Andrei Sinyavsky
Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky | |
|---|---|
literary critic | |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Alma mater | Moscow State University |
| Spouse | Maria Rozanova |
| Children | Iegor Gran |
| Signature | |
 | |
Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (
Soviet dissident known as a defendant in the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial
of 1965.
Sinyavsky was a
autobiographical and retrospective
works.
Early life and education
Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky was born on 8 October 1925 in
autobiographical
novel Goodnight!
Sinyavsky's family was evacuated to Syzran following the
graduate school where he successfully defended his thesis in 1952. Sinyavsky worked at the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow and taught at Moscow State University's Faculty of Journalism and the Moscow Art Theatre School. By the end of 1960, he was admitted into the Union of Soviet Writers
.
Sinyavsky became one of the leading
Jewish gangster, although Sinyavsky himself was not Jewish. Sinyavsky's works were naturally rejected for publication by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during a time of extreme censorship
.
Sinyavsky–Daniel trial
On 4 September 1965, Sinyavsky was arrested along with fellow-writer and friend
Soviet media, perceived as a sign of demise of the Khrushchev Thaw
which had allowed greater freedoms of expression during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
On 14 February 1966, Sinyavsky was sentenced to seven years on charges of "anti-Soviet activity" for the opinions of his fictional characters. After the trial, 63 supporters of Sinyavsky and Daniel signed a petition requesting their release. In response to the petition, members of the Secretariat of the Union of Soviet Writers spoke out against Sinyavsky and Daniel. 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."[1]
Sinyavsky was forced to work as a
General Secretary of the CPSU
.
Later years and death
In 1973, Sinyavsky was allowed to emigrate to
and became a novelist.On 17 October 1991, Sinyavsky was featured in a report received by Izvestia on the review of convictions for several prominent Soviet individuals due to lack of corpus delicti in their actions. Sinyavsky, Yuli Daniel, Kārlis Ulmanis, Nikolay Timofeev-Ressovsky were considered for "rehabilitation" only two months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In early 1996, Sinyavsky suffered a
radiotherapy at the Curie Institute. Sinyavsky died in 1997 in Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, and was buried there by the Russian Orthodox priest and writer Vladimir Vigilyansky with Andrei Voznesensky
in attendance.
Sinyavsky was the catalyst for the formation of the Russian-English translation team of
Fyodor Dostoyevski, Nikolai Gogol, and Leo Tolstoy
. Volokhonsky, who was born and raised in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), first visited the United States in the early 1970s and happened across Pevear's Hudson Review article about Sinyavsky. At the time, Pevear believed Sinyavsky was still in a Russian prison; Volokhonsky had just helped him immigrate to Paris. Pevear was surprised and pleased to be mistaken: "Larissa had just helped Sinyavsky leave Russia," Pevear recalled. "And she let me know that, while I'd said he was still in prison, he was actually in Paris. I was glad to know it."
Bibliography
- Books
- Gogol and Vladimir Mayakovsky. This work also drew connections between socialist realism and classicism. It asserted that greater similarities exist between Soviet literature and that predating the 19th century than exist between Soviet (socialist realist) literature and the intellectual skepticism plaguing the protagonists of 19th-century Russian novels.
- The Trial Begins (1960) is 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 (1963) 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 them criminals or even German war prisoners.
- Goodnight! (1984) is an autobiographical novel.
- Soviet Civilization: A Cultural History (1990).
- Кошкин дом. Роман дальнего следования (1998).
- Strolls with Pushkin (Columbia University Press, The Russian Library, 2016) (translated by Catherine Theimer Nepomnyashchy and Slava I. Yastremski).
- In Gogol's Shadow (Columbia University Press, The Russian Library, 2021) (translated by Josh Billings)
- Articles
- Sinyavsky, Andrei; Tikos, Laszlo; Ellert, Frederick (Summer 1966). "On Robert Frost's poems". JSTOR 25087444.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (1969). "Boris Pasternak (1965)". In Davie, Donald; Livigstone, Angela (eds.). Pasternak. Macmillan. pp. 154–219. ISBN 978-0312032258.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (May 1974). "Father Boris Zalivako". Religion in Communist Lands. 2 (3): 16–17. .
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (15 April 1976). "The Jews and the Devil". The New York Review of Books.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (September 1978). "Emigré". Encounter. 51 (3): 79–80.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (April 1979). "Andrei Sinyavsky on dissidence". Encounter. 52 (4): 91–93.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei; Andreyev Carlisle, Olga (22 November 1979). "Solzhenitsyn and Russian nationalism: an interview with Andrei Sinyavsky". The New York Review of Books.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (August 1980). "Samizdat and the rebirth of literature". S2CID 144564086.
- Aksenov, Vasily; Etkind, Efim; Grigorenko, Pyotr; Grigorenko, Zinaida; Kopelev, Lev; Litvinov, Pavel; Litvinov, Maya; Mihajlov, Mihajlo; Proffer, Carl; Proffer, Ellendea; Synyavsky, Andrey; Shraginet, Boris; et al. (4 February 1982). "Help the Poles". The New York Review of Books.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (Spring 1984). "Dissent as a personal experience". Dissent. 31 (2): 152–161.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (June 1986). "My life as a writer". .
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (May 1988). "The space of prose". S2CID 145113890.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (10 April 1989). "Would I move back?". Time. No. 15. pp. 75–77.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (November 1989). "A trip to Moscow". S2CID 142996985.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei; Peterson, Dale (Winter 1990). "Russian nationalism". JSTOR 25090205.
- Sinyavsky, Andrei (1990). "Rozanov". In Freeborn, Richard; Grayson, Jane (eds.). Ideology in Russian literature. Macmillan. pp. 116–133. ISBN 978-0312032258.
