Andrei Sinyavsky
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Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (Russian language: Андрей Донатович Синявский) (1925 - 1997) was a Russian writer, dissident, gulag survivor, emigrant, Professor of Sorbonne University, magazine founder and publisher. He frequently wrote under the pseudonym Abram Tertz.
During a time of extreme censorship, Sinyavsky published both under his real name and (through samizdat, and Western publications) his pseudonym. The historical Abram Tertz was a Jewish gangster from Russian past; Sinyavsky himself was not Jewish.
A protege of Boris Pasternak, Sinyavsky described the realities of Stalinism. In 1965, he was arrested, along with Yuly Daniel and sentenced to hard labor for "anti-Soviet activity". He was released in 1971 and allowed to emigrate in 1973 to France, where he was one of cofounders of Russian-language almanac Syntaxis. He actively contributed to Radio Liberty.
Bibliography
- On Socialist Realism (1959) criticised the poor quality of the drearily positive-toned, conflict-free strictures in the style of the state-backed Socialist Realism, and called for a return to the fantastic in Soviet literature, the tradition, he said, of Gogol and Vladimir Mayakovsky.
- The Trial Begins (1960) a short novel with characters reacting in different ways to their roles in a totalitarian society, told with elements of the fantastic.
- The Makepeace Experiment (1963) is an allegorical novel of Russia where a leader uses non-rational powers to rule.
- Fantastic Stories is a collection of short stories, such as "The Icicle". The stories are mostly culled from the 1950s and 1960s, and are written in the fantastic tradition of Gogol, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Yevgeny Zamyatin.
- A Voice from the Chorus (1973) is a collection of scattered thoughts from the gulag, composed in letters he wrote to his wife. It contains snippets of literary thoughts as well as the comments and conversations of fellow prisoners, most of the criminals or even German war prisoners.
- Goodnight! (1984) is an autobiographical novel.
- Soviet Civilization: A Cultural History (1990).
Quote
- "All writers are dissidents".
External Links
Literary Guide Avram Tertz (http://www.literature-guide.com/browse-tertz_abram-2311-1.html)