Aksenov Vasily: biography and the best books of the writer. Aksyonov, Evtushenko, Akhmadulina
Books by Vasily Aksenov have enjoyed unprecedented popularity among thinking readers for several decades. Among them there are completely different works: tough and romantic, truthful and utopian. Therefore, each person can find something for himself in the work of Vasily Pavlovich.
Biography
Vasily's biography turned out to be difficult but interesting and eventful. It will certainly be interesting to get acquainted with it for all fans of his literary work. In addition, Wikipedia will tell you information about the life of Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov.
early years
Aksenov was born in 1932 in Kazan to the chairman of the city council and a teacher of a well-known pedagogical university in the city. He became the third child in the family, but the first common son of Pavel and Eugene. The early years of the boy's life were happy and joyful. His parents loved him very much and tried to spend all their free time with him. Father in the evenings played board games with Vasya, took him fishing and into the forest for mushrooms. True, the happy time did not last long.
When the future writer was 4 years old, his parents were arrested in turn and sent to Stalin's camps for 10 years. Vasily's mother spent a total of 18 years in exile and prisons. It was about this that she later wrote an autobiographical book, which is still popular today.
The brother and sister of the younger Aksenov, after the imprisonment of their parents, were somewhat more fortunate. Alexei and Maya were taken to their place by the relatives of the family. It is interesting that the grandmothers of the baby wanted to raise Vasya, but this was forbidden to them. As a result, the boy ended up in an orphanage for the sons and daughters of convicts, which was located in Kostroma. Have your relatives even been informed? to which city the child was sent. Two years later, his paternal uncle took him from there. Andreyan had to make a lot of efforts to find his nephew. From that time and throughout the war, Vasily lived with relatives.
As soon as the boy's mother was released from prison, she immediately began to try to get permission for living together with son... As a result, Aksenov Jr. moved to her in the Kolyma. Here she was like an exile. By the way, the writer will tell about his childhood years in these parts in the future in one of his novels.
Education
During his childhood, Vasily had to study in a variety of schools. He was never an excellent student, but he was very fond of gaining new knowledge. The boy had a special inclination for the humanities. True, his parents then could not even imagine that in the end the younger Aksenov would become a writer. After receiving a school certificate, the young man entered the Leningrad Medical Institute. This was insisted on by his relatives, who believed that only the profession of a doctor could feed the guy. After graduation, he is distributed managed to work in different places:
- At the capital's tuberculosis hospital;
- In the Far North (by a quarantine doctor);
- In Karelia (general specialist).
By the way, by the time Vasily received his diploma, his parents were already at large and completely rehabilitated.
Creation
Despite the fact that, at the insistence of his parents, the young man received a medical education, the profession of a doctor never did not arouse much interest in him... He knew his job very well and from the first months of work was known among his colleagues as a real professional, but his soul yearned for literature.
The beginning of writing
At first, Vasily wrote his books “on the table”. But in the 60s he nevertheless decided to send one of his favorite stories to the publishing house. The young man was extremely surprised and delighted that the work "Colleagues" immediately appeared in print... The reader liked it so much that it later turned into a full-length film.
After that, one by one, the novels of Vasily Aksenov and collections of his stories begin to appear. For some of them, films are also made in the future. For example, the novel "Star Ticket" turned into the movie "My Little Brother". It was especially pleasant for Vasily Pavlovich that a full-fledged performance was staged by the Sovremennik Theater shortly after the beginning of his literary career. The success inspired the man so much that he decided to finally change his profession.
Aksenov's name is becoming more and more popular in Moscow, and then in other cities of the country. He becomes the editor of the magazine "Youth", in which his works are also periodically published. The writer's parents are anxious to find each new issue and add it to the family collection.
Social activity
In parallel with literature, Vasily was carried away by social activities. First, he volunteered to participate in a demonstration on Red Square, in which he spoke out against the rehabilitation of Stalin, then he signed letters to defend the dissidents. There were quite a few such actions, which could not remain unnoticed by the authorities.
Public activity Aksenov strongly disliked the government. He first learned about this at a meeting of the authorities with representatives of the intelligentsia in the Kremlin. Then he heard public criticism in his address from Nikita Khrushchev. Once Vasily Pavlovich was even detained by vigilantes. Of course, there were no grounds for the arrest of the writer, but he was repeatedly given to understand that he urgently needed to change his line of behavior.
Despite the emerging disagreements with the authorities, the man continued to create and delight his fans with all the new works. In the early 70s, an adventure book for the youngest readers saw the light. She proved to be very popular with children and their parents. Then the historical and biographical story "Love for Electricity" appeared in print. Vasily was very fond of experimenting with literary genres. He himself noted that for a very long time he could not find exactly the direction in which it would be most interesting and comfortable for him to work. He shared his doubts with the readers in the work "The Search for a Genre".
Was engaged in Aksenov and translations from English... He managed to make several foreign novels available to the domestic reader at once. Among the literary experiments of Vasily Pavlovich, there was even a joint work with two other writers. It was a funny parody of a book about spies.
Aksenov himself understood that conflicts and misunderstandings with the government would sooner or later lead to the fact that he would no longer be able to publish in his homeland. And so it happened: as soon as the "thaw" ended. True, some of the works of Vasily Aksenov were still published (to the great surprise of the author himself). Among them are the aforementioned autobiographical novel about the early years of life and the fantastic book "The Island of Crimea". Vasily noted that he created these works "on the table" and in general did not at all hope that they would ever see the world.
Towards the end of the 70s the authorities are beginning to criticize the writer more and more openly and sharply. Such an epithet as “non-Soviet” is already being addressed to him. And the last straw for the government was the withdrawal of Vasily Pavlovich from the "Union of Writers". Thus, he and several other authors expressed their disagreement with the exclusion of Popov and Erofeev from the indicated public organization.
Since 1977, Aksenov's works have been actively published abroad. They appear especially frequently in print in the United States. It is here that Vasily, together with his creative comrades, organizes the Metropol almanac. Despite the tremendous efforts of the entire team, it was not possible to publish it at home. Among the staff of the magazine were V. Erofeev, A. Bitov, B. Akhmadulina and other "outcasts" of their country.
Life in the USA
For moving abroad (by invitation) Vasily Aksenov was stripped of USSR citizenship... This greatly upset the writer, but he understood that he would not be able to live and create peacefully in his homeland for a long time. Therefore, the man simply resigned himself to his position and stayed in the United States, where he was until 2004. During this time, he managed to visit the post of professor of Russian literature at the most famous American universities and replenish his own bibliography. I tried myself as a writer and as a journalist. He has worked with several foreign radio stations and magazines.
By the way, the man published his impressions of his work on the radio in the work "Decade of Slander", which was published in the last year of his life in the states. Other books were also published in America. While living in the United States, Vasily Pavlovich actively worked on new stories, novellas and novels. As a result, they the following works were written:
- "The negative of the positive hero";
- New Sweet Style;
- "Egg yolk" and others.
Interestingly, the last novel was written in English. But later the author himself translated it for domestic readers. True, he never received much popularity at home.
9 years after his departure from the USSR, the writer returned home for the first time... He was invited to the Soviet Union by the American ambassador. And in 1990, Soviet citizenship was returned to Aksenov. True, this did not motivate him to move back. Vasily Pavlovich continued to live abroad with his family and only occasionally flew to Moscow on business.
