Andrei Alexejewitsch Amalrik

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Andrei Amalrik, 1976
Andrei Amalrik with his wife Gjusel Makudinowa, 1976

Andrei Alexejewitsch Amalrik ( Russian Андрей Алексеевич Амальрик ; born May 12, 1938 in Moscow ; † November 12, 1980 near Guadalajara , Spain) was a Russian historian, publicist, writer and dissident . After numerous clashes with Soviet authorities, he accepted the offer to leave in 1976. Just four years later he died in a car accident in Spain.

Life

Amalrik was born as the son of the historian and archaeologist Alexei Sergejewitsch Amalrik and his wife Zoja Grigoryevna Amalrik (née Schablejewa). The young Amalrik shone more often at school because of his absence, liked to play ice hockey and performed his own pieces with the puppet theater. By the way, childhood and youth were shaped by the era of Stalinism .

Study and avant-garde

From 1959/1960 he studied at the History Faculty of Moscow State University . In one work he advocated the thesis - advocated by Western historians but rejected by the Soviet School of Historians - that Norman Varangians played the leading role in the founding of the first Russian state . For this reason, he was expelled from the university a year before he graduated in 1963 and subsequently worked as a postman, technical translator and timekeeper at sporting events.

The art of Socialist Realism was enacted by the Communist Party in the 1960s . Amalrik has been collecting contemporary works by avant-garde Soviet artists since the late 1950s ; he himself wrote dramas based on the theater of the absurd .

First imprisonment

As one of the first dissidents of the Russian civil rights movement, Amalrik specifically sought contact with Western diplomats and journalists accredited in Moscow. In January 1965 the exhibition of the Soviet expressionist and underground artist Anatoly Swerew opened in Moscow; Sverv himself was questioned by a US journalist in Amalrik's apartment - a criminal offense in the Soviet Union at the time. The militia and the KGB visited Amalrik and he was summoned for questioning.

On May 15, 1965, he was summoned to the public prosecutor's office and imprisoned in the Butyrka . His home was searched. After his temporary release he was brought to justice and sentenced to two and a half years of exile with forced labor, formally as a day thief (Russian: тунеядец) for parasitism. Parasitism convictions were common in the Soviet Union, especially among critical intellectuals.

In June 1965 Amalrik was taken to the Sverdlovsk , Novosibirsk and Tomsk prisons in the Siberian village of Guryevka, where he worked in the Kalinin collective farm . After the death of his father, he received permission to go to Moscow at the end of September. There he made Gjusel Kowylewna Makudinowa, a painter of Tatar nationality, a marriage proposal. In the autumn he traveled with her back into exile in the village of Guryevka and married her there. In December, Amalrik's wife drove back to Moscow.

Freedom and human rights movement

On July 29, 1966, after his release, Amalrik returned to Moscow, where he lived in a room with his wife in a so-called Kommunalka . In 1966 and 1967 he worked on his first book Unwanted Journey to Siberia (Russian: Нежелательное путешествие в Сибирь). He succeeded in having the finished manuscript smuggled into the West for printing. Amalrik again took part in the life of the Moscow artistic scene. He also wrote articles on cultural topics for the state-run Novosti news agency .

From 1968 to 1970 Amalrik worked increasingly as a human rights activist. He helped to prepare the Soviet samizdat publication Chronicle of Current Events (Хроника текущих событий) and to compile documentation on the trial against dissidents. With this, however, he was caught in September 1968 at a train station, arrested and released again. After the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia, the KGB began to monitor the dissident scene more intensively. Amalrik had to work as a postman again and his apartment was searched twice. Nevertheless, he managed to write the book Will the Soviet Union live in 1984? (Russian: Доживет ли Советский Союз до 1984 года?) and to have it smuggled back into the West. For the publication of the book he gave an interview to American correspondents, which again attracted the attention of the security forces.

Second imprisonment, illness and exile

On February 21, 1970, Amalrik's home was searched and on May 21, he was arrested for the second time. The trial began on November 12th and earned him three years in a labor camp . He served his sentence in Kolyma and in the Magadan region , in particular in camp 261/3 in the village of Talaja, where he worked as a cleaner. While in detention, he developed meningoencephalitis .

In 1973, Amalrik was charged with spreading anti-Soviet propaganda in detention centers. He then went on a hunger strike, which he broke off after five days. On August 13th, he was sentenced again to three years, this time of hard labor. He went on a hunger strike again and was force-fed. When the sentence was softened from intensified forced labor to exile, he ended the hunger strike. During the exile he lived in Magadan and worked at an institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In January 1975, the KGB suggested that he apply to travel to Israel.

Release and departure

On May 6, 1975, Amalrik was released and went to Moscow. His application for a passport and residence permit for Moscow was denied. He got a residence permit for the hamlet of Worsino near Borowsk in the Kaluga district . He stayed illegally in Moscow, where he helped found the Moscow Helsinki Group , which subsequently, citing the Helsinki Final Act , demanded respect for human rights.

After receiving an invitation from Holland, Amalrik agreed to leave and once again used the last opportunity to tour Russia. On May 17, 1976, he received an exit visa for Holland and Israel. On July 15th he traveled to Amsterdam .

Exile and death

In the following years, Amalrik worked as a writer and publicist in exile. On the way to Madrid for a conference on human rights, he died in a car accident on November 12, 1980 near the Spanish city of Guadalajara.

Quote

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  • The dissenters performed an act of ingenious simplicity - in an unfree land they began to behave like free people.

References and footnotes

  1. ↑ German translation (summary and introduction) ( 1000dokumente.de )

Works

Russian editions during his lifetime

  • Will the Soviet Union see 1984? Amsterdam, Herzen Foundation 1969 (Russian: Просуществует ли Советский Союз до 1984 года? Амстердам: Фонд им. Герцена, 1969). In Russia, excerpts were made available to the general public for the first time in 1990 in Ogonyok magazine No. 9, pages 18 to 22
  • Involuntary trip to Siberia (Нежеланное путешествие в Сибирь) New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. Online in Russian here
  • Plays Amsterdam, Heart Foundation 1970 (Russian: Пьесы. Амстердам: Фонд им. Герцена, 1970)
  • Articles and letters Amsterdam, Herzen Foundation 1971 (Russian: Статьи и письма: 1967-1970. Амстердам: Фонд им. Герцена, 1971. 100 с. Б-ка Самиздата; № 2)
  • The USSR and the West in one boat London, Overseas Publications Interchange 1978 (Russian: СССР и Запад в одной лодке. Лондон: OPI, 1978 241 с)

Russian editions after death

  • Notes of a dissident Ann Arbor Ardis 1982 (Russian: Записки диссидента. Анн-Арбор Ардис, 1982)
  • Rasputin. Documentary narrative (Распутин. Документальная повесть) Moscow, Slovo 1992

German first editions

  • Can the Soviet Union see 1984? Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1970.
  • Involuntary trip to Siberia . Wegner Verlag, Hamburg 1970.
  • USSR - 1984 and no end. Essays . Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1981.
  • Record of a revolutionary . Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983.
  • Can the Soviet Union see 1984? New edition in German, Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1992 (= Diogenes-Taschenbuch; 20005), ISBN 3-257-20005-6 . (With an afterword by Christoph Neidhart : Andrej Amalrik's Guide to the Fall of the Soviet Union. A historical document .)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Amalrik, Andrei Alexejewitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Амальрик, Андрей Алексеевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian historian, publicist, writer and dissident
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1980
Place of death at Guadalajara