenkiy gigant bolshogo seksa (1993). He was married to Antonina Khlebnikov. He died on 31 July 2016 in Moscow, Russia.
- Andrey Platonov was born on 20 August 1899 in Voronezh, Russian Empire [now Russia]. He was a writer, known for Revolt in the Desert (1931), Three Brothers (1981) and Television Theater (1953). He died on 5 January 1951 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia].
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Yulian Semyonov was born on 8 October 1931 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]. He was a writer and assistant director, known for Solaris (1972), Noch na 14-y paralleli (1971) and Po tonkomu ldu (1966). He died on 5 September 1993.- Nikolai M. Karamzin was born on 12 December 1766 in Mikhailovka, Kazan Governorate, Russian Empire [now Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia]. Nikolai M. was a writer, known for Poor Liza (2000), Boris Godunov (2013) and Bednaya Liza (1967). Nikolai M. died on 3 June 1826 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire [now Russia].
- Pyotr Ershov is known for Upon the Magic Roads (2021), The Little Humpbacked Horse (1962) and Konyok-gorbunok (1941).
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Sergey Mikhalkov was born on 13 March 1913 in Moscow, Russian Empire [now Russia]. He was a writer and art director, known for The Saint (1997), The Hunt for Red October (1990) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). He was married to Yulia Valerievna Subbotina, Yulia Valerievna Subbotha and Natalia Petrovna Konchalovskaya. He died on 27 August 2009 in Moscow, Russia.- Andrey Nekrasov is known for Adventures of Captain Vrungel (1976).
- Leonid Panteleev was born in 1908 in St.Petersburg, Russia. He was a writer, known for Zolotye chasy (1970), They Met on the Road (1957) and The Republic of ShKID (1966). He died in 1988 in Russia.
- Lyudmila Ulitskaya was born on 21 February 1943 in Davlekanovo, Bashkir ASSR, RSFSR, USSR [now Bashkortostan, Russia]. He is a writer, known for Umirat legko (1999), Niotkuda s lyubovyu, ili Vesyolye pokhorony (2006) and Sestrichki Liberti (1991).
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Zakhar Prilepin is an award-winning novelist, essayist, journalist, political activist, TV presenter, actor and musician. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages and sold worldwide. Named Writer of the Year in 2016, he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Bestseller Award, Yasnaya Polyana and many others. Many of Prilepin's works have been turned into stage plays and feature films.
"Probably the most important writer in modern Russia, a sensitive and intelligent critic of his country's condition." - Newsweek.
Prilepin has hosted several popular TV shows including the interview series Tea with Zakhar on TsarGrad TV, a popular music show Salt on Ren TV and a political program Russian Lessons on NTV. The shows are available on YouTube.
Formerly a darling of Western literary critics and political commentators on Putin's Russia, in 2014 he attracted considerable wrath and ostracism for his stance on Crimea and the conflict in the East of Ukraine.
He first went to the war-torn region of Donbass in 2014 as a journalist and published articles about the conflict in several media outlets including Komsomolskaya Pravda and Svobodnaya Pressa, which he edits. Being familiar with the situation there, he then started to gather and supply humanitarian aid to the people of the Donbass region, as well as military aid to the rebels. Finally, in 2016 he joined the rebel forces as a deputy commander of one of the volunteer battalions and remains there to this day.- Actor
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Dmitriy Bykov is known for Devstvennost (2008), Poshchyochina, kotoroy ne bylo (1987) and Russia's Open Book: Writing in the Age of Putin (2013).- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian writer who was imprisoned for his criticism of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and later exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile.
He was born Aleksandr Isaakovich Solzhenitsyn on December 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk, Southern Russia. He was born six months after the tragic death of his father, who was an Army artillery officer. His mother spoke English and French, she encouraged Solzhenitsyn's interest in literature and science. Since 1937 he was writing chapters for his book about the First World War. In 1936-1941 he studied at the Rostov State University, graduating with degrees in mathematics and physics. In 1939- 1941 he also took correspondence courses in literature from the
During the Second World War Solzhenitsyn served as an artillery captain in the Red Army. He was involved in major battles at the front as a commander of an artillery unit, and was twice decorated for courage. In February of 1945 he was fighting against the Nazis on the territory of East Prussia. There he was arrested by the Soviet secret service, because they opened all his private letters and found one line critical of Joseph Stalin. Solzhenitsyn was tried in his absence by a three-man tribunal of the Soviet security police and was sentenced to 8 years of prison just for describing Joseph Stalin as a "man with mustache" in a private letter to a friend.
Solzhenitsyn spent 8 years in Soviet Gulag prison-camps. There he was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach. He was forced to work as a miner, a bricklayer, a foundry-man, and as a mathematician. His mathematical skills really saved his life, because he was released from prison-camp and was eventually used in the secret "sharashka" prison-camp for scientists. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 he was sent to a Tashkent hospital for tumor removal and radiation therapy. He described his experience of the treatment and recovery from cancer in his novel 'Cancer Ward'. Solzhenitsyn was secretly writing a thorough account of his life in prison-camps. That became the content of his first official publication in 1962. He gave Aleksandr Tvardovsky his autobiographical story 'One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' which was allowed for publication after personal permission from Nikita Khrushchev. That one sensational publication gave Solzhenitsyn a brief chance to publish one more small work during the "Thaw" that was initiated by Nikita Khrushchev.
