The life path of this extraordinary woman - a poet, writer and missionary - was not easy. In addition to ordinary events, the book of life of Yulia Voznesenskaya contains such difficult pages as camps and prisons, recognition and condemnation, emigration. But this whole thorny path is penetrated by the bright light of love for God. She found her embodiment not only in the works of the author, but in the support that Yulia Nikolaevna Voznesenskaya provided to people.
The beginning of life
Julia Nikolaevna Voznesenskaya was born on September 14, 1940 in Leningrad. In 1945, after the end of the war, the Tarapovskys moved the whole family to Berlin. Here, in the eastern part of the city, the father served in the Soviet troops, who at that time worked as a military engineer.
In 1949, the family returned to their homeland. Here, Ascension Julia enters the Leningrad Institute of Theater, Music and Cinema and begins her career in the field of informal art. It is with this period of life that the first arrest is connected, which happened in 1964 and ended with a year of forced labor.
Young years of life
With the birth of the first-born, I had to leave school. Later, Julia transferred to the medical faculty, which later also remained unfinished. He is trying his hand at journalism. At the dawn of 1960, she was a correspondent for a local Murmansk newspaper. One of her first publications appeared there - the verse "Lapland".
She tried herself in other forms too. In the mid-1960s, Julia Nikolaevna with her husband and sons moved to the village of Vazhiny, closer to nature and clean air. This decision was associated with frequent illnesses of the youngest son. Here, the couple also found themselves more than worthy of use. The husband was in charge of the House of Culture, and Julia Nikolaevna herself got a job as a teacher in a music school. However, after the son recovered and due to pressure from local officials, the family had to leave these places.
Julia Voznesenskaya - poet
Here a few words need to be said about the creative name. Julia Voznesenskaya, whose real name is Voznesenskaya-Okulova, received her creative pseudonym from her first husband. This union was very short and subsequently disintegrated. However, after the breakup, Julia Nikolaevna decided to leave a harmonious surname.
The first samples of the pen were led by Tatyana Gnedich. The poetess and translator, widely known in the 1960s, created a literary association in which many aspiring poets and writers developed their talents. It was her Julia Nikolaevna Voznesenskaya who called her first and only teacher who discovered the origins of poetic mastery. The early work and the first publication in 1966 were favorably received by Tatyana Grigoryevna and later received high praise from readers.
In the late 60s, the works of Yulia Nikolaevna were published in various literary magazines. It was then that she declared herself as a promising poet. On one of the poems a song was written, which was performed by Edita Pieha.
However, in 1968, all publications of Yulia Voznesenskaya in the Soviet editions ended. The reason for this turn of events was the poem "Invasion", in which the poetess described the events taking place in Czechoslovakia.
The poem caused a mixed reaction from the Soviet authorities: Voznesenskaya was summoned to the KGB, where after long interrogations, without receiving recognition and remorse, they threatened to put her in prison. There were many such conversations in the life of the writer.
After this incident, Julia Nikolaevna could acquaint the reader with her works only thanks to samizdat. Many verses were published in this way. But it’s hard to say exactly how many works she had at that time. Archives were kept by like-minded and admirers of talent in different places. There were many problems with this, too. The places where the manuscripts were kept were constantly searched.
The magazines in which Voznesenskaya Julia published her poems were dissident. In some of them, she acted as a publisher (Lepta, Woman and Russia).
The activities of the "Second Culture"
In the 1970s, Ascension Julia and her family live in a communal apartment on Zhukovsky. Here they occupy a couple of rooms, one of which has become a meeting place for talented young people. The community called itself the "Second Culture". This name was protest. It was directed against the first - pompous Soviet culture.
Young people actively tried to make themselves known. In 1974, they created a collection of essays called Lepta. This included one of the poems of Julia Nikolaevna. The request for publication was firmly rejected by the Soviet authorities.
In 1975, the “Second Culture” staged a protest rally: a manifestation and a hunger strike on the anniversary of the Decembrist rebellion.
A few months later, young people “decorated” the walls of the buildings of the central streets of Leningrad with slogans denouncing the Soviet regime. Ascension Julia was one of the first to be detained, but refused to give evidence, she was soon released.
Later, in 1976, during a search of the poetess’s apartment, KGB officers found several publications containing anti-Soviet propaganda. Based on this, Julia Nikolaevna was detained, in the winter of 1977 a trial was held. She was convicted and given five years of exile in Vorkuta.
