Aksenov Vasily: biography and the best books of the writer

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

Aksenov Vasily Pavlovich is a well-known Russian writer. His works, imbued with the spirit of freethinking, tough and touching, sometimes surreal, do not leave any reader indifferent. The article will consider the biography of Vasily Aksenov and provide a list of his most interesting literary works.

Early years

In 1932, on August 20, in the city of Kazan, Pavel Aksenov, chairman of the Kazan City Council, and Evgenia Ginzburg, a teacher at the Kazan Pedagogical Institute, had a son, Vasily. According to the account in the family, he was already the third child, but the only common one. When the boy was not yet five years old, both parents (first mother, then father) were arrested and then convicted, each to ten years in prison. After going through the Stalinist camps, Yevgenia Ginzburg would subsequently publish a book of memoirs about the era of repression, The Steep Route, which tells about eighteen years spent in prisons, exiles, and Kolyma camps. But this is not about that now, we are interested in the biography of Vasily Aksenov.

After the conclusion of the parents of older children - Alyosha (son of Evgenia Ginzburg) and Maya (daughter of Pavel Aksenov) -taken in by relatives. And Vasya was forcibly sent to an orphanage for the children of convicts (the boy's grandmothers wanted to keep him, but they were not allowed to). In 1938, Pyotr Aksenov's brother, Andreyan, found the child in the Kostroma orphanage and took him to him. Until 1948, Vasya lived with a paternal relative, Motya Aksenova, until the boy's mother, released from prison in 1947, obtained permission to move her son to her in Kolyma. Later, the writer Vasily Aksenov will describe his Magadan youth in the novel "The Burn".

Education and work

In 1956, the guy graduated from the Leningrad Medical Institute and, by distribution, was supposed to work as a doctor in the B altic Shipping Company on long-distance ships. However, he was not given permission, despite the fact that his parents had been rehabilitated by that time. There is evidence that Vasily Aksenov worked as a quarantine doctor in Karelia, in the Far North, in a tuberculosis hospital in Moscow (according to other information, he was a consultant at the Tuberculosis Research Institute in Moscow), as well as in the commercial seaport of Leningrad.

The beginning of literary activity

Aksenov can be considered a professional writer since 1960. In 1959, he wrote the story "Colleagues" (the film of the same name was shot on it in 1962), in 1960 - the work "Star Ticket" (the film "My Little Brother" was also shot on it in 1962), two years later - the story "Oranges from Morocco", and in 1963 - the novel "It's time, my friend, it's time." Then the books of Vasily Aksenov "Catapult" (1964) were published.and "Halfway to the Moon" (1966). In 1965, the play "Always on Sale" was written, which in the same year was staged on the stage of "Sovremennik". In 1968, the story of the satirical-fiction genre "Overstocked Barrel" was published. In the sixties of the twentieth century, the works of Vasily Aksenov were published quite often in the journal Yunost. The writer worked for several years on the editorial board of this publication.

Seventies

In 1970, the first part of the adventure dilogy for children "My grandfather is a monument" was published, in 1972 - the second part - "A chest in which something knocks." In 1971, the story "Love for Electricity" (about Leonid Krasin) was published, written in the historical and biographical genre. A year later, the Novy Mir magazine published an experimental work called The Search for a Genre. 1972 also saw the creation of Jean Green the Untouchable, a parody of the spy thriller. Vasily Aksenov worked on it together with Grigory Pozhenyan and Oleg Gorchakov. The work was published under the authorship of Grivadiy Gorpozhaks (a pseudonym from a combination of the names and surnames of three writers). In 1976, the writer translated from English the novel "Ragtime" by Edgar Lawrence Doctorow.

Community activities

The biography of Vasily Aksenov is filled with difficulties and hardships. In March 1966, while participating in an attempted demonstration against the intended rehabilitation of Stalin in Moscow, on Red Square, the writer was detained by vigilantes. In the next two years, Aksyonov put his signature on a number of letters,sent to protect dissidents, and received a reprimand for this from the Moscow branch of the Union of Writers of the USSR with entering into the case.

Nikita Khrushchev, at a meeting with the intelligentsia back in 1963, sharply criticized Vasily Aksenov and Andrei Voznesensky. When the "thaw" ended, the writer's works were no longer published in his homeland. In 1975, the novel "The Burn" was written, which we have already mentioned. Vasily Aksenov did not even hope for its publication. "Island of Crimea" - a novel in the fantasy genre - was also originally created by the author without the expectation that the work would be published and seen by the world. At this time (1979), criticism towards the writer became more and more sharp, such epithets as “anti-people”, “non-Soviet” began to slip in it. But in 1977-1978, Aksenov's works began to appear abroad, mainly in the United States of America.

Together with Victor Erofeev, Iskander Fazil, Bella Akhmadulina, Andrey Bitov and Evgeny Popov, Vasily Aksenov in 1978 became a co-author and organizer of the Metropol almanac. It never got into the Soviet censored press, but it was published in the USA. After that, all the participants of the almanac were subjected to "studies". This was followed by the expulsion of Erofeev and Popov from the Union of Writers of the USSR, and in protest, Vasily Aksenov, together with Semyon Lipkin and Inna Lisnyanskaya, also announced their withdrawal from the Union.