In 1964 Nikita Khrushchev was dismissed by Leonid Brezhnev and neo-Stalinist hard liners. Solzhenitsyn fell under suspicion and was in danger again. At that time he took a risk and arranged that his manuscripts of autobiographical books 'First Circle' and 'Cancer Ward' were secretly smuggled out of the Soviet Union, and published in the West. But at home, his writings were confiscated by the KGB in 1965 and banned. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but could not go outside of the Soviet Union, and could not receive the award until several years later. Meanwhile he was wanted by the KGB, because he was officially restricted from being in Moscow and was secretly living in the dacha of Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya.
Solzhenitsyn was one of the leading dissidents in the Soviet Union, and was active against the Soviet Communist regime. His main work 'Gulag Archipelago' (1973), being inspired by the academic work of Anton Chekhov titled 'Island of Sakhalin' (1895). After the publication of 'Gulag Archipelago' abroad in 1973, he was arrested again, and charged with "anti-Soviet" treason, then exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He lived mostly in Cavendish, Vermont, USA, until after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then he was invited by the new Russian president Boris Yeltsin and his Russian citizenship was restored. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994 and was granted a suburban house in Moscow. His wife and three sons remained American citizens.
Back in Moscow, Solzhenitsyn enjoyed full recognition and wide publication of all his works. He was an active and important figure in Russian society, because of his independent position and sharp criticism of the declining state of affairs in Russia. He refused to take award from the Russian president Boris Yeltsin. His weekly TV show was canceled. His provocative and controversial two-volume history of Russian-Jewish relations ignited debates, which included little praise, but substantial criticism from both sides. His autobiographical novel 'First Circle' was made into a TV-movie and shown on the Russian national TV in 2006.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at age 89, on August 3, 2008, at his home near Moscow. His death caused a considerable mourning in Russia, especially among the Russian conservatives and Orthodox Christians. Solzhenitsyn received a state funeral and was laid to rest in Donskoy Convent cemetery in Moscow, Russia. - Writer
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Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow on February 10, 1890 into an artistic family of Russian-Jewish heritage. His father was an acclaimed artist named Leonid Pasternak, who converted to Christianity, and his mother was a renown concert pianist named Rosa Kaufman. Their home was open to family friends such as composers Sergei Rachmaninoff and Aleksandr Skryabin as well as writers Rilke and Lev Tolstoy. Pasternak had a happy childhood, being brought up by prominent intellectuals in a cosmopolitan atmosphere. He studied music at the Moscow Conservatory and philosophy at the University of Marburg, Germany. In 1914 he returned to Moscow and published his first collection of poems. His work at a chemical factory in the Urals during WWI was later used as material for his novel "Doctor Zhivago".
In 1917 he fell in love with a Jewish girl and wrote "My Sister Life", a collection of passionate metaphoric poems that brought him international recognition and had an impact upon Russian Symbolist and Futurist poetry. Pasternak cautiously supported the Russian revolution, but was shocked with the brutality of communists. His parents and sisters emigrated to Europe in 1921. During the "Great Terror" of 1930s, Pasternak became disillusioned with the Soviet reality. He came under severe political attack and devoted himself to making translations of classic works: Shakespeare's "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "King Lear", Goethe's "Faust", as well as Paul Verlaine, Rainer Maria Rilke and other Western poets. His translations of Georgian poets favored by Joseph Stalin probably saved his life. Stalin spoke with Pasternak in 1934 over the phone, and questioned his association with poet Osip Mandelstam, who was executed upon Stalin's order. Later Stalin crossed Pasternak's name off the arrest list, quoted as saying "Don't touch this cloud dweller", alluding to his book "The Twin in the Clouds".
During 1940s-50s Pasternak wrote his autobiographic novel "Doctor Zhivago". A model for Lara in the novel was the poet's muse, beautiful and kind Olga Iwinskaja, an editor at "Novy Mir" magazine. In 1949, when she was pregnant by Pasternak, she was arrested by KGB on false accusations of "spying" and spent 4 years in prison-camp. Their unborn baby was lost, and Pasternak suffered a heart attack. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Olga Iwinskaja was released and reunited with Pasternak, who completed "Doctor Zhivago". He tried to publish it in the Soviet magazine "Novy Mir", but was rejected. The manuscript of "Doctor Zhivago" was secretly smuggled out of the Soviet Union and was first published in Italy in 1957.
Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. But Soviet authorities declared him a "traitor" and attacked him with a campaign of persecution, terrorizing Pasternak up until his death in 1960. He was so abused by the Soviet authorities, that he became unable to go to accept the Nobel Prize and was forced to decline the honor. He lived the life of fear and insecurity that was imposed upon him and millions of others under the Soviet totalitarian system. He ended his life in poverty and a virtual exile in an artist's community of Peredelkino near Moscow. His last poems are devoted to love, to freedom, and to reconciliation with God. Pasternak was rehabilitated posthumously in 1987. In 1988, after being banned in the Soviet Union for three decades, "Doctor Zhivago" was published in the same "Novy Mir" magazine as a sign of changing times. In 1989 Pasternak's son accepted his father's Nobel Prize medal in Stockholm.- Writer
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Nikolai Leonov was born on 18 June 1933 in Moscow, USSR. He was a writer, known for Odin i bez oruzhiya (1984), Traktir na Pyatnitskoy (1978) and Ippodrom (1980). He died on 13 April 1999 in Moscow, Russia.- Dmitri Merezhkovsky was born on 14 August 1865 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire [now Russia]. He was a writer, known for The Patriot (1928), Devi gory (1919) and Yulian Otstupnik (1917). He was married to Zinaida Gippius. He died on 9 December 1941 in Paris, France.
