Biography Aikhenvald Yuri Alexandrovich
(16.11.1928 – 28.06.1993)
Eyhenvald Yuri Alexandrovich (16.11.1928, Moscow – 28.06.1993, Moscow). The grandson of the well-known literary critic and essayist Aikhenvald Yulia Isayevich, expelled from the RSFSR for his anti-communist views in 1922. His father, Aikhenvald Alexander Yulievich, – a Communist, a prominent member of the party (Bukharin) opposition, since 1933 was imprisoned, subsequently shot. In 1938, A.’s mother was arrested, and many of his relatives were repressed. Raised by his grandmother, who had a great influence on A.. About the parents and about the childhood he told in the memoirs “Fathers and grandfathers”.
During the war he studied at the craft communication school, at the same time he worked at the plant. In 1944 he entered the school of working youth. Studying at school, he began to write poetry and perform with them on poetry evenings. In 1944 he entered the literary association at the publishing house “Young
In the autumn of 1949, he was arrested on false denunciation for “anti-Soviet statements”; the resolution of the Special Meeting was sent to Kazakhstan for ten years as a “socially dangerous element”. He left the link in Karaganda, worked as an electrician, his friends A. Volpin and N. Korzhavin were also expelled there.
In September 1951 he was arrested again, this time for “terrorist statements”, and was sent to Moscow. During the investigation came to the conviction that the only way to survive is to feign mental illness. In prison, wrote for this purpose a treatise “Critique of the axiom of existence” (unpublished), in which the idea of destroying the human race was put forward.
Examination of the Institute. Serbian [4] in 1952 recognized A. insane. In the same year he was placed in the Leningrad
I returned to Moscow. In 1957 he graduated from the Pedagogical Institute, began to teach Russian language and literature at school. At the same time he was engaged in poetic translation, he published literary-critical articles in newspapers and magazines, wrote lyrics for the theater, and prepared stage versions of translated pieces. In 1964 in the theater “Sovremennik” on the translation of A. and in his stage version the comedy E. Rostand “Cyrano de Bergerac” was staged. However, his most famous works were his poems, which were distributed in samizdat and published abroad.
Since the 1960s he has been constantly monitored by the KGB. The special interest of the authorities was caused by his “open house”, in which there were many friends, acquaintances, former school pupils. “There are houses in Moscow where the doors are always unbuttoned, the people are constantly pounding, and the family and all-human holidays and dates are filled with a horrible gap of guests and there is a general uproar equal to the density of tobacco smoke, puffing like a cake” Napoleon. “This is usually an actor’s apartment, artists ‘studios or teachers’ dwellings, Eichenwald and his wife Valery Mikhailovna are precisely representatives of that breed of true Russian teaching: they are enlighteners by their vocation, and just like them, our unfortunate high school owes those m, that at least some particle of real knowledge and culture in it is preserved “(Kim Yu. About Yuri Aikhenvalde Soviet circus. 1991. 11 March).
Avoid participation in open human rights campaigns. I considered it expedient that those who can influence the Western public opinion or are committed, “if a person can not live in an honest way otherwise.” He was an anonymous author of some human rights appeals (for example, letters of mathematicians in defense of Yesenin-Volpin). Passed information for the “Chronicle of current events” [5], participated in the collection of funds to help victims of persecution for convictions – political prisoners, those who lost their jobs or were subjected to other extrajudicial persecution.
Contrary to his rule of non-participation in public actions, in early 1968, A. and his wife V. Gerlin signed a letter in defense of A. Ginzburg and Yu. Galanskov, for which they were dismissed from their work with a prohibition to engage in pedagogical activities. After applying to court, A. was reinstated, but did not return to school, having resigned “at his own request”. In the book A. published in Munich, “On the Edging Sharp” is an essay “How We Fired” (written by A. together with his wife), including a verbatim record of speeches at meetings where colleagues A. and V. Gerlin “denounced” their “antisocial behavior, “and comments by A. himself, revealing the mechanism of involving ordinary citizens in the actions of the authorities to persecute dissenters.
He became a professional writer, acted as a literary and theater critic. Many of his publications in the Soviet press were forced to sign pseudonyms. Continued to be published in the West, where in 1982-1984 he published his most significant work – the historical and philological study “Don Quixote on Russian soil.”
He was a member of the founding congress of the Memorial Society (January 1989), a member of the Council of the Scientific Research Institute “Memorial” (since its inception – June 1990).
Throughout the 1960s and 1990s, the A. House continued to be the meeting place of the liberal intelligentsia and participants in the human rights movement.
He was buried at the Domodedovo cemetery.
EM Papovyan
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