- Переписка Андрея Синявского с редакцией серии "Библиотека поэта": изменение советского литературного поля [Andrei Sinyavsky's correspondence to the editors of "Poet's Library" series: the change of the Soviet literary field]. Новое литературное обозрение (in Russian) (71). 2005.
Further reading
- Artz, Martine (15 May 1995). "Literature in the dock: the trial against Andrej Sinjavskij". Russian Literature. 37 (4): 441–450. .
- Borden, Richard (Autumn 1998). "Andrei Sinyavsky: in memoriam". The Slavic and East European Journal. 42 (3): 372–376. JSTOR 309673.
- Chapple, Richard (February 1976). "Criminals and criminality according to the Soviet dissidents–works of Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel". In Fox, Vernon (ed.). Proceedings of the 21st annual Southern conference on corrections. Vol. 21. Tallahassee: Florida State University. pp. 149–158.
- Genis, Aleksandr (1999). "Archaic postmodernism: the aesthetics of Andrei Sinyavsky". In Epstein, Mikhail; Genis, Aleksandr; Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka (eds.). Russian postmodernism: new perspectives on post-Soviet culture. Berghahn Books. pp. 185–196. ISBN 978-1571810281.
- Fenander, Sara (1993). Andrei Sinyavsky's fantasies of subversion. Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University.
- Frank, Joseph (27 June 1991). "The triumph of Abram Tertz". The New York Review of Books. 38 (12): 35–43.
- Glenny, Michael (January 1968). "Sinyavsky and Daniel on Trial". Survey: 145–146.
- Haber, Erika (Autumn 1998). "My personal strolls with Tertz". The Slavic and East European Journal. 42 (3): 381–384. JSTOR 309675.
- Hayward, Max (1966). On trial: the Soviet State versus "Abram Tertz" and "Nikolai Arzhak". Harper & Row. ASIN B000BF3EIE.
- Jacobson, Dan (1 November 1976). "Observations: Sinyavsky's art". Commentary. 62 (5): 66.
- Kolonosky, Walter (1975). "Andrei Siniavskii: the chorus and the critic". Canadian-American Slavic Studies. 9 (3): 352–360. .
- Kolonosky, Walter (Autumn 1998). "Andrei Sinyavsky: puzzle maker". The Slavic and East European Journal. 42 (3): 385–388. JSTOR 309676.
- Kolonosky, Walter (2003). Literary insinuations: sorting out Sinyavsky's irreverence. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0739104880.
- Lourie, Richard (1975). Letters to the future: an approach to Sinyavsky–Tertz. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801408908.
- Matich, Olga (Spring 1989). "Spokojnoj noči: Andrej Sinjavskij's rebirth as Abram Terc". The Slavic and East European Journal. 33 (1): 50–63. JSTOR 308383.
- Murav, Harriet (1998). "Siniavskii, libel, and the author's liability". Russia's legal fictions. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. pp. 193–232. ISBN 978-0472108794.
- Nepomnyashchy, Catharine (Fall 1982). "Andrei Sinyavsky's "You and I": a modern day fantastic tale". Ulbandus Review. 2 (2): 209–230. JSTOR 25748080.
- Nepomnyashchy, Catharine (1984). "Sinyavsky/Tertz: the evolution of the writer in exile" (PDF). Humanities in Society. 7 (3/4): 123–142. Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 April 2016.
- Nepomnyashchy, Catharine (Spring 1991). "Andrei Sinyavsky's 'return' to the Soviet Union". Formations. 6 (1): 24–44.
- Nepomnyashchy, Catharine (1995). Abram Tertz and the poetics of crime. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300062106.
- Nepomnyashchy, Catharine (Autumn 1998). "Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (1925–1997)". The Slavic and East European Journal. 42 (3): 367–371. JSTOR 309672.
- Parthé, Kathleen (Autumn 1998). "Sinyavsky on his way to tomorrow". The Slavic and East European Journal. 42 (3): 394–398. JSTOR 309678.
- Pearson, John (1972). Techniques of alienation in the fiction of Andrey Sinyavsky. Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University.
- Pevear, Richard (Autumn 1972). "Sinyavsky in two worlds". JSTOR 3850088.
- Phillips, William; Shragin, Boris; Aleshkovsky, Yuz; Kott, Jan; Siniavski, Andrei; Aksyonov, Vassily; Litvinov, Pavel; Dovlatov, Sergei; Nekrassov, Viktor; Etkind, Efim; Voinovich, Vladimir; Kohak, Erazim; Loebl, Eugen (Winter 1984). "Writers in exile III: a conference of Soviet and East European dissidents". The Partisan Review. 51 (1): 11–44.
- Woronzoff, Alexander (Winter–Spring 1983). "The writer as artist and critic: the case of Andrej Sinjavskij". Russian Language Journal. 37 (126/127): 139–145. JSTOR 43659908.
References
- ISBN 978-0-312-16816-2.
- ^ Andrei Sinyavsky Archived July 17, 2007, at the Wayback Machine RADIO LIBERTY: 50 YEARS OF BROADCASTING. Hoover Inst, Stanford University
External links
- Andrei Siniavskii Papers at the Hoover Institution Archives
- Obituary: Andrei Sinyavsky, The Independent, February 27, 1997
- Literary Guide Avram Tertz
- (in Russian) Sinyavsky/Tertz. Anthology of Samizdat
- (in Russian) Sinyavsky/Tertz: Face, Image, Mask. Toronto Slavic Quarterly
- (in Russian) Sinyavsky/Tertz. Alexander Belousenko's Electronic Library