Vitaly Alexandrovich Schentalinsky

Witali Schentalinski (2006)

Vitaly Alexandrowitsch Schentalinski ( Russian Виталий Александрович Шенталинский , born October 7, 1939 in Kemerovo ; † July 27, 2018 in Serpukhov ) was a Russian writer , journalist and literary historian . He became internationally known for his documentaries on the fate of Russian writers during the Stalinist purges .

Life

Schentalinski spent his school days in the Chistopol District in the Autonomous Soviet Republic of Tatarstan . He graduated from the College of Arctic Maritime Studies ( Арктическое морское училище ) in Leningrad and then studied at the Faculty of Journalism at Lomonosov University in Moscow . His first job was at a polar station on Wrangel Island , and he took part in five scientific expeditions in the Arctic . He worked for state television and several magazines, he was the author of numerous travel reports from Siberia and the Arctic. In the popular magazine Ogonyok he had his own column, which was devoted to the preservation of nature and cultural monuments. He also wrote several volumes of poetry.

During Perestroika under Mikhail Gorbachev , he was elected to head a commission of the Writers' Union of the USSR , which was supposed to compile a documentary on the fate of writers persecuted by the NKVD secret service during the Stalin era . He was then given permission to work in the KGB archives. On the basis of his research, three documentation volumes have been published with extensive commentary, in which detailed chapters are devoted to Anna Akhmatova , Mikhail Bulgakov , Pawel Florensky , Maxim Gorky , Nikolai Kljujew , Ossip Mandelstam , Boris Pasternak , Boris Pilnjak and Marina Tsvetaeva . They contain longer excerpts from intelligence reports and interrogation protocols.

He also published materials about the NKVD officer Yakov Agranov , who led many of the repression measures against writers. Schentalinski's books on the repression of writers have also appeared in German, English, French, Spanish, Serbian and Polish. Several television documentaries were created on the basis of his work. His publications were praised by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Yevgeny Evtushenko .

In the Tatar community Juldus ( Chistopol district ), where he grew up, the "Schentalinsky Readings" have been taking place since 2013, at which people read from his works.

Major works

• Raby svobody v literaturnych archivach KGB . Parus, Moscow 1995 ISBN 5-900920-01-1 (German edition: Das Auferstandene Wort. Persecuted Russian writers in their last letters, poems and notes. From the archives of Soviet secret services. From the Russian by Bernd Rullkötter. Gustav Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1996 ISBN 3-7857-0848-3 )
• Prestuplenie bez nakazanija. Documental'nye povesti [ crime without atonement. Documentary narratives ]. Progress-Plejada, Moscow 2007 ISBN 978-5-93006-033-1 (English edition: The KGB's Literary Archive. Introduction by Robert Conquest. The Harvill Press, London 1997 ISBN 978-1860460739 )
• Donos na Sokrata. [ The Denunciation of Socrates ]. Formika-S, Moscow 2001 ISBN 5-8463-0081-2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ «Я - Виталий Шенталинский» Magadanskaya Pravda , August 3, 2018.
2. ↑ Beyond Guilt and Atonement nzz.ch , January 22, 2001.
3. ^ The Deafening Silence of Suppressed Russian Voices Gets a Hearing latimes.com , July 23, 1996.
4. ↑ Vitali Chentalinski elpais.com , January 26, 1995.
5. ↑ Les lettres noires du KGB lemonde.fr , December 6, 2012
6. ↑ Десять дней на родине. Виталий Шенталинский в Чистополе chisto-muzei.ru , May 11, 2017.
7. ↑ Aleksandr Malkin, Otgorivšij “Grobnicu pamjati”, in: Zarubež'e , 2.2012.
8. ↑ Thomas Urban , Witali Schentalinski has died , Süddeutsche Zeitung , 14./15. August 2018, p. 14.
9. ↑ Осколки серебряного века. Окончание Nowy Mir , 6.1998.
10. ↑ Умер высоко оцененный Солженицыным и Евтушенко журналист lenta.ru , July 27, 2018.
11. ↑ В Чистопольском районе в поселке Юлдуз прошли "Шенталинские чтения" tatarstan24.tv , May 11, 2017.