Lev Emmanuilovich Rasgon

Lew Emmanuilowitsch Rasgon ( Russian Лев Эммануилович Разгон , scientific transliteration Lew Emmanuilovič Razgon ); (* March 19 ^July / April 1,  1908 ^greg. In Gorki , Mogilev Gouvernement , Russian Empire (today Horki, Mahiljouskaja Woblasz , Belarus ); †  September 8, 1999 in Moscow ) was a Russian writer .

biography

Rasgon was born into a Jewish working class family. His parents were Mendel Abramowitsch Rasgon (1878-1942) and Glika Israilewna nee Shapiro (1880-1955). In 1923 his family moved to Moscow . After attending school, he worked as a librarian in a children's library.

In 1932 he completed his history studies at the State Pedagogical Institute in Moscow and joined the CPSU . During his studies he worked in the special encryption department of the United State Political Administration headed by Gleb Ivanovich Boki at the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (OGPU, since 1934 Central Administration for State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD of the USSR) and developed ciphers and deciphers . During this time he married Boki's daughter Oxana, who fell victim to the Stalinist purges and died in the Gulag in 1938 .

After graduating, Rasgon worked as an editor for a children's book publisher . He was arrested in April 1938 and spent 17 years in Gulag labor camps. In 1944 he met his second wife Rebekka Jefremowna Berg (1905–1991) in the Gulag. In 1955 he was released.

Then he worked again in a children's book publisher as a literary scholar for children's literature. In 1978 he published his book "The Sixth Station" ( Шестая станция ) , a retrospective on his youth, and also books on important Russian scholars.

In the early 1970s, he began to write about the years of his incarceration without ever anticipating publication. The first excerpts appeared in Soviet magazines under Gorbachev , such as in 1987 The President's Wife ( Жена президента ) in the weekly Ogonyok . His book about his imprisonment Nothing but the Truth ( Непридуманное ) was published in 1988 and made him widely known.

Together with Solzhenitsyn , Razgon was one of the founders of the human rights organization Memorial . He was a member of the Central Grace Commission created by Yeltsin , which campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty and reform of the legal system in Russia.

Ragon's brother was the historian Israil Mendelevich Rasgon .

Works

• Nothing but the pure truth. Memories. Volk und Welt, Berlin, 1992, ISBN 3-353-00901-9

Web links

• Lew Emmanuilowitsch Rasgon on gulag.memorial.de