Aksenov Vasily Pavlovich - a well-known Russian writer in wide circles. His works, imbued with the spirit of free thought, harsh and touching, sometimes surreal, do not leave indifferent any reader. 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 Evgeny Ginzburg, teacher of 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 sentenced, each to ten years in prison. Having passed the Stalinist camps, Eugenia Ginzburg will subsequently publish a book of memoirs about the era of repression, “The Steep Route”, which tells of the eighteen years spent in prisons, exiles, and Kolyma camps. But now is not about that, we are interested in the biography of Vasily Aksenov.
After the conclusion of the parents of the older children, Alyosha (the son of Eugenia Ginzburg) and Maya (the daughter of Pavel Aksenov), relatives took them up for education. And Vasya was forcibly sent to the orphanage for the children of the convicts (the boy’s grandmothers wanted to keep him, but they were not allowed to do this). In 1938, the brother of Peter Aksyonov, Andreyan, tracked down the child in the Kostroma orphanage and took him to him. Until 1948, Vasya lived with his paternal relative Moti 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 Aksyonov will describe his Magadan youth in the novel Burn.
Education and work
In 1956, the guy graduated from the Leningrad Medical Institute and, according to the distribution, was to work as a doctor in the Baltic Shipping Company on long-distance vessels. However, they did not give him access, despite the fact that his parents had been rehabilitated by then. There is evidence that Aksyonov Vasily worked as a quarantine doctor in Karelia, in the Far North, in the Moscow Tuberculosis Hospital (according to other sources, he was a consultant at the Tuberculosis Research Institute in Moscow), as well as in the commercial sea port of Leningrad.
The beginning of literary activity
Aksenov’s professional writer can be considered since 1960. In 1959, he wrote the story “Colleagues” (the film of the same name was shot in 1962), in 1960 the work “Star Ticket” (the film “My Younger Brother” was also shot in 1962), with two years later, the novel Oranges from Morocco, and in 1963, the novel Time, My Friend, Time. Then came the books of Vasily Aksenov's Catapult (1964) and Midway to the Moon (1966). In 1965, the play “Always On Sale” was written, which was staged on the stage of Sovremennik in the same year. In 1968, the novel of the satirical-sci-fi genre “Overstocked barrel cask” was published. In the sixties of the twentieth century, the works of Vasily Aksenov were published quite often in the journal "Youth". The writer worked for several years in 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,” was published. In 1971, the novel “Love of Electricity” (about Leonid Krasin) was published, written in the historical and biographical genre. A year later, an experimental work entitled “The Search for the Genre” was published in the New World magazine. In 1972, the novel Gene Green The Untouchable was also created, which is a parody of an action movie about spies. Aksenov Vasily worked on it together with Grigory Pozhenyan and Oleg Gorchakov. The work was authored by Grivadij Gorpožaks (a pseudonym from a combination of surnames and names of three writers). In 1976, the writer translated from English the novel Ragtime by Edgar Lawrence Doctorow.
Social work
The biography of Vasily Aksenov is filled with difficulties and hardships. In March 1966, while participating in an attempt to demonstrate against the intended rehabilitation of Stalin in Moscow, on Red Square, the writer was detained by combatants. Over the next two years, Aksenov put his signature in a series of letters aimed at protecting dissidents, and received a reprimand from the Moscow branch of the USSR Writers Union for this.
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 at home. In 1975, the novel Burn was written, which we have already mentioned. Vasily Aksyonov did not even hope for its publication. “Island of Crimea” - a novel in a fantastic genre - was also originally created by the author without the expectation that the work will be published and see the world. At that time (1979), criticism towards the writer became more acute, such epithets as “anti-people” and “non-Soviet” began to slip in it. But in 1977-1978, the works of Aksenov began to appear abroad, mainly in the United States of America.
Together with Viktor Yerofeyev, Iskander Fazil, Bella Akhmadulina, Andrey Bitov and Evgeny Popov, Aksenov Vasily in 1978 became a co-author and organizer of the Metropol almanac. He never got into the Soviet censorship press, but he was published in the United States. After that, all the participants of the almanac underwent “elaborations”. This was followed by the exclusion from the Union of Soviet Writers Yerofeyev and Popov, and in protest, Vasily Aksyonov, along with Semyon Lipkin and Inna Lisnyanskaya, also announced their withdrawal from the joint venture.