Camps and links
She did not stay there long. Having learned about the trial of her associates, she fled. Her goal was to warn them not to think about repenting of their deeds.
However, she failed to get to court. The arrest took place before the start of the process. After Yulia Nikolaevna was sent to the village of Bozoy, which was located in the Irkutsk region. The five-year exile was replaced by two and a half years of camps.
She embodied the time spent in the dungeons of the camps on the pages of her novels and essays, telling about the difficult life of women in these places. And even talking about such difficult things, Julia Nikolaevna presents everything in a wonderful figurative form, highlighting all the best and brightest. All the time she was in the camp, she wrote letters to her friends, telling about terrible, sometimes incomprehensible things. But, in spite of all this, each line was saturated with optimism, which Yulia Nikolaevna “infected” with others. Especially female cellmates, who read poetry by poets such as Akhmatova, Yesenin, Tsvetaeva. She told some of them about Jesus Christ.
Her acute need to keep in mind and tell her contemporaries, their children and grandchildren about what really happened at that time, was embodied in the stories of the national team of the story "Notes from the sleeve." It contains a lot of small stories about those circles of hell that many people of the Soviet era and the writer herself had to go through.
In addition to the notes, there are other works that tell about the life of women in places of detention: “Women's Camp in the USSR”, “White Chamomile”.
Emigration and life after
In 1980, Yulia Nikolaevna was almost forcibly expelled from the country. Together with her family, she lived for some time in Vienna. She later applied for political asylum to the German authorities. The first four years of emigration she spent in Frankfurt. Here she devoted herself to work in an international organization protecting human rights. Later, after moving to Munich, she worked for ten years as an editor on Radio Liberty.
In 2002, Julia Nikolaevna returned to the capital of Germany. Most Orthodox works were written here. A few years before her death, she found out that she was sick. During the illness she underwent several operations. Julia Nikolaevna died on February 20, 2015 and was buried in Berlin.
Orthodox choice
In 1973, Ascension Julia Nikolaevna stepped on the path of the Orthodox faith and received Holy Baptism. This choice was conscious. It was he who helped her pass the tests of the camps and exiles and keep in her heart a love for God and people.
Later, already in exile, Julia Nikolaevna met her future spiritual father - the priest Mark Arndt, who was later replaced by father Nikolai Artemov. After her husband died, Voznesenskaya decides to settle in a monastery. And in 1996 she was received by the Lesninskaya female monastery, in which Yulia Nikolaevna spent several years of her life.
It was here that Orthodox works saw the light, among which the first was the story-parable "My Posthumous Adventures."
Orthodoxy and its place in the work of the writer
It should be noted that the works of the last years of the author’s life were devoted mainly to Orthodox subjects. Among the most famous are the novels My Posthumous Adventures, The Way of Cassandra, The Pilgrimage of Lancelot, and others. For the first two in 2003, Julia Voznesenskaya was awarded the honorary title of "Best author of the year."
The novels are also known: “100 days before the flood” and “The Son of the Leader”. Yulia Nikolaevna also has children's works. Among them is the Yulianna trilogy, as well as the Svetlyaya Polyana collection.
For many of her works, she was awarded honorary titles and prizes. Particular attention was drawn to "Posthumous Adventures." For this story, Julia Nikolavna was considered the founder of a special genre - Orthodox fantasy. Those metamorphoses that occur with the main character very vividly and figuratively paint the afterlife.
The creative path of the writer indicates that Julia Voznesenskaya is a poet of the Orthodox direction. And although she writes not poetry, but prose, all of her works are very poetic. Perhaps that is why they are so easy to read, and their characters are remembered.
Missionary path
Yulia Nikolaevna Voznesenskaya, whose biography is saturated with such different events, is an image of a person seeking to help others.
This person could very simply talk about the most difficult. In recent years, she collaborated with psychologists who helped seriously ill patients. Gradually, this activity grew into communication through letters. Acting as a moderator on the sites Perezhit.ru and Pobedish.ru, together with Orthodox psychologists, she provided invaluable support to those who especially needed help. Among the people who contacted the site were potential suicides and those who could not survive the death of loved ones.
Julia Nikolaevna Voznesenskaya, whose photo always emits some kind of invisible light and kindness, will remain in the hearts of many people not only as a wonderful writer, sincerely believing person, but also as a good friend - helping, compassionate and comforting.