In the early 2000s, the writer began to publish in Russia. The first to appear in print was his novel "Voltaireans and Voltaireans". For this work Vasily was awarded the Booker Prize. His last novel was "The Mysterious Passion", truthfully telling about the life of the sixties. As a result, he was filmed at home. True, it became available to viewers after the death of the writer.
Personal life
The first wife of Aksenov was K. Mendeleev, who gave the man a long-awaited son (the writer was 28 years old at that time). His ex-wife is still alive and is a production designer in one of the capital's theaters. True, with Kira, Vasily did not manage to build a strong family, even for the sake of a child. Vasily Pavlovich felt happy in love only after meeting with M. Carmen... For his sake, the woman left the famous documentary filmmaker Roman Carmen. Immediately after they met, a real passion arose between the writer and his new lover.
Maya was far from creativity (a specialist in foreign trade), but she was ready to follow her husband even to the ends of the world. She moved with the writer to the United States, where she also began to teach Russian. The couple did not have joint children. Vasily and Maya raised her daughter from her first marriage. It was for his second wife that Aksenov experienced true passion and love.
Alexey, half-brother, died during the blockade of Leningrad, so Vasily practically did not know him. And here paternal sister, Maya- became a very close and dear person for the writer. When, after the release of the parents, the family was reunited, the girl willingly kept in touch with the younger Aksenov and often helped him in difficult life situations. Their communication did not stop even after Vasily Pavlovich moved to the states. Maya became a teacher-methodologist and published many textbooks on the Russian language, which are still actively used by specialists to this day.
Awards
During his life, the writer Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov received many awards and prizes... Among them are the following:
- Russian Booker Prize;
- Honorary Order of Arts and Literature;
- the title of an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts.
In 2011, Aksenov's comrades published a book of memoirs about him. Their main task was to convey to the reader the real facts from his life and work without any distortions to please the authorities and all kinds of events.
Aksyonov Vasily Pavlovich
Writer
Winner of the "Booker - Open Russia" prize for the best novel of the year "Voltaireans and Voltaireans" (2004)
Recipient of the Order of Arts and Letters, one of the highest awards in France (2005)
Holder of the title Doctor of Humane Letters (USA)
Member of the PEN Club and the American Author's League
“One of the brightest people of the“ thaw ”generation passed away, who all his life tried to preserve this warmth of the“ thaw ”and invited his readers to follow him." Andrey Bitov.
Vasily Aksyonov was born on August 20, 1932 in the family of party workers Evgenia Semyonovna Ginzburg and Pavel Vasilyevich Aksyonov. He was the third, youngest child in the family, and the only common child of his parents. His father, Pavel Vasilyevich, was the chairman of the Kazan City Council and a member of the bureau of the Tatar Regional Party Committee, and his mother Evgenia Semyonovna worked as a teacher at the Kazan Pedagogical Institute, then she was the head of the culture department of the Krasnaya Tataria newspaper, and was a member of the Kazan regional party organization.
In 1937, when Vasily Aksyonov was not yet five years old, his mother, and soon his father, were arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison and camps. After going through the horror of the Stalinist camps during the exposure of the personality cult, Yevgenia Ginzburg later became the author of the book of memoirs "Steep Route" - one of the first books-memoirs about the era of Stalinist repressions and camps, a story about eighteen years spent by the author in prison, Kolyma camps and exile.
The elder children - sister Maya (daughter of P.V. Aksenov) and Alyosha (son of E.S. Ginzburg from his first marriage) were taken by relatives, and Vasya was forcibly sent to an orphanage for children of prisoners, since his grandmothers were not allowed to leave child at home. In 1938, Vasily Aksyonov's uncle (P. Aksenov's brother) managed to find little Vasya in an orphanage in Kostroma and take him to him. Vasya lived in the house of Moti Aksyonova (his paternal relative) until 1948, when his mother Yevgenia Ginzburg, leaving the camp in 1947 and living in exile in Magadan, obtained permission for Vasya to visit her in Kolyma. Evgenia Ginzburg described the meeting with Vasya in "Steep Route".
Magadan amazed Vasily with its freedom - a real "salon" gathered in the mother's barracks in the evenings. In the company of the "former camp intellectuals" they talked about things that Vasily had never known about before. The future writer was shocked by the breadth of the problems discussed and the reasoning about the fate of mankind. Many years later, in 1975, Vasily Aksyonov described his Magadan youth in his autobiographical novel Burn.
In 1956, Aksyonov graduated from the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute and was assigned to the Baltic Shipping Company, where he was supposed to work as a doctor on long-distance ships. Despite the fact that his parents had already been rehabilitated, he was never given a visa. Aksyonov worked as a quarantine doctor in the Far North, in Karelia, in the Leningrad commercial sea port and in a tuberculosis hospital in Moscow (according to other sources, he was a consultant at the Moscow Research Institute of Tuberculosis).
In 1958, the magazine "Youth" published the first stories of Aksyonov "Torches and Roads" and "One and a half medical units", and in 1960 his first story "Colleagues" was published, based on which a film of the same name was subsequently filmed. Thanks to this story, Aksyonov became widely known. He retired from medicine and took up literary work. Many of their early works by Aksyonov - the novels "Star ticket", "It's time, my friend, it's time", the stories "Oranges from Morocco" and "It's a pity that you weren't with us" caused an ambiguous reaction from the authorities. " What forced the leaders of the magazine "Yunost" in 1963 to persuade him to write and submit to the newspaper "Pravda" a repentant article "Responsibility". “True, not everyone believed in Aksyonov's repentance,” noted the researchers of his work. Later, his satirical story "Overstocked Barrel", written in 1968, also became the reason for accusing the author of "hidden anti-Sovietism."
In 1972 he wrote an experimental novel "The Search for a Genre". At the same time in 1972, together with O. Gorchakov and G. Pozhenyan, he wrote a parody novel of the spy thriller Gene Green - Untouchable under the pseudonym Grivadiy Gorpozhaks (a combination of the names and surnames of real authors). In 1976 Aksenov translated from English the novel by E.L.Doktorow "Ragtime".
In the 1970s, after the end of the Thaw, Aksyonov's works were no longer published in the Soviet Union. The novels "Burn" in 1975 and "Island of Crimea" in 1979 from the very beginning were created by the author without counting on publication. At this time, criticism of Vasily Aksyonov and his works became more and more harsh - such epithets as "non-Soviet" and "non-people" were used. In 1977 and 1978, Aksyonov's works began to appear abroad, primarily in the United States.
His friends recalled: “He was in his way untouchable and was respected even among those writers who belonged to a completely different 'camp'. They felt a certain reverence for him, even the secretaries of the Union called him Vasily Pavlovich. " However, after the Metropol, everything changed.
In 1979, Vasily Aksyonov, together with Andrei Bitov, Viktor Erofeev, Fazil Iskander, Evgeny Popov and Bella Akhmadulina, became one of the organizers and authors of the uncensored almanac Metropol. Never published in the Soviet censored press, the almanac was published in the United States. In protest against the subsequent expulsion of Popov and Erofeev from the Union of Writers of the USSR in December 1979, Vasily Aksyonov, Inna Lisnyanskaya and Semyon Lipkin announced their withdrawal from the joint venture.