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Yevgeni Yevtushenko (Evgeni Evtushenko) is a Russian poet, writer, actor, and film director who is best known for his poem 'Babi Yar' and the eponymous symphony made in collaboration with composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
He was born Yevgeni Aleksandrovich Gangnus (later he took his mother's last name, Evtushenko) on July 18, 1933 in Zima, Irkutsk region, Siberia, Russia. His maternal grandfather, named Ermolai Naumovich Evtushenko, was a Red Army officer during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. His father, named Aleksandr Rudolfovich Gangnus, was a geologist, as well as his mother, named Zinaida Ermolaevna Evtushenko; who later became a singer. He accompanied his father on geological expeditions to Kazakhstan in 1948, and to Altai, Siberia, in 1950.
Young Yevtushenko wrote his first verses and humorous songs "chastushki" while living in Zima, Siberia. After the Second World War Yevtushenko moved to Moscow. From 1951-1954 he studied at the Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow, from which he dropped out. In 1952 he joined the Union of Soviet Writers after publication of his first collection of poetry. His early poem 'So mnoyu chto-to proiskhodit' (Someting is happening to me) became a very popular song, in performance by actor-songwriter Aleksandr Dolsky. In 1955 Yevtushenko wrote a poem about the Soviet borders being an obstacle in his life. He was banned from traveling, but gained wide popularity with the Russian public. His first important publication was the poem 'Stantsiya Zima' (Zima Junction 1956).
His success grew after the 1956 speech by Nikita Khrushchev denouncing Joseph Stalin. Khrushchev declared a cultural "Thaw" that allowed some freedom of expression. Yevtushenko's powerful poem "Nasledniki Stalina" (The Heirs of Stalin) claimed that the atmosphere of Stalinism was still dominating the country. It was initially published in the communist paper 'Pravda' in 1961, and was immediately censored. Yevtushenko became one of the most famous poets of the 50's and 60's in the Soviet Union. He was part of the 60's generation, which included such writers as Vasiliy Aksyonov, Andrei Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Robert Rozhdestvensky; as well as actors Andrey Mironov, Aleksandr Zbruev, Natalya Fateeva, and many others. As a close associate of writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and as a member of the 60's generation, Yevtushenko made an important contribution to promote progress, openness, human rights and freedoms in the former Soviet Union.
He was banned from traveling outside the Soviet Union in the 1960s. At that time the KGB Chairman Vladimir Semichastny and the next KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov reported to the Communist Politburo on the "Anti-Soviet activity of poet Yevtushenko", but he was not intimidated. In 1965, he joined Anna Akhmatova, Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy, Jean-Paul Sartre and others and co-signed the letter of protest against the unfair trial of Joseph Brodsky. He also co-signed the letter against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. His poems covered a wide range of political issues from "Stalinism" to anti-war and patriotic themes, often causing a controversial perception of his eclectic style and views. Several of his lyrical poems were set to music and became popular Russian songs. In 1989 Yevtushenko was elected as a representative in the Soviet Parliament, where he was a member of the pro-democratic group supporting Mikhail Gorbachev.
Yevtushenko is known across the world for his powerful poem "Babi Yar", written in 1961. He protested the Soviet Union's refusal to recognize Babi Yar, a ravine in Kiev; as a site where Nazis committed a mass murder of 33,000 Jews in September of 1941. Yevtushenko and Dmitri Shostakovich worked together on the famous Symphony No. 13 titled "Babi Yar", a vocal setting of poems by Yevtushenko. It was first performed in Moscow on December 18, 1962 under the baton of Kirill Kondrashin. Yevtushenko and Shostakovich toured many countries with the performances of "Babi Yar", and made several recordings of the Symphony No. 13. The site of Babi Yar is now an important WWII memorial, that was built with the support of many contributors. This was partly the result of creative cooperation and outstanding artistry of both Yevtushenko and Shostakovich.
He was filmed as himself during the 50s as a performing poet-actor. Yevtushenko contributed lyrics to several Soviet films and contributed to the script of Soy Cuba (1964), a Soviet propaganda film. His acting career began with the leading role in 'Vzlyot (1979) by director Savva Kulish, where he played the leading role as Russian rocket scientist Tsiolkovsky. Yevtyshenko also made two films as a writer/director. His film 'Detsky Sad' (aka.. Kindergarten, 1983) and his last film, 'Pokhorony Stalina' (aka.. Stalin's Funeral, 1990) are dealing with life in the Soviet Union. He received numerous Russian and International awards for his literary works.
Yevgeni Yevtushenko has been teaching Russian literature at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa for several years. He also teaches seminars on literature and gives public performances of his poetry. Yevtushenko tours Russia annually with public performances during the summer months. He lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and has a home in Moscow, Russia.- Ivan Bunin was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1933).