Life in the USA
At the invitation of the summer of 1980, the writer went to the United States, and in 1981, for this, he was deprived of USSR citizenship. Aksenov lived in the United States until 2004. During his stay there, he worked as a professor of Russian literature at various universities in America: the Kennan Institute (from 1981 to 1982), the University of Washington (from 1982 to 1983), and Gaucher College (from 1983 to 1988), Mason University (from 1988 to 2009). As a journalist from 1980 to 1991. Aksenov Vasily collaborated with Radio Liberty, Voice of America, the verb almanac, and the Continent magazine. The radio essays of the writer were published in the collection “Decade of Defamation”, published in 2004.
In the United States saw the light written, but not published in Russia, the works "Burn", "Our Golden Iron", "Island of Crimea", the collection "The right to the island." However, Vasily Aksyonov continued to create in America: The Moscow Saga (trilogy, 1989, 1991, 1993), The Negative of the Good Hero (storybook, 1995), The New Sweet Style (a novel dedicated to the life of Soviet emigrants in the USA, 1996) - all this was written during his life in the United States. The writer created works not only in Russian; in 1989, the novel “Egg Yolk” was written in English (although, later, the author himself translated it). At the invitation of Jack Matlock, the American ambassador, for the first time after traveling abroad (nine years later), Aksenov arrived in the Soviet Union. In 1990, the writer was returned to Soviet citizenship.
Work in Russia
In 1993, during the dispersal of the Supreme Council, Vasily Aksenov again openly showed his convictions and expressed solidarity with the people who signed the letter in support of Yeltsin. In 2004, Anton Barshchevsky filmed the Moscow Saga trilogy in Russia. In the same year in the magazine "October" published a work by the writer "Volterians and Volterian women", subsequently awarded the Booker Prize. In 2005, Aksyonov wrote a book of memoirs in the form of a personal diary, entitled The Eye of the Eye.
last years of life
In his last years, the writer and his family lived in France, in the city of Biarritz, then 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 surgery to remove a blood clot in the carotid artery. For a long time, the state of the writer remained rather difficult. And in March 2009, new complications appeared. Aksenov was transferred to the Burdenko Institute and again operated on. Then Vasily Pavlovich was again hospitalized at the Sklifosovsky Research Institute. It was there that on July 6, 2009, the writer died. 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 full after the death of Aksenov, in October 2009. Prior to this, in 2008, separate chapters were published in the publication “Collection of a Caravan of Stories”. The novel is autobiographical, its heroes are the idols of art and literature of the sixties of the twentieth century: Evgeny Yevtushenko, Bulat Okudzhava, Andrei Voznesensky, Ernst Unknown, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Marlen Khutsiev, Vladimir Vysotsky, Andrei Tarkovsky and others. Aksenov gave the characters fictitious names so that the work was not associated with the memoir genre.
Prizes, awards, memory
In the United States, the writer was awarded the doctorate in humanities. He was also a member of the American Copyright League and the PEN Club. In 2004, Aksenov was awarded the Russian Booker Prize for the work Voltairens and Voltairenki. A year later, he was awarded the honorary Order of Arts and Literature. The writer was a member of the Russian Academy of Arts.
Every year since 2007, a literary and musical international festival called "Aksenov-fest" has been held in Kazan. 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 the literary city club is now operating in it. In 2010, the autobiographical unfinished novel by the writer Lend-Lease was released. His 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 called Aksyonov. In it, they consider the fate of the writer, the intricacies of biography, the process of birth of a large personality. The main task and idea of ​​the book is to prevent distortion of facts for the sake of certain events.
A family
The brother of Vasily Aksenov on the maternal side, Alexei, died during the siege of Leningrad. Maya's paternal sister is a methodologist and author of many textbooks in the Russian language. The first wife of the writer was Kira Mendeleva, married to her at Aksenov in 1960, his son Alexei. 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. During the life of her family in the United States, she taught Russian; in Russia, she worked at the Chamber of Commerce. Vasily Pavlovich and Maya Afanasevna did not have joint children, but Aksenov had a stepdaughter Elena (born in 1954). She died in August 2008.