Leonid Natanowitsch Tschertkow

Leonid Natanowitsch Tschertkow ( Russian Леонид Натанович Чертков , scientific transliteration Leonid Natanovič Čertkov , pronunciation [lʲɪɐˈnʲit nəˈtanəvʲɪtʃʲ tʃʲɪrtˈkɔf] ; *  December 14, 1933 in Moscow ; † June 28, 2000 in Cologne was a pro- Russian writer and poet)

Life

Leonid Chertkow was born into the Jewish family of a professional soldier. He studied at the Moscow Library School from 1952 to 1956. In 1953 he founded the Mansarde Circle , which included around 30 censorship-independent Moscow poets (including Stanislaw Krassowizki , Andrei Sergejew and Galina Andrejewa ) and which was also known as the "Chertkow Group". In addition, he dealt with the Russian literature of the Silver Age and with foreign poetry. In 1957 he was arrested and sentenced for "anti-Soviet propaganda" to five years in a camp, which he served in a camp in Mordovia . While in custody he was the editor of the prisoner almanac "Five Streams", and in 1961 one of his poems appeared in the Moscow samizdat magazine "Phoenix".

After his release in 1962, Chertkow lived in Moscow and worked in the Fundamental Library of Social Sciences of the Soviet Academy of Sciences . Here he published the volume "Nerastankino" with his poems in samizdat. His friends included Gennady Aigi , Dmitri Plawinsky , Vadim Kosowoi and Lev Turchinsky . From 1966 to 1974 he lived in Leningrad , where he took up distance learning at the University of Tartu and the Pedagogical University of Leningrad , which he graduated in 1968. He dealt with Russian literary history and wrote a large number of essays, including around 100 articles for the "Brief Literature Encyclopedia", which appeared between 1964 and 1978 (after his emigration under the pseudonym L. Moskvin). Secretive about many political reasons Russian writers of the 20th century, especially dissidents and emigrants. (U a. Vladimir Nabokov , Anna Radlowa , Sigismund Krzhizhanovsky , Alexander Tschajanow , Vladislav Khodasevich , Dmitri Svyatopolk-Mirski , Irina Odojewzewa , Nikolai Burliuk , Wilhelm Sorgenfrei , Georgi Tschulkow , Sergei Solowjow ), he wrote the first articles published in the Soviet Union and only made them known in their homeland. He also translated poems from English. Chertkow was in close contact with Joseph Brodsky , Lev Lossew , Sergei Dowlatow , Konstantin Asadowski and Alexander Lavrov . His wife is the literary scholar Tatjana Nikolskaja .

In 1974, Chertkow left the Soviet Union. He first lived in Vienna and then worked as a lecturer in Toulouse . In 1980 he came to Cologne, where he taught from 1980 to 1985 at the invitation of Wolfgang Kasack at the University of Cologne . During this time he obtained editions of Konstantin Waginow (Munich 1982) and Wladimir Narbut (Paris 1983).

His poems and prose first appeared in émigré magazines and newspapers (e.g. Russkaja Mysl ) and since 1993 also in Russian literary magazines (e.g. Nowy Mir ). In addition, several volumes of poetry were published in Germany and posthumously in Russia.

On June 28, 2000, at the age of 66, Chertkow suffered a fatal heart attack in the library of the Slavic Institute at the University of Cologne.

Works (selection)

• Ognepark , Cologne 1987.
• Smalta , Cologne 1997.

Web links

• Leonid Chertkow in the Russian Virtual Library
• Dmitri Subarew: Biobibliographical Information (in Russian) , NLO 47 (2001).