Members of the Metropol almanac from left to right: Evgeny Popov, Viktor Erofeev, Bella Akhmadulina, Andrei Voznesensky, Zoya Boguslavskaya, Boris Messerer, Fazil Iskander, Andrei Bitov, Vasily Aksenov, Maya Carmen.
On July 22, 1980, Aksyonov left by invitation to the United States, after which he and his wife Maya Carmen were deprived of Soviet citizenship. Until 2004, he lived in the United States, teaching Russian literature at J. Mason University in Fairfex, Virginia. Vasily Pavlovich had amazing willpower. Those who sent him out of the country thought it would break the writer, but they were wrong. Here is how Aksyonov explained what happened: “There is an opinion that a Russian writer cannot write outside of Russia. That, as soon as he gets abroad, he begins to whine, suffocate, and ends his life in the nearest ditch. This is not entirely true if we recall the experience of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, who spent many years abroad and wrote far from their worst things there. This is how my destiny developed. When you leave your homeland forever, you experience stress, then you start to somehow struggle with it, come to your senses and suddenly realize that you can write great. "
Since 1981, Vasily Aksyonov has been a professor of Russian literature at various US universities: he worked at the Kennan Institute from 1981 to 1982, at the University of Washington from 1982 to 1983, at Gaucher University from 1983 to 1988, at George Mason University from 1988 to 2009.
The novels "Our Golden Iron" (1973, 1980), "Burn" (1976, 1980), "Crimea Island" (1979, 1981), a collection of stories "The Right to the Island" (1981). Also in the USA, Vasily Aksyonov wrote and published new novels: "Paper Landscape" in 1982, "Say Raisins" in 1985, "In Search of a Sad Baby" in 1986, the Moscow Saga trilogy in 1989, 1991 and 1993 , a collection of short stories "The negative of the positive hero" in 1995, "New sweet style" in 1996, dedicated to the life of the Soviet emigration in the United States, "Caesarean glow" in 2000.
For the first time after nine years of emigration, Aksyonov visited the USSR in 1989 at the invitation of the American Ambassador J. Matlock. In 1990, Vasily Aksyonov was returned to Soviet citizenship, after which the writer lived in Moscow and traveled to Biarritz in France, where he had a house since 2002.
From 1980 to 1991, Vasily Aksyonov, as a journalist, actively collaborated with the Voice of America and Radio Liberty. Aksyonovskie radio essays were published in the author's collection "Decade of Slander" in 2004. Eduard Topol told about Aksyonov: "Aksyonov was from a powerful cohort of dissidents of the sixties, which gave hope that we would remain human even under Soviet rule." In his opinion, without the spirit of dissidence, there is no real writer at all: “The revolution should not be on the street, but in the souls of people. And a real writer must say what he wants to say, despite the fact that it may be prohibited. "
The second wife of the writer was Maya Afanasyevna, whom Aksyonov recaptured from his friend, the Russian film director Roman Karmen. Vasily Pavlovich met Maya in Yalta, where Carmen came to rest after a heart attack. We met in secret in Sochi. Aksyonov admitted: “Everyone knew about our betrayal. Roman's comrade Yulian Semyonov almost beat me once. Shouted: "Give Roma to Mike."
Aksyonov was fond of historical literature, he was especially interested in the 18th century. He has read many books on the history of the sailing fleet. Since his student days, he was fond of jazz. His sporting passions included jogging and basketball. Vasily Pavlovich was not devoid of small human weaknesses. Smoking was his bad habit. The writer did not hide this, in one of his numerous interviews he said: “I smoked a pipe at 22, when I imagined myself as Hemingway. But the cigarette has always been nicer. Later, Marina Vlady gave me a cool pipe. I went with her for a very long time. "
They wrote about Aksyonov that it was he who, in the 1960s, “was the first to introduce the word“ jeans ”into the Russian language and made them his uniform.” “He walked, so denim and so jazzy,” Bella Akhmadulina recalled. And the writer Yevgeny Popov, congratulating the writer on his birthday, noted: "All modern Russian literature came out of Aksyonov's denim jacket, like Gogol's" Overcoat ".
“It was remarkable for its amazing power, and our literature was definitely empty without it,” the writer Dmitry Bykov considered. - And most importantly, he was a good man, which almost never happens among us. First of all, in Aksyonov I was amazed by his ability to experiment, because I do not know of a single young writer who could write such a daring essay as "Moscow Kva-Kva", such a striking in courage, absolutely Platonic experiment. "
Aksyonov throughout his life led a very active lifestyle, he could stand on his head doing yoga. But on January 15, 2008, Aksyonov suddenly felt bad when he was driving a car. There was an accident, Vasily Aksyonov was urgently hospitalized in the 23rd hospital, from which he was transferred to the Sklifosovsky Institute. Aksyonov was found to have a blood clot in the carotid artery feeding the left hemisphere of the brain. The thrombus was removed. Moscow neurologists did their best; they could not have done anything better in another country.
On January 29, 2008, doctors assessed the writer's condition as extremely grave. Vasily Aksyonov remained in the hospital under the supervision of doctors. On August 28, 2008, the condition remained “consistently difficult”. On March 5, 2009, new complications arose, Aksyonov was transferred to the Burdenko Research Institute and operated on. Later Aksyonov was transferred back to the Sklifosovsky Research Institute.
“He suffered terribly and was physically tormented. Out of habit, they tried to rehabilitate him. Recently, he survived only because he was a very strong and courageous person. About three or four months ago, he showed very good hopes for recovery. It seemed to us that psychological reactions and emotions were returning, but later this was not confirmed, ”said Vladimir Naydin, head of the rehabilitation department at the Research Institute of Neurosurgery at the Burdenko Hospital.
According to him, Aksyonov also suffered from intestinal thrombosis: “It was with this diagnosis that he was sent from our research institute to the Sklifosovsky Institute, where he was operated on. The operation was quite successful, but, given the serious condition that the patient had before, it was still not possible to avoid this tragic end. They say that God gives a person as much as he can bear. Vasily Aksyonov withstood as much as the average person cannot withstand. "
According to the literary critic Vladimir Bondarenko, who studied the writer's work, the death of Aksyonov was a real blow to the literature of the sixties, the literature of the Russian emigration and all the literature of the last century. “Aksyonov is undoubtedly one of the brightest and most famous Russian writers in the whole world of the second half of the XX century. His books will of course be reprinted because they have already passed the test of time, ”he said.
About Vasily Aksyonov in 2009 a documentary film “Vasily Aksyonov. It is a pity that you were not with us. " In it, writers Anatoly Gladilin, Evgeny Popov, Alexander Kabakov, Bella Akhmadulina and Anatoly Naiman told about Aksyonov. Lily Denis, translator of Vasily Asenov, shared his memories of the early 1960s, telling about the first acquaintance with the writer's prose. Among those who also spoke about Aksyonov in the film are Boris Messerer, Oleg Tabakov and Alexey Kozlov.
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The text was prepared by Andrey Goncharov
Used materials:
Materials of the site www.biograph.ru
Materials of the site www.rian.ru
Materials of the site www.news.km.ru
Materials of the site www.jewish-library.ru
Site materials www.peoples.ru
The text of the article "Vasily Aksenov: Maya is the main love" by O. Kuchkina
Vasya, let's talk about love. Turgenev had Viardot, Scott Fitzgerald had Zelda, Herzen had Natasha, had it not been for her, the great book Past and Thoughts would not have been born. What is his woman for a writer? Has it happened in your life that you wrote for the sake of a girl, for a woman?