He was born Ivan Alekseevich Bunin on October 22, 1870 on his ancestral estate near Voronezh, Russia. His father, Aleksei Bunin, and his mother, were descendants of several lines of old nobility that included Russian landed gentry and Luthuanian knights. The Bunins were landlords and serf-owners; but Bunin's father lost his estate in a unfortunate card-game spree, leaving his family in a financial ruin. Young Ivan Bunin spent his childhood around the peasant surfs on his estate. He went to a grammar school in the town of Yelets, but after only five years of school he had to return back home. Bunin continued homeschooling under the tutelage of his elder brother, who was a university student. Brother encouraged Bunin to write and read Russian classics such as Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, Lev Tolstoy, and others.
Bunin published his first poem at the age of 17, in a literary magazine in St. Petersburg. His first short story 'Derevenski eskiz' (aka.. Country Sketch) was published in 1891, it was soon followed by publications of more poems and short stories. At that time he had a job as an assistant editor of a local newspaper in the city of Orel, Russia. His stories were published in several newspapers and magazines across Russia. At that time Bunin started a correspondence with Anton Chekhov, and with a passage of time the two writers became close friends. In 1894 Bunin met Lev Tolstoy. He admired the works of Tolstoy, but their social and moral views were quite different. Bunin's communication with Maxim Gorky led to their meeting in 1899 and both writers developed good friendship. During the 1900s Bunin and Gorky spent several winters together on the isle of Capri. At that time Bunin had several publications through the "Znanie" (Knowledge) group, which was founded and managed by Maxim Gorky.
By 1900 Ivan Bunin had published over 100 poems. His 1899 translation of 'The Song of Hiawatha' by Longfellow was awarded the Pushkin Prize and Gold Medal from the Russian Academy of Science. His other translations included Lord Byron's 'Manfred', Tennyson's 'Lady Godiva', and poems by Alfred de Musset. In 1909 Bunin was elected one of the 12 full members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1910 he published his first full-scale novel 'Derevnya' (The Village), and in 1912, 'Sukhodol' (Dry Valley), a nostalgic portrayal of decaying Russian nobility based on the true story of his own family. Bunin traveled extensively in Russia and abroad, in Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, all-over Europe and Asia. His first marriage to the daughter of a Greek revolutionary ended in divorce. His second marriage in 1907 lasted his all life.
Bunin witnessed the terror and destruction caused by communists during the Russian Revolution of 1917. He fled from the Bolshevok communists by moving from Moscow to Odessa. There Bunin lived for 2 years hoping that the White Russians might restore order and beat the communist revolutionaries, but soon revolutionary chaos spread all over Russia. In February 1920 Bunin had to leave all his property behind under the threat of approaching communist armies. He swiftly emigrated aboard the last French ship leaving Odessa with other anti-communist Russians, and eventually settled in Grasse, near Cannes, in the south of France. There he published his eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution in the form of a diary entitled 'Okayannye dni' (The Accursed Days 1925-26). In it Bunin described the Soviet government by writing of them: "What a disgusting gallery of convicts!"
He was the eldest of Russian émigré writes, and was regarded by all intellectual émigrés as the last one writing in the high tradition of Lev Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov. Bunin was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933. At that time Bunin received congratulations from intellectuals from all-over the world, but not a word from the Soviet Russia, where his name and his books were banned. On his way to accept the Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Sweden, Bunin had to pass through Germany. There he was arrested by the Nazis on a false accusations of smuggling jewels, and was forced to drink a bottle of Castor oil. Bunin had a staunch anti-Nazi position, he was known for sheltering a Jew in his home during the Nazi occupation of France.
Bunin's best known books 'Solnechny Udar' (A Sunstroke 1927), 'Zhizn Arsenyeva' (The Life of Arsenyev 1933), 'Lika' (1939), and 'Tyomnye Allei' (Dark Alleys, or in some translations, Shadowed Paths, 1943) are among the highest achievements in Russian literature of the 20th century. Bunin's poetry was highly regarded by Vladimir Nabokov. However, most of Bunin's books were banned in Russia under the Soviet censorship, because of his truthful and frightening description of chaos and destruction caused by the communists after the Russian revolution of 1917. Later, every year in the morning of the 8th of November, Bunin suffered from painful traumatic memories about the collapse of Russia caused by the communist takeover that happened on that date in 1917. He died of a heart attack in the morning of November 8, 1953, in his apartment in Paris, and was laid to rest in the Russian Cemetery at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois in Paris.
Selected works by Bunin were published posthumously in Russia, in 1956- 1961, during the "Thaw" that was initiated by Nikita Khrushchev. However,
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Nikolai Nosov was born on 22 November 1908 in Kiev, Russian Empire [now Ukraine]. He was a writer and director, known for Dunno on the Moon (1997), Dva druga (1955) and Fantazyory (1965). He died on 26 July 1976 in Moscow, USSR [now Russia].- Tatyana Aleksandrova is known for Domovyonok Kuzya (2024), A House for Kuzka (1984) and Adventures of Brownie (1986).
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Anna Akhmatova was arguably the greatest Russian woman poet.
