(22.04.1922 – 6.10.1996)
Kunitsyn Georgiy Ivanovich (22.04.1922, Kunitsyno village, Irkutsk region – 6.10.1996, Peredelkino, Moscow region). After graduating from the Chernigov Military Engineering School in 1942, he served on the front as a sapper. September 30, 1944 during the storming of the Dukel Pass was seriously wounded. In 1951 he graduated from the History Department of the Tambov Pedagogical Institute and in 1961 from the Academy of Social Sciences attached to the Central Committee of the CPSU. In 1961 he became a candidate of philological sciences. In 1961 – 1966 he worked in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU, having reached the post of first deputy head of the department of culture. Because of disagreements with his leadership, in 1961 he was transferred to the newspaper Pravda, but also there for a long time did not get accustomed, two years later leaving for the Institute of Art History. Due to disagreements with the party leadership,
the government did everything, so that on May 16, 1968, at the first defense of his doctoral dissertation at the Institute of World Literature, Kunitsyn’s scientific council “rolled”. He became a Doctor of Philosophy only in 1971. Theme of the thesis: “Art and Politics”. February 26, 1988 published in the “Literary Russia” noisy controversial article on the Russian national novel “Has the time come?”. At the beginning of the article, Kunitsyn stated: “The national novel is a spiritual doubling of the destinies of our people, and our destinies are extremely complex.” Have we grown to an objectively fair talk about this? To argue about the novel that absorbed the epic is to profess and prophesy, both ability without a long training they have weakened. ” Kunitsyn at the top of his voice was the first to put such concealed problems in this article, as a genocide against the Russian peasantry, which the Russian epic dared to reflect only with a kind of dotted line and the assertion in modern Russian literature of a new type – serfdom and barbarity
(the “face of truth came instead of truth”). Conclusion Kunitsyn: “We must get rid of the ocean of premium literature.” Needless to say, the article by Kunitsyn served as the beginning of the conflict between the editor of the newspaper Mikhail Kolosov and Yuri Bondarev, which ended with the squeezing out of Kolosov. Recently he taught at the Literary Institute. Posthumously in 1996 – 1997 in “Literary Russia” were letters GI Kunitsyn “architect of perestroika” AN Yakovlev.