It was not like that ... But still, it was so sublime. And our main love - I don't know how Maya looks at it, but I look like this: Maya, yes.
I remember well: House of Creativity in Pitsunda, you appear with an interesting blonde, and everyone whispers that, they say, Vasya Aksenov took his wife away from the famous documentary filmmaker Roman Karmen ...
I didn’t take her away. She was his wife for another ten years.
- Did you know him?
No. I once went with him in the Red Arrow to St. Petersburg. I was under the can. I've already heard about his wife. And I say to him: is it true that you have a very pretty wife? He says: I like it. So he said, and maybe it was postponed somewhere.
- How old were you?
Years 32 or 33. I was married. Kira I had a wife. Kira is Alexey's mother. And it was somehow very bad with her ... In fact, we lived, in general, merrily. Before the baby was born, before she got so fat ...
- Has everything changed because she got fat? Did it ... offend you? ..
It began to offend her. By this time I had become, well, a famous writer. I went everywhere with our then celebrities ... different adventures happened ... she began to roll scenes ...
- Did it start as a student marriage?
No, I have already graduated from the medical institute in St. Petersburg. And my friend and I went to the Karelian Isthmus, our interests are sports, jazz, this and that. And he told me: I saw a girl at the dance ... She was staying there with her grandmother, an old Bolshevik woman. She served in prison, she was just released, it was 1956. And she had been in prison since 1949 ...
- And your mother was sitting ...
My mother was in prison in 1937. And Kirina's grandmother was somehow dragged into the Voznesensky case ...
- Which Voznesensky?
Not Andrei, of course, but the one who directed all party work in the Soviet Union. He was imprisoned and shot. His nephew came, who told how he was in prison in solitary confinement and wrote letters to Stalin all the time that he was not guilty of anything. And suddenly, one fine moment, the Politburo, almost in full force, entered his cell, and when he saw them, he shouted: I knew, my friends, that you would come to me! And then Lazar Kaganovich gave him so much in his ear that he became deaf.
- Why did they come?
Just look at the defeated enemy.
- Sadists ...
And Kira graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages and sang various foreign songs very well ...
- And your heart melted.
That's it. And then ... all sorts of things were ...
- Are things love interests?
Love hobbies. This always took place in the houses of creativity. And somehow we come to the House of Creativity in Yalta. Pozhenyan is there, my friend. We are sitting with him, and he rubs his hands: oh, Carmen's wife is here ...
- Rubbing her hands, thinking that you will have an affair now?
He thought he was going to have an affair. She just arrived and sat down at Bella Akhmadulina's table. Bella and I have always been friends. And Bella says to me: Vasya, Vasya, come here, you know Maya, how are you not familiar with Maya! .. And Maya looks at me like that, and she looks very exhausted, because Carmen had a heart attack, and she she looked after him all winter, and when he recovered, she went to Yalta. And then she began to laugh, cheered up. And in Yalta was our steamer "Georgia", a steamer of literature. Because the captain was Tolya Garagulya, he adored literature and always lured us to him by arranging feasts for us. And here we are with Maya ... For some reason, Maya always set the table, well, somehow she tried, I spread something like that, trying to be closer to her ...
- Did you fall in love right away?
Yes. And I tell her: you see, what a captain's cabin, and in general, somehow all this is fraught, and tomorrow my wife will leave ... And she says: and we will be closer to each other. Pozhenyan sees everything and says: I'm leaving ... And he sailed away on this "Georgia". And we returned to the House of Creativity. I saw off Kira, and some feasts began. Bella came up with something, walked around and said: you know, I heard that previous people buried bottles of champagne for us, let's look. And we searched and found.
- Was Maya's divorce difficult?
There was no divorce as such, and it was not hard, she was such a laugh. Everything happened gradually and, in general, was already quite open. We met many times in the south, and in Moscow too. I still continued to live with Kira, but we already parted. Of course, it was not easy, but love with Maya was very strong ... We traveled everywhere together. In Cheget, in the mountains, in Sochi. We were not lodged together, since we did not have a stamp in our passport, but close by. Abroad, of course, she went alone, brought me some clothes ...
- The happiest time in your life?
Yes. This coincided with the Metropol, everything was spinning around Maya and me, she cooked everything there. But this is after the death of Roman Lazarevich. At that time we were in Yalta, her daughter phoned and said.
- He did not try to get Maya back?
He is not, but he had a friend, Yulian Semyonov, he walked around me and said: give him Mike.
- What do you mean give it back? She's not a thing.
Well yes, but that's exactly what he said.
- Do you have a habit, like poets, of dedicating things to someone?
No. But Burn is about Maya. And the story "Ivan" - to our Vanechka. Did you hear what happened to our Vanya?
- No, why? Is Vanechka Maya's grandson?
Her grandson, I had a son. He was 26 years old, he graduated from an American university. Alena, his mother, had a very difficult life in America, and he somehow tried to distance himself from her. He left for Colorado, they had three friends: an American, a Venezuelan and he, three handsome men, and they could not find work. They worked part-time at the post office, at rescue stations, in the mountains. He had love with a German girl, they already lived together. But then she left somewhere, in general, it did not work out, and the three of them went to San Francisco. All are huge, and our Vanya is huge. He already forgot this Greta, he had a lot of girls. When everyone came to our funeral, we saw many pretty girls. He lived on the seventh floor, went out to the balcony ... They were all carried away by a book, allegedly written by a three-thousand-year-old Chinese sage. That is, no one saw him or knew him, but they knew that he was three thousand years old. I saw this book, it was possible to learn fate from it. And Vanya wrote letters to him. There it was necessary to somehow correctly write: dear oracle. And he supposedly answered something. And he seemed to say to Vanya: jump from the seventh floor ...
- Some kind of sectarian history.
He didn't seem to be going to jump. But he had such a habit of looking down ...
- They say you don't have to look into the abyss, otherwise the abyss will look into you.
And he flew down. Two students were with him then. They ran to him, he was already lying on the ground, woke up and said: I went over alcohol and leaned over the railing. After that he passed out and did not come to his senses any more.
- How did you handle it? How did Maya handle it?
Terrible. Absolutely awful. The nightmare began.
- When did it happen?
In 1999. We were just wonderful friends. Somehow he turned out to be close to me. I took the best pictures of him. I also wanted to take him to Gotland. When I lived in America, every summer I went to Gotland, to Sweden, there is also a house of creativity like ours, and there I wrote. This house of creativity is at the top of the mountain, and at the bottom is the huge church of St. Mary. When you go up to the third floor, you see chimeras on the church, they look into the windows. I often looked and was afraid that the chimera would look into my life. And she looked in. Maya was in Moscow, I was in America. My friend Zhenya Popov called me and said ...
- It seemed to me that, in spite of everything, your life is happy and easy.
No, it's very hard.
You wrote a story about Vanechka - did you feel better? In general, when a writer transforms the substance of life into prose, does it become easier?
Do not know. No. Writing is happiness. But when you write about misfortune, it’s not easier. She is there in the story, that is, Maya, asks: what are we going to do now? And I answer her: we will live sadly.