She was born Anna Andreevna Gorenko on June 23, 1889, in Bolshoi Fontan, a suburb of Odessa, Ukraine, Russian Empire. Her father, Andrei Antonovich Gorenko, was a Navy Engineer. Her mother, Inna Erazmovna (nee Stogova), belonged to Russian Nobility. From 1890-1905 her father served in St. Petersburg at the Headquarters of the Imperial Trade Fleet and Ports under Grand Prince Aleksander Mikhailovich. The family lived in Tsarskoe Selo, the elite Royal suburb of St. Petersburg. Young Anna Akhmatova received an excellent private education and attended the Tsarskoselky Gymnasium for Ladies. After the divorce of her parents in 1905, she lived in Kiev for 4 years. There she graduated from the Fundukleevsky Gymnazium in 1907, and attended the Law school of Kiev University for 2 years. Back in St. Petersburg she studied at the St. Petersburg Classes for women (Zhenskie Kursy) from 1911-1913.
Akhmatova started writing poetry from age 11, and signed her first publication with her real name, Anna Gorenko. Her father objected that she used his name, because he also was a writer, and even met Fyodor Dostoevsky and corresponded with Anton Chekhov. Then Anna made up a pseudonym 'Akhmatova' and invented a poetic myth of her connection to the Tatar Khan Akhmat; her pseudonym was a product of her creative imagination. In 1910, in Kiev she married Nikolai Gumilev, whom she knew for five years. Gumilev was an important Russian poet and critic, the founder of the literary movement of Acmeism. The young couple spent a honeymoon in Paris. There she met with then little known artist Amedeo Modigliani. She made a second trip to Paris in 1911 and to Italy in 1912, and continued her friendship with Modigliani, who made fifteen portraits of her, some of them nude. Inspired by love, Akhmatova wrote her first book of poetry "Evening" (Vecher, 1912). At the same time Akhmatova met Vladimir Mayakovsky at the St. Petersburg literary club 'Brodyachaya Sobaka' (Stray Dog). Her son Lev Gumilev was born in October of 1912. Her next books "Rosary" (Chyotki, 1914) and "The White Flock" (Belaya Staya, 1917) brought her literary fame. Her poetry was highly praised by Yuri Tynyanov and Boris Pasternak.
Terror came in her life with the Russian revolution of 1917. Communists killed leading intellectuals by thousands. Akhmatova's separated husband Nikolai Gumilev was executed in 1921 on the charges of "anti-Soviet plot". After publishing her books "Plantain" (Podorozhnik, 1921) and "Anno Domini MCMXXI (1922) she was ostracized as "bourgeous". She witnessed the brutal arrest of poet Osip Mandelstam, who criticized Joseph Stalin and later was killed in a Siberian prison-camp. Publication of her works has been banned from 1925 to 1953. One modest collection of her poetry was published in Leningrad in 1940, but was banned the same year and confiscated from all Soviet libraries and book stores. In spite of her own suffering, Akhmatova supported a young struggling writer Olga Berggolts. At the beginning of the Nazi siege of Leningrad Akhmatova was starving and helpless. She was evacuated to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where she lived with the family of Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy. In the middle of WWII her poem 'Courage' was published in Pravda.
Akhmatova's husband Nikolai Punin was a chief curator of the Hermitage and a prominent art historian and writer. He was arrested in 1935, after his criticism of ugly life in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Punin criticized the loss of civilized values and tasteless portraits of the Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin, thousands of which flooded the renamed city of Leningrad. Akhmatova had to burn all of her husband's documents and photographs in order to protect his life. Then she was assisted by her friends Mikhail A. Bulgakov and Boris Pasternak in writing a petition to Joseph Stalin, and her husband was released. The second time Akhmatova tried to save Punin from under arrest was in 1949. At that time, Punin lectured that Cezanne and Van Gogh were great artists, and he described the portrait of Vladimir Lenin, as "a bootleg, not a painting"; for such anti-communist statement he was arrested and exiled to the Gulag prison-camp. He died in a Vorkuta prison-camp in 1953. This time Akhmatova was powerless, because she was under KGB surveillance.
After the end of the Second World War Akhmatova was interviewed in Leningrad by Sir Isaiah Berlin, who came for a visit from London in the fall of 1945. In August of 1946 Akhmatova was attacked by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, because Joseph Stalin pushed repressions against intellectuals (writers, musicians, doctors). Akhmatova was labeled "alien to the Soviet people" for her "eroticism, mysticism, and political impartiality." She was censored along with Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Zoschenko, Sergei Prokofiev, and other leading intellectuals. The official ban was imposed on all publications and public performances of Akhmatova, and she was deprived of livelihood until the death of Joseph Stalin.
After her expulsion from the Union of Writers in 1946, Akhmatova was left penniless. At that time she was threatened by the Soviet authorities and moved from Leningrad to Moscow with the family of Viktor Ardov. Ardov, Chukovsky, and Fadeev later helped reinstate her membership in the Union of Writers. Boris Pasternak gave a special reading of the unpublished version of his novel 'Doctor Zhivago' for Akhmatova. In 1955 she received a small dacha-cabin in Komarovo, a suburb of Leningrad (St. Petersburg). There she was living and writing in the summertime, working on her major works: 'Poema bez geroya' and 'Requiem'. But her masterpiece 'Requiem' was not published until 1987. 'Requiem' is a monumental poem about survival of the people through the 'Great Terror' and dictatorship of Stalin.
Her only son Lev Gumilev (1912 - 1992) was a historian and philosopher, who survived several arrests and spent many years in the Soviet Gulag prison-camps. Akhmatova and her circle in the 50's and 60's Leningrad was an unofficial incubator for talented youth, such as her apprentice Joseph Brodsky. In 1962, Akhmatova was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1964 she was awarded the Etna-Taormina Prize for poetry. Akhmatova also received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University (1965).
