Medvedev Roy Alexandrovich, writer-historian: biography, family, books

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Roy Medvedev is a popular Russian historian, teacher and publicist. First of all, he is known as the author of numerous political biographies. The hero of our article worked mainly on journalistic investigations. In the dissident movement in the Soviet Union, he represented the left wing, in the late 80s and early 90s he was a deputy of the Supreme Council. He is a doctor of pedagogical sciences, his twin brother is a talented gerontologist.

Early years

Roy Medvedev was born in 1925. He was born in Tiflis, on the territory of modern Georgia. Roy Medvedev got his unusual name in honor of Manabendra Roy, a communist from India, popular in the 1920s, who was one of the founders of the Indian Communist Party and a member of the executive committee of the Comintern.

The father of the hero of our article was a regimental commissar of the Red Army, and after the Civil War he headed the department of historical and dialectical materialism inMilitary-Political Academy.

Roy Medvedev's family experienced a real tragedy when in 1938 his father was arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison with the right to correspond. In 1941 he died at the age of 40. As the historian later recalled, farewell to his father was forever engraved in his memory, influencing the rest of his life.

Education

In 1943 he graduated from school as an external student, and immediately after that he was called up for non-combatant service in the army. Until 1946, he remained on the territory of the Transcaucasian Military District, where he worked in the auxiliary units of logistic support. In particular, I had to deal with the protection of air and railway communications, and the repair of equipment.

After the end of the war he entered the Leningrad State University. A diploma of a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy was awarded to Roy Alexandrovich Medvedev in 1951. All this time he was the secretary of the Komsomol committee at his faculty.

In 1958 he defended his dissertation on the production work of high school students in the fields of industry. The degree of candidate of pedagogical sciences he gets within the walls of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute.

Work activity

From 1951 to 1954 he taught history in schools in the Sverdlovsk region. Then, until 1957, he worked as the director of the "seven-year plan" in the Leningrad Region. Since 1958, he began to work as deputy editor-in-chief of the Uchpedgiz publishing house.

Since the 60s, historian Roy Medvedev -Senior Researcher at the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. He remains in this position until 1970, and after that he is considered a free scientist.

Joining the CPSU

After the significant XX Congress of the CPSU, followed by the rehabilitation of Father Medvedev, the hero of our article joins the Communist Party. At the same time, since the beginning of the 60s, he has been actively involved in the dissident movement.

In particular, he edits several samizdat publications. Among them are the almanac "XX century" and the magazine "Political Diary". In 1969, he was expelled from the party after writing the book "To the Judgment of History", which was devoted to the period of the Great Terror in the USSR.

In the spring of 1970, together with Academician Sakharov and Soviet cyberneticist and physicist Valentin Turchin, he took part in the publication of an open letter to the leadership of the Soviet Union. In it, scientists call for the need to immediately begin the democratization of the entire system in the country.

In opposition

According to the memoirs of Medvedev himself, in 1971, after all these events, he had to leave his job. Law enforcement officers are beginning to show increased interest in him. The scientist's house is searched, during which the entire archive is confiscated. He was subpoenaed to the prosecutor's office.

He decides not to go there, but instead to leave Moscow until his books are published in the United States of America. After that, for some time he was in an illegal position in the B altic states. The hero of ourarticle admits that when he returned to Moscow after some time, no one called him for interrogations. The authorities forgot about him almost until the very moment of Brezhnev's death.

Fate of brother

The fate of the scientist's family members was not easy. If Roy was not actually touched, then his brother Zhores was subjected to full-scale repression.

He was fired from his job in 1969 after the publication of the book "The Rise and Fall of Lysenko" in the West. In it, he tried to trace the chronicle of the development of biological teachings in the country over the past few decades. He sharply criticized the destruction of genetics, the massacre of great scientists, among whom was Vavilov.

In his next books, "Secret of Correspondence Protected by Law" and "International Cooperation of Scientists and National Borders", he criticizes the restrictions in the Soviet scientific society related to traveling abroad, as well as censorship to which books, magazines and mail are subjected, which he receives from abroad.

In 1970, he was forcibly placed in a psychiatric hospital in the Kaluga region, but was soon released after a wave of public outrage. These events were described by him in the book "Who's Crazy", co-authored by his brother.

Medvedev's popularity

Roy Medvedev's books soon also become popular in the Soviet Union in samizdat and abroad. The real bestsellers are the works "They surrounded Stalin" and "To the courthistory".

In 1989, he was reinstated in the Communist Party with the preservation of seniority since 1959. It is believed that this initiative at that time came from the head of the propaganda department, Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev, who was considered the ideologist of perestroika.

Until 1992, Medvedev was a people's deputy, a member of the Supreme Council. In particular, he advocated a decree on the publication of the so-called "Secret Protocols". This is an additional protocol concluded by the USSR and Germany to the non-aggression pact on the eve of World War II.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Medvedev was seen by many as one of the potential leaders of the movement for democratic socialism. Since 1991, he has been one of the chairmen of the Socialist Party of Workers of the Russian Federation. He was among those who sharply criticized both the State Emergency Committee and the policies of Boris Yeltsin.

Now Medvedev is 92 years old and lives in Moscow. His brother Zhores also still works. For example, in 2007 and 2008 he published a series of articles about the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

Publications

Medvedev's journalistic investigations have become the most popular. In total, he published about 35 books on pedagogy, history, sociology, philosophy, and literary criticism.

A vivid example of his investigations is one of his latest works - "The Soviet Union. The last years of his life." Roy Medvedev wrote it in 2010. This is a detailed study that was started by the author back in 1991.

It is based on numerous memoirs of participants in those events and documents, his own impressions, interviews and conversations that Medvedev had with the main figures of those years. To some, this book seemed like a political biography of Gorbachev. One of its main ideas is the proposition that the decrepit political system of the USSR brought to the forefront a politician who was unable to take the lead. As a result, this led to a full-blown economic and political crisis.

His latest work so far is the 2014 book "Putin's Time". In it, he closely examines almost a decade and a half of the work of the new Russian president, who rose to the head of state in a difficult time.