- Vasya, why did you leave the country - this one and why did you come back - two?
I left because they wanted to get their hands on me.
- Were you afraid that you would be jailed?
No. Will kill.
- Will kill? Did you know that?
There was an attempt. It was 1980. I was driving from Kazan, from my father, on a Volga, a summer empty highway, and a KamAZ and two motorcycles came to me. He walked straight towards me, they closed the road, blinded me ...
- Have you been driving? How did you manage to avoid the collision?
Just a guardian angel. I have never been some kind of ace, he just told me what to do. He said: turn right to the very end, now gas, and turn back, back, back. And we slipped along the very edge of the road.
And I thought you were lucky ... You entered literature so perfectly, instantly, one might say, starting to write, as no one else wrote. Is it the work of consciousness or is the hand leading?
In general, the hand drove, of course. I imitated Kataev. Then we were friends with him, and he was very proud that we are so friendly ...
Are you talking about his "Diamond Crown", "The Grass of Oblivion", about what they began to call "Movism", from the French "mo" - the word, the taste of the word itself? And I have the impression that first you started, then he came to his senses and began to write in a new way.
May be. Quite. He told me: old man, you know, everything is going so well with you, but you are in vain holding on to the plot, there is no need to develop the plot.
- You had a wonderful storyless piece “Search for a genre” with the definition of a genre “search for a genre” ...
By this time he had parted company with us. There was already Metropol, and speaking on his 80th birthday on TV, he said: you know, I am so grateful to our party, I am so grateful to the Writers' Union ... I bowed. The last time I drove along the Kiev road and saw him - he was standing so big and looking at the road ... If there hadn't been such a threat to my novels, I might not have left yet. Were written "Burn", "Crimea Island", a lot of ideas. All this could not be printed here and began to be printed in the West. And in the West, when I started writing my great novels, such a story happened. My main publishing house, Random House, sold itself to another publisher. My publisher told me: don't worry, everything will remain the same. But they appointed a person who first looked closely, and then said: if you want to make a profit, you must expel all intellectuals.
- And you got on this list? Just like ours.
Bring in income or you will be lost - they have such a saying. This man became vice president of a publishing company, and I realized that my books would no longer be there. And I suddenly realized that I was returning to Russia, because I was again saving my literature. Most importantly, I returned to the host country of my language.
- Vasya, you lived in America and in Russia. What is better for life here and here?
It warms me that my books are read in America. This, of course, is not what it was in the USSR ... But they publish me with a circulation of 75 thousand, 55 thousand ...
But I am not asking about your selfish, so to speak, joys, I am asking about something else: how is life in America and how is it with us?
Life in America is really amazing. Incredibly comfortable and cozy. France is not as cozy as America.
- What is the convenience? They are disposed towards you, they smile at you, do they help you?
It is too. There's a lot there. There, the university takes on a lot of your worries and deals with all this fuss, which is represented by the formalities of life, it's terribly convenient.
- What do you like in Russia?
Language. I really like the language. I can't say anything else.
- To whom and what do you feel obligated to in life?
I am now writing a piece about my childhood. It was monstrous. And yet the monster somehow enabled me to survive. Mom was in prison, father was in prison. When I was exposed that I had concealed information about my mother and father, I was kicked out of Kazan University. Then they restored it. I could actually go to jail. Then such a successful combination of the 60s, the "thaw" and everything together - it tempered and educated me.
- Did you feel like a free person inside?
No, I was not a free person. But I never felt like a Soviet person. I came to my mother in Magadan for a settlement, when I turned 16, we lived on the very outskirts of the city, and these convoys dragged past us, I looked at them and realized that I was not a Soviet person. Absolutely categorical: not Soviet. I even once took aim at Stalin.
- How is it, in a portrait?
No, live. I walked with the guys from the Construction Institute along Red Square. We walked and I saw the Mausoleum where they stood, black figures on the right, brown on the left, and in the middle - Stalin. I was 19 years old. And I thought: how easy it is to aim and get it out of here.
- I can imagine if you had something in your hands, what would have been done to you.
Naturally.
- Do you feel free now?
I felt it when I got to the West. That I can go there and there, anywhere in the world, and I can behave however I want. The only question is money.
- As we have now.
Now everything is completely different. Everything is different. Among other things, I have two citizenships.
- If anything, they will not beat on the passport.
Then I will resist.
- Returning to the beginning of the conversation, does a woman continue to be a driving incentive for you as a writer?
We are elderly people, we must die already ...
- You're going to?
Of course.
- How do you do it?
I think about it.
- Are you afraid of death?
I do not know what will happen. It seems to me that something is about to happen. It can't just end so easily. We are all children of Adam, where he is, there we are, he is threatened with a return to paradise, here we are after him ...
SELECTED WORKS
Prose:
1960 - "Colleagues" (story)
1961 - "Star Ticket" (novella)
1963 - "Oranges from Morocco" (story)
1964 - "Catapult", (story and short stories)
1964 - "It's time, my friend, it's time" (story)
1964 - "Halfway to the Moon", (collection of stories)
1965 - "Victory" (an exaggerated story)
1965 - "It's a pity that you weren't with us" (story)
1968 - "Overstocked barrel" (story)
1969 - "Love for Electricity" (story)
1971 - "The Story of a Basketball Team Playing Basketball" (essay)
1972 - "In Search of a Genre" (story)
1972 - "My grandfather is a monument" (story)
1973 - Our Golden Iron (novel)
1975 - Burn (novel)
1976 - "Chest, in which something knocks" (story)
1979 - "Crimea Island" (novel)
1983 - Say Raisins
1987 - "In Search of the Sad Baby"
1989 - Yolk of the Egg ((English) translation into Russian - "Egg yolk", 2002)
1994 - "Moscow Saga" (epic novel) film adaptation of "Moscow Saga"
1998 - New Sweet Style
2000 - "Caesarean Glow"
2004 - Voltaireans and Voltaireans (novel, Russian Booker Prize)
2006 - Moscow Kva-Kva (novel)
2007 - Rare Earths
2009 - “Mysterious Passion. A novel about the sixties "
Movie scripts:
1962 - When the bridges are raised
1962 - Colleagues
1962 - My little brother
1970 - Master
1972 - Marble House
1975 - Center from the skies
1978 - While the dream is mad
2007 - Tatiana
2009 - Jester
Plays:
1965 - "Always on Sale"
1966 - "Your Killer"
1968 - "Four Temperaments"
1968 - "Aristophanian with the frogs"
1980 - "Heron"
1998 - "Woe, woe, burn"
1999 - "Aurora Gorenina"
2000 - "Ah, Arthur Schopenhauer"
The biography of Vasily Aksenov, known not only in Russia, but throughout the world, is incredibly rich in events. It seems that he lived not one, but several lives. He was a doctor by profession. In the 80s he left for the USA, where he worked as a journalist and lectured on Russian literature. He spent his last years in France. Several films have been created based on his books. One of Vasily Aksenov's colleagues said about him: "he has always been fashionable." The works of this prose writer arouse the interest of readers at any time.
Son of "enemies of the people"
Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov was born in 1932 in Kazan. Well-being reigned in the family then. Father was the chairman of the city council. Mother taught at the pedagogical institute and headed the department of culture in a local periodical. But the childhood of the future writer Vasily Aksenov cannot be called happy. Only the first years of life were cloudless.