Anna Akhmatova died on March 5, 1966, in Domodedovo, a suburb of Moscow. Akhmatova's burial service was held at the St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral in St. Petersburg, she was laid to rest in the Komarovo cemetery, near St. Petersburg, Russia.- Aleksei Ivanov was born on 23 November 1969 in Gorky, USSR [now Nizhny Novgorod, Russia]. He is a writer, known for Tsar (2009), The Geographer Drank His Globe Away (2013) and The Conquest of Siberia (2019).
- Joseph Brodsky was a Nobel Prize-winning Russian-Jewish poet, writer, director and translator, who was arrested and prosecuted by the Soviet regime before his emigration.
He was born Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad (St. Petersburg, Russia). He survived the Nazi siege of Leningrad during WWII. His father, Aleksandr Brodsky, was a professional photographer, who worked for newspapers and magazines. His mother, Maria Volpert, was a professional interpreter. Young Brodsky was brought up in a highly intellectual and stimulating atmosphere of his family. He studied languages for the purpose of reading the banned Western authors.
Joseph Brodsky was an unusual individual with his own independent views. He was destined to be at odds with the Soviet system due to his highly original thinking and his uncommon ways. He got tired of being abused by the Soviet propaganda and countless portraits of Lenin at his school. In an act of disobedience to the totalitarian system he dropped out of school at the age of 15. Then he tried many different jobs, including a sanitary job in the morgue at the "Kresty" prison, where he would be imprisoned a few years later. From the age of 16 he was writing his own poetry and produced literary translations. In 1961, Brodsky met the leading Russian woman poet Anna Akhmatova, at her dacha in Komarovo. That meeting was a pivoting point in his life as a poet and man. Anna Akhmatova and her circle was an unofficial incubator for talented youth. She praised Brodsky's poetry as "enchanting", and encouraged him to keep on writing. At that time Brodsky met his first love, the artist Marianna Basmanova, who inspired him on writing a collection of poetry, dedicated to "M. B." But his happiness was not on the agenda of the secret police.
The Soviet regime attacked Brodsky after he wrote a poem "Isaac and Avraam", based on the Old Testament and tried to publish it in 1963. He was arrested for an unofficial publication in an underground edition in 1963. Then he was charged with "social parasitism" in 1964. The trial of poet Brodsky was designed to intimidate other intellectuals during the return of censorship under the hard-line regime of the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. The Soviet judge announced that Brodsky was not an officially registered poet, and that his activity does not help the construction of Communism. He was sentenced to five years of hard labor. He was exiled to the remote Northern village of Norenskaya in Arkhangelsk region. There he was visited by several Russian intellectuals and cultural figures. Marianna Basmanova went along to live with Brodsky in his exile for several months, and in 1965 she became the mother of his son, Andrei. The civil union between Joseph Brodsky and Marina Basmanova could not be registered officially due to obstruction from the Soviet authorities. Brodsky and Marina agreed to have the baby registered on the mother's name for the safety of their child.
The unfair trial and exile of Joseph Brodsky caused political protests from such prominent figures as Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy, Dmitri Shostakovich, Anna Akhmatova, Samuil Marshak, Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, and the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. After their written protests, his sentence was commuted. In 1965, Brodsky returned to Leningrad (St. Petersburg), but his poetry was still under the Soviet censorship. That same year his first collection of poetry was published in USA. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union Brodsky was forcefully sent to a Soviet mental institution, where the treatment consisted of wrapping him in cold, wet sheets. On June 4, 1972, Brodsky became an involuntary exile from the Soviet Union. He made brief stops in Vienna and London, and then went to USA. There he worked as a visiting professor at several universities. In 1978 he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at Yale University. In 1979, Brodsky was indicted as a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1981, Brodsky received the "genius" award from the MacArthur Foundation.
While living in America, Brodsky tried to bring his father and mother to live with him. He sent many official requests and invitations, but all his requests were denied by the Soviet authorities, and his parents ended up dying in the Soviet Union without seeing Brodsky ever again. In the 80s he published a collection of love poems, dedicated to Marianna Basmanova, with several verses titled "M. B." He also wanted to reunite with her and their son, Andrei Basmanov, but neither Marianna Basmanova, nor their son, were able to leave the Soviet Union to join Brodsky in emigration. In 1990 he married his Sorbonne student, Maria Sozzani, who was of Russian-Italian heritage, and they had a daughter. Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Brodsky succeeded in bringing his son, Andrei Basmanov, for a father-son reunion in New York, and they were together for several months. By that time, his son already had a wife and three children living in Russia.
Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987), and was designated Poet Laureate of the United States (1991-1992). Outside of his writing profession, he founded a popular Russian restaurant in New York, and also made a documentary film about the city of Venice, which was his favorite place to visit. He died of a heart attack on January 28, 1996, and was laid to rest in the island of San Michele in Venice, near the tomb of Sergei Diaghilev. - Writer
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Viktor Dotsenko was born on 12 April 1946 in Omsk, RSFSR, USSR. He is a writer and director, known for Chyornye berety (1995), Tridtsatogo unichtozhit! (1992) and His Nickname Is Beast (1990).- Writer
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Daniil Koretskiy is known for Antikiller (2002), Antikiller 2: Antiterror (2003) and Operativnyy psevdonim (2003).- Writer
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Aleksandr Volodin was born on 10 February 1919 in Minsk, Byelorussia [now Belarus]. He was a writer and actor, known for Proisshestviye, kotorogo nikto ne zametil (1968), Starshaya sestra (1967) and Five Evenings (1979). He died on 17 December 2001 in Moscow, Russia.- Russian writer and poet Fyodor Sologub was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1863. His father was a tailor and shoemaker who died when Fyodor was four. He and his sister were raised by their mother, who was a servant. In 1882, after attending the St. Petersburg Teahers Training Institute, he was appointed a teacher at a local school, and afterward began teaching math for the Russian Ministry of Education.
