Leonid Borisovich Zypkin

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Leonid Borissowitsch Zypkin ( Russian Леонид Борисович Цыпкин , scientific transliteration Leonid Borisovič Cypkin ; also: Tsypkin ; born March 20, 1926 in Minsk ; died March 20, 1982 in Moscow ) was a Russian author, best known for his novel Ein Sommer in Baden-Baden .

Life

Zypkin was born to Russian-Jewish parents. Both father and mother were medical professionals . Boris Zypkin, his father, was arrested at the beginning of the Great Terror . After a suicide attempt, he was allowed to return thanks to influential friends. Boris Zypkin lost two sisters and a brother and, after the German invasion , his mother, another sister and two nephews who perished in the German forced ghetto in Minsk.

Zypkin began studying medicine , graduating in Minsk in 1947 . In 1948 he married Natalja Michnikowa. Two years later the son Mikhail Zypkin was born. In 1957 the Zypkin family moved to Moscow , where Zypkin worked as a pathologist.

In the early 1960s, Zypkin began writing poetry. From 1969 a raise allowed him to write more. Zypkin turned to prose. Stories emerged, including two autobiographical novels ( The Bridge over the Neroch & Norartakir ). In 1977 Zypkin's son Michail and his wife applied for a visa and emigrated to the USA. Thereupon Zypkin was demoted in the hierarchy, under the simple scientific coworkers without PhD degrees, of which he had two. Zypkins and his wife's visa applications were subsequently rejected.

Between 1977 and 1980 Zypkin wrote his greatest work: Léto v Baden-Badenu . For this novel he had spent years of preparation: researching archives, traveling to places that were important in Dostoyevsky's life. He had photographed a lot and passionately. It was not possible to publish the novel in the USSR , so he had a copy of the manuscript smuggled out of the country by a journalist friend. On March 13, 1982, the first episode of the novel appeared in the New York émigré newspaper Novaya Gazeta with a few pictures he had taken himself. A week later, Zypkin died of a heart attack.

Works

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