In 1937, the parents were arrested. A five-year-old boy was sent to a boarding school for children of "enemies of the people". The biography of Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov is reflected in his literary work. Most of the works are devoted to the events that he had to endure.
Vasily was not the only child in the family. The elder sister and brother Alyosha were taken away by relatives. Grandma tried to keep Vasya, but to no avail. Only in 1938 did the father's brother manage to find his nephew in the Kostroma orphanage. Vasily Aksenov told about the early period from his biography in the story "Burn".
Medical student
The son of political prisoners is a potential prisoner. Young Vasily Aksenov understood this perfectly, and therefore, after graduating from school, he entered the medical institute. The profession of a doctor seemed safer to him. He became a medical student in 1950. Stalin died three years later. But in the later periods of the biography of Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov, there are sad events caused by a clash with the authorities.
Dudes
They were young people who were attracted to everything Western. The hipsters loved American films, jazz, and admired the culture of the United States. In addition, the dandy movement was a special form of protest against totalitarianism. This social phenomenon is mentioned in the autobiographical books of Vasily Aksenov. He was an active participant in the informal movement.
In the 50s, the future writer wore bright clothes, fashionable hairstyles and listened to jazz. Hipsters were under the scrutiny of state security officers. But Vasily Aksenov, fortunately, passed the fate of many of his associates.
He graduated from medical school in 1956. Then he got a job in the sea post. In 1957, an important event took place in the personal life of Vasily Aksenov - his marriage to Kira Mendeleeva.
Thaw
The writer's youth fell on a relatively quiet time. In 1956, Khrushchev exposed Stalin's crimes, after which the mass rehabilitation of political prisoners began. Among the people who gained the long-awaited freedom were Aksenov's parents. Mother later wrote an autobiographical book in which she spoke in the Stalinist camps. This work was one of the first on a similar topic.
Literary debut
During the years of the thaw, important events took place in the art world. New names have appeared in the literature. Films appeared on the screens, the appearance of which a few years ago was difficult to imagine. These changes coincided with changes in the life of the young doctor Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov.
At the end of the fifties, Valentin Kataev held the post of editor-in-chief in the Yunost magazine. It was he who once published the stories of an unknown physician. Later they said that Kataev signed Aksenov's works to the issue, without having read to the end. The eminent writer admired the young author's metaphors.
Interesting facts from the biography and personal life of Vasily Aksenov can be found in the book "The Mysterious Connection". But it is worth remembering that this is a work of fiction, and therefore, of course, there are also fictional characters in it.
In 1961, the "Yunost" magazine published the stories "Star Ticket" and "Colleagues". It was then that a new type of literary hero appeared - a person who despises Soviet cliches, stretches in foreign culture and loves jazz. The characters in Vasily Aksenov's first books use special vocabulary in conversation, and speak critically about Soviet society. In the sixties, the writer's works became incredibly popular. And it was already incomprehensible: the author introduced youth slang into his books, or the youth spoke the language of his heroes.
Confession
So, in the 60s, fame came to Vasily Aksenov. During these years he wrote and published a lot. His stories, short stories and novels were enthusiastically received by the readers. Vasily Aksenov's books have gained particular popularity among young people.
In 1963, "Oranges from Morocco" was published in Yunost. A year earlier, the story "Halfway to the Moon" appeared in the magazine "New World". Other works of this period: "Catapult", "Comrade handsome Forazhkin", "Overstocked barrel". But not everything was so smooth in the life of a popular writer. His success was accompanied by attacks from the zealots of communist morality. Nikita Khrushchev, at a meeting with the creative intelligentsia, which took place in 1963, criticized the work of Vasily Aksenov and Andrei Voznesensky.
The era of stagnation
The thaw ended in 1964. It turned out that freedom, which the intelligentsia so often talked about, is just an illusion. Lawsuits began against human rights defenders and writers, whose work aroused disapproval of the Soviet censors. But now those who disagreed with the regime were not sent to the camps. They were placed in psychiatric hospitals. And after Soviet tanks entered Prague, Vasily Aksenov understood: there is no socialism with a human face.
In an era of stagnation, his novels and stories were published less and less. In 1968, Aksenov wrote the parody "Jean Green - Untouchable" in collaboration with Pozhenyan and Gorchakov. Several years later he published the story "Love for Electricity", "My Grandfather - a Monument". And then, as if forgetting about censorship, he began work on the novel "Burn". It was an anti-Soviet work that went beyond realism.
The Burn was completed in 1975. Aksenov understood that this work could not be published in the Soviet Union. He decided to send the novel to the West. It was a very dangerous event - the author could easily become one of the victims of repression. But at the same time, the only way to preserve a work is to present it to readers even if something happens to the author.
But then the novel "The Burn" was not published in the West. The authorities, in order to avoid this, went to some indulgences in relations with Aksenov. He was still allowed overseas business trips, lecturing at US universities. From time to time, the writer published his stories in Novy Mir. But in 1979 the first issue of the Metropol almanac was published. After that, there was a final break with the authorities.
"Metropol"
It was a magazine that was originally conceived as a publication loyal to the authorities. It published the works of writers whose work was approved by the censorship. At the same time, stories and novellas created by dissidents appeared in the almanac.
The officials' anger was caused by the very fact of the publication of the publication, which did not pass the censorship. When one of the issues got to the USA, it was possible to put an end to the further publication of this almanac in the Soviet Union. Several members of the Metropol were expelled from the Writers' Union. Vasily Aksenov left voluntarily - in protest. In 1980 he went with his family to France. When Vasily Aksenov and his wife were returning from Kazan, where the writer said goodbye to his father, an attempt was made on his life.
Emigration
Aksenov did not stay in Europe for long. In 1980 he flew to New York. Then the novel "The Burn" was first published abroad. In 1981, The Island of Crimea was published, a work that for a long time was inaccessible to Soviet readers. In the early 1980s, the books by Vasily Aksenov "Our Golden Iron", "Silver Age", "Rendezvous" were also published in the USA. In 1981, the writer was deprived of his Soviet citizenship.
Aksenov and his family settled in Washington. Here he lectured on Russian literature, and this brought him incredible pleasure. Later, the writer admitted: "many years of teaching made me an intellectual." Aksenov also found time for writing. In the first decade of his emigration, he wrote stories that were included in the collection Right to the Island, the novels Say Raisins, Paper Landscape, Yolk of an Egg, In Search of a Sad Baby. Most of the works were published in émigré publications.
Vasily Aksenov was able to visit the Soviet Union only in 1989, after serious changes began in the country. True, the writer and his wife did not live in a hotel, but in the residence of the American ambassador - he arrived in the USSR at the invitation of an employee of the US Embassy. In 1990, citizenship was returned to Aksenov. And soon in Moscow bookstores there were works written in exile. The publication of previously banned books became an important event in the biography of Vasily Aksenov.
Personal life
Aksenov was married twice. For the first time - at Kira Mendeleeva. The girl was the daughter of Lajos Gavro, a Hungarian internationalist, an active participant in the Civil War. In 1960, the writer had a son. Alexey Aksenov is a well-known production designer, his filmography includes such projects as "Love-Carrot", "Cloud-Paradise", "Attraction".