In his spare time Sologub had been writing prose and poetry, and in 1884 his poem "Fox and Hedgehog" was published. In 1886 his first article, "About Muniipal Schools", was published in Russki Nachalny Uchitel No. 4. Over the next several years he published a variety of articles and short stories, often under the pseudonym "Sologub". In 1894 the first of over 100 short stories he would write, "Ninochka's Mistake", was published in St. Petersburg. The next year he published a book of poems, entitled simply "Poems: The 1st Book", which caught the attention of such writers as Anton Chekhov and Valery Brusov. His novel "Heavy Dreams" was published in 1895. In addition to writing poems and novels, Sologub also translated the works of many of the top French writers--Honore de Balzac, Guy De Maupassant and Verlaine, among others--into Russian.
He became involved in several art and literature movements, collectively known as "Symbology", which included such figures as Sergei Diaghilev. In 1907 he published what is probably his best-known work, the novel "The Petty Demon". He also retired from schoolteaching in that year, and traveled to Finland with his sister, who was being treated for tuberculosis (at the time called "consumption"), but she died soon afterwards. In 1908 he married Anastasia Chebotarevskaya, a writer and translator who was to become one of his greatest supporters and influences.
When the Bolsheviks took over the country in 1917 Sologub was strongly opposed to them. In 1919 he and his wife applied for permission to leave the country, but were denied. Repeated applications were also denied, and Anastasia's health began to deteriorate. In 1921, suffering from a variety of diseases and exhaustion, she drowned while attempting to take a swim. Devastated, Sologub was never the same after her death. He died in St. Petersburg in 1927. - Vladimir Sollogub is known for Gospoda artisty (1992) and Beda ot nezhnogo serdtsa (1975).
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Kornei Chukovsky was a Russian-Jewish writer who established himself before the Russian Revolution of 1917, and later emerged as important public figure in the Soviet Union.
He was born Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneichukov on March 31, 1882, in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father, Emanuel Ben Shlomo Levinson, was an honorary citizen of Odessa. His mother, Yekaterina Osipovna Korneichukova, worked as the housekeeper for Levinson's family. The young Chukovsky grew up virtually without a father, because Levinson did not legitimize his fatherhood, but apparently supported him financially. Through his entire life in Russia and Soviet Union Chukovsky was shy to mention that he was half-Jewish.
Chukovsky was a classmate and a close friend of Vladimir Jabotinsky in Odessa Gymnasium. Their friendship and correspondence lasted for several decades, regardless of the many dangers. He was a journalist for an Odessa newspaper from 1901-1905, spending 2 years as a correspondent in London. In St. Petersburg he published a satirical magazine "Signal" (1905-1906) with criticism of the Czar's government, for which he was arrested and sentenced to 6 months in prison. He became friends with Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vladimir Korolenko, Leonid Andreyev, Aleksei Tolstoy, and Maxim Gorky.
Chukovsky was a praised Russian translator of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and other English and American authors. His writings for children are regarded as classics of the form. His best-known poems for children are "Krokodil", "Moydodyr", "Tarakanische", and "Doctor Aybolit" (Doctor Ouch). Sergei Prokofiev composed music to several of his stories. In 1930 Chukovsky published a brilliant study of the language of children, "Ot 2 do 5" (From Two to Five). His "Mastery of Nekrasov," a literary research on Nikolai A. Nekrasov, was awarded the State Lenin Prize in 1962. Chukovsky received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University (1962). His works were praised by Vladimir Nabokov.
Chukovsky was fearless when he congratulated Boris Pasternak with the Nobel Prize. He also defended Mikhail Zoschenko, Anna Akhmatova, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn during their hard times under Joseph Stalin's dictatorship. His daughter, Lidiya Chukovskaya was the literary secretary and a life-long companion of Anna Akhmatova. Chukovsky was instrumental in publications of the authors, who were writing in Yiddish. He died on October 28, 1969, and was laid to rest in Peredelkino, a suburb of Moscow, Russia.- Nikolai Chukovsky was born on 2 June 1905 in Odessa, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire [now Ukraine]. He was a writer, known for Baltiyskoe nebo (1960), Chastnyy sluchay (1934) and Morskoy okhotnik (1954). He died on 4 November 1965 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia].
- Vsevolod Krestovskiy is known for Peterburgskiye trushchobi (1915) and Peterburgskie tayny (1994).
- Leonid Yuzefovich is known for Gibel imperii (2005), Syshchik Peterburgskoy politsii (1992) and Kontributsiya (2016). He has been married to Anna Berdichevskaya since 1975. They have two children.