Life in the USA

At the invitation in the summer of 1980, the writer went to the United States, and in 1981, for this, he was taken awayUSSR citizenship. Aksenov lived in the USA until 2004. During his stay there, he worked as a professor of Russian literature at various American universities: the Kennan Institute (from 1981 to 1982), the University of Washington (from 1982 to 1983), Goucher College (from 1983 to 1988), Mason University (from 1988 to 2009). As a journalist between 1980 and 1991 Aksenov Vasily collaborated with Radio Liberty, Voice of America, the Verb almanac and the Continent magazine. The writer's radio essays were published in the collection "A Decade of Slander", published in 2004.

In the United States, the works “Burn”, “Our Golden Iron”, “The Island of Crimea”, the collection “The Right to the Island” were published but not published in Russia. However, Vasily Aksenov continued to create in America: "The Moscow Saga" (trilogy, 1989, 1991, 1993), "The Negative of the Good Hero" (collection of stories, 1995), "The New Sweet Style" (a novel dedicated to the life of Soviet emigrants in the USA, 1996) were all written while living in the United States. The writer created works not only in Russian, in 1989 the novel “The Yolk of an Egg” was written in English (though the author himself later translated it). At the invitation of Jack Matlock, the American ambassador, Aksyonov came to the Soviet Union for the first time after going abroad (nine years later). In 1990, Soviet citizenship was returned to the writer.

Work in Russia

In 1993, during the dispersal of the Supreme Council, VasilyAksyonov again openly showed his convictions and expressed solidarity with the people who signed the letter in support of Yeltsin. Anton Barshchevsky in 2004 filmed the trilogy "The Moscow Saga" in Russia. In the same year, the magazine "October" published the work of the writer "Voltaireans and Voltaireans", which was subsequently awarded the Booker Prize. In 2005, Aksyonov wrote a book of memoirs called "The Apple of the Eye" in the form of a personal diary.

Last years of life

In his last years, the writer and his family lived either in France, in the city of Biarritz, or in Moscow. In the Russian capital, on January 15, 2008, Aksenov felt unwell, he was hospitalized in the 23rd hospital. The writer was diagnosed with a stroke. A day later, Vasily Pavlovich was transferred to the Sklifosovsky Research Institute, he underwent an operation to remove a blood clot in the carotid artery. For a long time, the writer's condition remained rather difficult. And in March 2009, new complications appeared. Aksenov was transferred to the Burdenko Institute and operated on again. Then Vasily Pavlovich was again hospitalized at the Sklifosovsky Research Institute. It was there that the writer died on July 6, 2009. Vasily Pavlovich was buried in Moscow, at the Vagankovsky cemetery. In November 2009, in Kazan, in the house where the writer once lived, the Museum of his work was organized.

Vasily Aksenov: “Mysterious passion. A novel about the sixties"

This is the last finished work of a talented writer. It was published in its entirety after Aksenov's death, inOctober 2009. Prior to this, in 2008, individual chapters were published in the publication "Collection of the caravan of stories." The novel is autobiographical, its heroes are the idols of art and literature of the sixties of the twentieth century: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Bulat Okudzhava, Andrei Voznesensky, Ernst Neizvestny, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Marlen Khutsiev, Vladimir Vysotsky, Andrei Tarkovsky and others. Aksyonov gave fictitious names to the characters so that the work would not be associated with the memoir genre.

Prizes, awards, memory

In the United States of America, the writer was awarded the degree of Doctor of Humane Sciences. He was also a member of the American Authors' League and the PEN Club. In 2004, Aksenov was awarded the Russian Booker Prize for his work The Voltairians and the Voltairians. A year later, he was awarded the honorary Order of Arts and Letters. The writer was a member of the Russian Academy of Arts.

Every year since 2007 Kazan has been holding an international literary and musical festival called "Aksenov-fest". For the first time it was held with the personal participation of Vasily Pavlovich. In 2009, the Literary House-Museum of the famous writer was opened, and a literary city club is now functioning in it. In 2010, the autobiographical unfinished novel of the writer "Lend-Lease" was published. Its presentation took place on November 7 at the Vasily Aksenov House-Museum.

Evgeny Popov and Alexander Kabakov in 2011 jointly published a book of memoirs about Vasily Pavlovich, which they calledAksenov. In it, they consider the writer's fate, the intricacies of biography, the process of the birth of a great Personality. The main task and idea of the book is to prevent the distortion of facts in favor of certain events.

Family

Vasily Aksenov's maternal brother, Alexei, died during the siege of Leningrad. My paternal sister, Maya, is a teacher-methodologist, the author of many textbooks on the Russian language. The first wife of the writer was Kira Mendelev, in marriage with her Aksenov had a son Alexei in 1960. Now he works as a production designer. The second wife and widow of the writer, Maya Aksenova (born in 1930), is a specialist in foreign trade by education. During her family's life in the United States, she taught Russian, and in Russia she worked at the Chamber of Commerce. Vasily Pavlovich and Maya Afanasyevna had no joint children, but Aksenov had a stepdaughter Elena (born in 1954). She died in August 2008.