But the main woman in the life of Vasily Aksenov was Maya Carmen. In the United States, Aksenov's second wife taught Russian. Maya Carmen was the daughter of the nomenklatura worker Afanasy Zmeil. Before meeting with Aksenov, she was married twice. After emigration, the apartment, which she got after the death of her second husband, was taken away. In 1993, the authorities provided Maya Carmen with housing in a high-rise building located on Kotelnicheskaya embankment. Photo of Vasily Aksenov with his wife below.
Last years
At the beginning of the 2000s, Aksenov acquired a small house on the French coast. Here he spent his last years. In 2001, the novel "Caesarean Glow" was published in Moscow. Aksenov considered this work to be his highest literary achievement. Vasily Aksenov finished teaching in 2004. It was then that he visited the United States for the last time.
In France, the writer had a home where he worked in peace and quiet. In Moscow, Aksenov talked to the press and friends. He attracted the attention of employees primarily with a vivid biography and extraordinary creative activity. In 2004, "American Cyrillic" was published. In the same year - the novel "Voltairians and Valerian". Other works of recent years "Rare Earths", "Zenitsa Oka", "Moscow-kva-kva".
In 2009, the novel "Mysterious Passion" was published. The heroes of the autobiographical work are famous poets and writers of the 60s. In 2015, Roman Aksenova was filmed. The role of the writer was played by the actor Alexei Morozov.
Death
In January 2008, the writer suddenly felt ill. He was hospitalized and diagnosed with a stroke. Soon Aksenov was transferred to the Sklifosovsky Research Institute. Here he underwent surgery, but his condition did not improve. The last year of his life, he was very sick. Vasily Aksenov died on July 6, 2009. Buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery.
Memory
Several biographical works are devoted to Vasily Aksenov. In 2012, Viktor Osipov published the book "On Lost Time". Later he wrote "The Four Lives of Vasily Aksenov". In the writer's hometown, every year, since 2007, a literary festival named after him has been held. Several years ago, the Aksenov Garden was opened in Kazan. In 2016, a sculpture dedicated to the famous native of Kazan appeared here.
Films based on the books of Vasily Aksenov: "My little brother", "Colleagues", "Journey", "Mysterious Passion", "Moscow Saga".
Vasily Aksyonov was born on August 20, 1932 in Kazan, in the family of Evgenia Solomonovna Ginzburg (1904-1977) and Pavel Vasilyevich Aksyonov (1899-1991). He was the third, youngest child in the family (and the only common child of his parents). Father, Pavel Vasilyevich, was the chairman of the Kazan City Council and a member of the bureau of the Tatar Regional Committee of the CPSU. Mother, Evgenia Solomonovna, worked as a teacher at the Kazan Pedagogical Institute, then as head of the culture department of the newspaper "Krasnaya Tataria". Subsequently, having gone through the horror of the Stalinist camps, at the time of the exposure of the personality cult, Yevgenia Ginzburg became the author of the book of memoirs "Steep Route" - one of the first books-memoirs about the era of Stalinist repressions and camps, telling about the eighteen years spent by the author in prison, Kolyma camps and link.
In 1937, when Vasily Aksyonov was not even five years old, both parents (first his mother, and then soon his father) were arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison and camps. The older children - sister Maya (daughter of P.V. Aksyonov) and Alyosha (son of E.S.Ginzburg from his first marriage) were taken by relatives. Vasya was forcibly sent to an orphanage for children of prisoners (his grandmothers were not allowed to keep the child with them). In 1938, P. Aksenov's brother, Andrey Vasilyevich Aksyonov, managed to find little Vasya in an orphanage in Kostroma and take him to him. Vasya lived in the house of Moti Aksyonova (his paternal relative) until 1948, when his mother Yevgenia Ginzburg, leaving the camp in 1947 and living in exile in Magadan, obtained permission for Vasya to visit her in Kolyma. Evgenia Ginzburg will describe the meeting with Vasya in "Steep Route".
Many years later, in 1975, Vasily Aksyonov described his Magadan youth in his autobiographical novel Burn.
In 1956, Aksyonov graduated from the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute and was assigned to the Baltic Shipping Company, where he was supposed to work as a doctor on long-distance ships. Despite the fact that his parents had already been rehabilitated, he was not given permission. Later it was mentioned that Aksyonov worked as a quarantine doctor in the Far North, in Karelia, in the Leningrad sea trade port and in a tuberculosis hospital in Moscow (according to other sources, he was a consultant at the Moscow Research Institute of Tuberculosis).
A family
- Half-sister (on her father's side) - Maya Pavlovna Aksyonova, teacher-methodologist, author of methodological and textbooks on teaching the Russian language. Stepbrother (by mother) - Alexey Dmitrievich Fedorov (1926-1941), died during the Leningrad blockade. Mother's adopted daughter - actress Antonina Pavlovna Aksyonova (original surname Khinchinskaya, born 1945).
- The first wife is Kira Lyudvigovna Mendeleva, daughter of the brigade commander Lajos (Ludwig Matvevich) Gavro and the granddaughter of the famous pediatrician and healthcare organizer Yulia Aronovna Mendeleva (1883-1959), founder and first rector of the Leningrad Pediatric Medical Institute (1925-1949).
- Son - Alexey Vasilievich Aksyonov (born 1960), production designer.
- The second wife, Maya Afanasyevna Aksyonova (nee Zmeul, Ovchinnikov's first marriage, Carmen's second marriage; born 1930), graduated from the Institute of Foreign Trade, worked in the Chamber of Commerce, taught Russian in America.
- Stepdaughter - Elena (Alena) (1954 - August 2008).
Since 1960 Vasily Aksyonov has been a professional writer. The story "Colleagues" (written in 1959; the play of the same name together with Yu. Stabov, 1961; the film of the same name, 1962), the novels "Star Ticket" (1961) (the film "My Younger Brother", 1962) was shot based on it), the story " Oranges from Morocco ”(1962),“ It's time, my friend, it's time ”(1963), collections“ Catapult ”(1964),“ Halfway to the Moon ”(1966), the play“ Always on sale ”(staged by the Sovremennik theater , 1965); in 1968 the satirical-fantastic story "The Overstocked Barrel" was published.
In the 1960s, V. Aksyonov's works were often published in the Yunost magazine. For several years he has been a member of the editorial board of the journal. On March 5, 1966, Vasily Aksyonov participated in an attempted demonstration on Red Square in Moscow against the alleged rehabilitation of Stalin. He was detained by vigilantes. In 1967-1968, he signed a number of letters in defense of dissidents, for which he received a reprimand with entry into a personal file from the Moscow branch of the USSR Writers' Union.
Back in March 1963, at a meeting with the intelligentsia in the Kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev subjected Aksyonov (together with Andrei Voznesensky) to sharp criticism. And in the 1970s, after the end of the "thaw", Aksenov's works ceased to be published in his homeland. The novels "Burn" (1975) and "The Island of Crimea" (1979) were created from the very beginning by the author without counting on publication. At this time, criticism of V. Aksyonov and his works becomes more and more harsh: such epithets as “non-Soviet” and “non-people” are used. In 1977-1978, Aksyonov's works began to appear abroad, primarily in the United States.