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Viktor Erofeyev is known for La bella di Mosca (2001), Russian Libertine (2012) and The Last Hero (2001).- Venedikt Yerofeyev was born on 24 October 1938 in Niva-2, Kandalaksha, Murmansk Oblast, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia]. He was a writer, known for Moskau - Petuschki (1991) and Bookmark (1983). He was married to Valentina Vasilevna Zimakova and Galina Pavlovna Nosova. He died on 11 May 1990 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia].
- Ossip Mandelshtam was born on 3 January 1891 in Warsaw, Poland, Russian Empire [now Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland]. He was a writer, known for Catalogue of Ships (2008) and An die Deutsche Sprache (2006). He was married to Nadezhda Khazina. He died on 27 December 1938 in Vladivostok, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Primorsky Krai, Russia].
- Vasiliy Grossman was born on 12 December 1905 in Berdichev, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire [now Berdychiv, Zhytomyr Oblast, Ukraine]. He was a writer, known for Stalingrad (2013), Stepan Kolchugin (1957) and The Commissar (1967). He was married to Olga Guber, Ekaterina Zabolotskaya and Galina Matsuk Petrowna. He died on 15 December 1964 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia].
- Vasili Aksyonov was a medical doctor turned writer during the dramatic changes and transformations of Russia and Russian society under the Soviet-communist regime.
He was born Vasili Pavlovich Aksyonov on August 20, 1932 in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia; where his father lived before his imprisonment. Aksyonov's parents spent many years in prisons and exile under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Aksyonov spent part of his childhood in Siberian exile in Magadan with his mother Yevgeniya Ginsburg, an exiled dissident. Aksyonov spent several years of his boyhood in a state home. He graduated from the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute in 1956 and worked as a doctor in residency at the Quarantine Station of Leningrad Sea Port. From 1957-1958 he worked as a Medical Doctor in the village of Voznesenie, Onega, Northern Russia. From 1958-1960 he worked as a Medical Doctor in Moscow.
The "Thaw", that was initiated by Nikita Khrushchev, allowed Aksyonov to have his first short stories published in the magazine 'Yunost' (Youth) in 1956, under then editor-in-chief Valentin Kataev. His 'Kollegi' (Colleagues 1960) and 'Zvezdny Bilet' (Star Ticket 1961) became extremely popular and were made into eponymous films. 'Pora, moy drug, pora' (It's Time, My Friend, It's Time 1963), 'Apelsiny is Marokko' (Oranges from Marocco 1964), and 'Zatovarennaya Bochkotara' (Surplussed Barrelware 1965) became part of the language of youth. Aksyonov's generation was labeled by Soviet propaganda as "Stilyagi" (Fashionable ones) for their festive and stylish way of life; the opposite of the officially controlled Soviet gloom. Literary critic Stanislav Rassadin coined the term "Shestidesyatniki" (People of the 1960's) which embraced such writers as Bella Akhmadulina, Joseph Brodsky, Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, Bulat Okudzhava, and others, who emerged during the "Thaw" of 1956-1964.
The dismissal of Nikita Khrushchev was followed by restrictions in all aspects of Soviet life, where KGB, censorship, and official critics were acting as one. Aksyonov fell under suspicion and surveillance by the KGB. His last official publication was 'V Poiskah Zhanra' (In Search of a Genre 1972). His novels 'Ozhog' (The Burn 1976) and 'Ostrov Krym' (The Island of Crimea 1979) were banned. Aksyonov received a personal warning in a face-to-face meeting with two secret service agents. In 1979 Aksyonov organized and published an almanac of prose and poetry titled 'Metropol' which was immediately banned. 'Metropol' included works by Bella Akhmadulina, Fazil Iskander, and other dissident writers of the 60's generation. Official repressions and threats against Aksyonov forced his expatriation in 1980.
During 80s, 90s, and 2000s, Aksyonov continued writing and his works were published in both English and Russian in the USA. He also was a professor of literature in Washington D.C. for 24 years until his retirement. His script about Soviet life under Joseph Stalin was made into a TV series Moscovskaya saga (2004 TV). He was awarded the Open Russia Booker Prize for 2004. His new novel 'Moskva-kva-kva' (2006) was published in the Moscow magazine 'Oktyabr'.
Outside of his writing profession Aksyonov was a co-founder of jazz festivals in Moscow, Russia and in Kazan, Tatarstan. He returned to Russia in the 1990s, and was living in his Moscow apartment with his wife, Maya Zmeul, and had a second home in Biarritz, France. He died of a heart failure on 6 July 2009, in Moscow, Russia. - Valentin Rasputin was born on 15 March 1937 in village Atalanka, Ust-Udinsky District, East Siberian Oblast, RSFSR, USSR [now Irkutsk Oblast, Russia]. He was a writer, known for Osobyy sluchay (1983), Vasiliy i Vasilisa (1981) and Farewell (1983). He was married to Svetlana. He died on 14 March 2015 in Moscow, Russia.
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Svetlana Alexievich was born on 31 May 1948 in Stanislav, Ukrainian SSR, USSR [now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine]. She is a writer, known for Voices from Chernobyl (2016), Chernobyl (2019) and Vassia (2017).- Marietta Shaginyan was born on 2 April 1888 in Moscow, Russian Empire [now Russia]. He was a writer, known for The Adventures of the Three Reporters (1926), The Last Attraction (1929) and Zrodenie syna (1970). He was married to Hachatryants Jacob Samsonovich. He died on 20 March 1982 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia].