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Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (Russian language: Андрей Донатович Синявский) (8 October 1925, Moscow - 25 February 1997, Paris) 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, or tamizdat) 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 fellow-writer and friend Yuli Daniel, and tried in the infamous Sinyavsky-Daniel show trial ("процесс Синявского и Даниэля"). On February 14, 1966, Sinyavsky was sentenced to seven years for "anti-Soviet activity". Unprecedented in the USSR, both writers plead not guilty.
The affair was accompanied by harsh propaganda campaign in the Soviet media and was perceived as a sign of demise of the Khrushchev Thaw. A group of Soviet notables sent a letter to Leonid Brezhnev asking not to rehabilitate Stalinism. Among the signatories were the academicians Andrei Sakharov, Igor Tamm, Lev Artsimovich, Pyotr Kapitsa, Ivan Maysky, writers Konstantin Paustovsky, Korney Chukovsky, actors Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Maya Plisetskaya, Oleg Yefremov, directors Georgy Tovstonogov, Mikhail Romm, Marlen Khutsiyev and others.
As historian Fred Coleman writes, "Historians now have no difficulty pinpointing the birth of the modern Soviet dissident movement. It began in February 1966 with the trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, two Russian writers who ridiculed the Communist regime in satires smuggled abroad and published under pen names...Little did they realize at the time that they were starting a movement that would help end Communist rule."
Sinyavsky 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.
Notes
- Coleman, Fred (August 15, 1997). The Decline and Fall of Soviet Empire : Forty Years That Shook The World, From Stalin to Yeltsin. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0312168160.
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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".