In 1972, together with O. Gorchakov and G. Pozhenyan, he wrote a parody novel of the spy thriller Gene Green - Untouchable under the pseudonym Grivadiy Gorpozhaks (a combination of the names and surnames of real authors). 1976 - translated from English the novel "Ragtime" by E. L. Doctorow.
In 1978 V. Aksyonov together with Andrey Bitov, Viktor Erofeev, Fazil Iskander, Evgeny Popov, Bella Akhmadulina became one of the organizers and authors of the uncensored almanac “Metropol”. Never published in the Soviet censored press, the almanac was published in the United States. Like all the participants in the almanac, it was "elaborated". In protest against the subsequent expulsion of Popov and Erofeev from the Union of Writers of the USSR in December 1979, V. Aksyonov, as well as Inna Lisnyanskaya and Semyon Lipkin, announced their withdrawal from the joint venture. The history of the almanac is described in the novel "with a key" "Say" raisins "".
On July 22, 1980, he left at the invitation of the United States, after which in 1981 he was deprived of Soviet citizenship. Until 2004 he lived in the United States.
Since 1981, Vasily Aksyonov has been a professor of Russian literature at various US universities: Kennan Institute (1981-1982), George Washington University (1982-1983), Gaucher College (1983-1988), George Mason University (1988-2009).
In 1980-1991, as a journalist, he actively collaborated with the Voice of America and Radio Liberty. Collaborated with the magazine "Continent" and the almanac "Glagol". Aksyonovskie radio essays were published in the author's collection "Decade of Slander" (2004).
In the United States, the novels "Our Golden Iron" (1973, 1980), "Burn" (1976, 1980), "The Island of Crimea" (1979, 1981), written by Aksyonov in Russia, but first published only after the writer's arrival in America, collection of short stories "The Right to the Island" (1981). Also in the USA V. Aksyonov wrote and published new novels: "Paper Landscape" (1982), "Say" Raisins "" (1985), "In Search of a Sad Baby" (1986), the trilogy "Moscow Saga" (1989, 1991 , 1993), a collection of short stories "The negative of the positive hero" (1995), "New sweet style" (1996) (dedicated to the life of the Soviet emigration in the United States), "Caesarean glow" (2000).
The novel "Egg yolk" (1989) was written by V. Aksyonov in English, then translated by the author into Russian.
In the United States, Aksyonov was awarded the honorary title of Doctor of Humane Letters. He was a member of the PEN Club and the American Writing League.
For the first time, after nine years of emigration, Aksyonov visited the USSR in 1989 at the invitation of the American Ambassador J. Matlock. In 1990, Aksyonov was returned to Soviet citizenship.
Recently he has lived with his family in Biarritz, France, and in Moscow.
The Moscow Saga trilogy (1992) was filmed in Russia in 2004 by A. Barshchevsky in a TV serial.
In 1993, during the dispersal of the Supreme Soviet, he expressed solidarity with the signatories of the letter in support of Boris N. Yeltsin.
In 2004, V. Aksyonov was awarded the Russian Booker Prize for the novel "Voltairians and Voltairians". In 2005 Vasily Aksyonov was awarded the Order of Arts and Literature.
On January 15, 2008 in Moscow V. Aksyonov suddenly felt very bad, was admitted to hospital No. 23, where he was diagnosed with a stroke. A day after hospitalization, Aksyonov was transferred to the Sklifosovsky Research Institute, where he underwent an operation to remove a carotid thrombus. On January 29, 2008, doctors assessed the writer's condition as extremely serious. As of August 28, 2008, the condition remained “consistently severe”. On March 5, 2009, new complications arose, Aksyonov was transferred to the Burdenko Research Institute and operated on. Later Aksyonov was transferred back to the Sklifosovsky Research Institute.
On July 6, 2009, after a long illness, Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov died in Moscow, at the Sklifosovsky Research Institute.
Since 2007, the International Literary and Music Festival Aksyonov-fest has been held annually in Kazan since 2007 (in October) (the first was held with his personal participation), in 2009 the building was recreated and the Aksyonov Literary House-Museum was opened, in which the city literary club operates.
In October 2009, Vasily Aksyonov's last completed novel, Mysterious Passion. A novel about the sixties ”, individual chapters of which were published in 2008 in the magazine“ Collection of the caravan of stories ”. The novel is autobiographical; its protagonists were the idols of Soviet literature and art of the 1960s: Robert Rozhdestvensky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akhmadulina, Andrei Voznesensky, Bulat Okudzhava, Andrei Tarkovsky, Vladimir Vysotsky, Ernst Neizvestny, Marlen Khutsiev and others. In order to distance himself from the genre of memoirs, the author gave the characters in the novel fictitious names.
In 2010, Aksyonov's unfinished autobiographical novel "The Lend-Lease" was released.
In 2011, Alexander Kabakov and Evgeny Popov published a joint book of memoirs "Aksyonov". The authors are extremely worried about the question of "the writer's fate" related to the intricacies of biography, the birth of a great Personality. The super task of the book is to resist distortion of facts for the sake of one or another conjuncture.
Writer, prose writer, playwright, screenwriter.
Born on August 20, 1932 in Kazan in a family of party workers.
He was the third, youngest child in the family (and the only common child of his parents). Father, Pavel Vasilyevich Aksyonov, was the chairman of the Kazan City Council and a member of the Bureau of the Tatar Regional Party Committee. Mother, Evgenia Semyonovna Ginzburg, worked as a teacher at the Kazan Pedagogical Institute, then as the head of the culture department of the newspaper "Krasnaya Tataria", was a member of the Kazan regional party organization.
He graduated from high school in Magadan.
In 1956 he graduated from the Leningrad Medical Institute.
He worked as a doctor in the Far North, in Karelia, in the Leningrad sea trade port, in a tuberculosis hospital in Moscow.
In 1960 he published the first story "Colleagues".
Author of the famous works "Star Ticket", "Oranges from Morocco", "Overstocked Barrel", "Crimea Island", "Moscow Saga" and others.
Scriptwriter for a number of feature films.
On July 22, 1980, he left at the invitation of the United States, after which in 1981, together with his wife Maya Carmen, he was deprived of Soviet citizenship. Until 2004 he lived in the United States.
Since 1981, Vasily Aksyonov has been a professor of Russian literature at various US universities: Kennan Institute (1981-1982), George Washington University (1982-1983), Gaucher University (1983-1988), George Mason University near Washington (1988-2009).
In 1980-1991, as a journalist, he actively collaborated with the Voice of America and Radio Liberty. Collaborated with the magazine "Continent" and the almanac "Glagol". Aksyonovskie radio essays were published in the author's collection "Decade of Slander" (2004).
Since the late 1980s, it has been published again in Russia.
In June 1999, the first Aksyonov readings took place in Moscow, for which the writer arrived from the United States.
In an interview with the newspaper "Segodnya" (June 25, 1999), Aksyonov called his early works "Colleagues" and "Star Ticket", which are still very popular among the Russian intelligentsia, "kindergarten". According to him, he made the transition from realistic art to a different plane during the "Overstocked Barrel" and is not going to return to the first one. The popular novel "The Island of Crimea" by V.P. Aksyonov defined it as "false realism, and his best thing he called the little-known (by that time unpublished in Russia) novel" New Sweet Style ".
Passed away after a long illness on July 6, 2009 in Moscow. The writer's funeral took place on July 9 at the Vagankovskoye cemetery of the capital (plot number 25).