Yuz Aleshkovsky

Yuz Aleshkovsky (Иосиф Ефимович Алешковский) is modern Russian writer, poet, playwright and performer of his own songs.

Biography

Yuz Aleshkovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk in 1929, when his family resided there briefly for his father's business. Three months later his family returned to Moscow. His high school studies were interrupted due to his family's evacuation during the Second World War.

In 1947 Aleshkovsky was drafted into the Soviet Navy, but because of breaking the discipline code, he had to serve four years in jail (1950–1953). After serving the term, Aleshkovsky moved back to Moscow and began writing books for children.

Aleshkovsky also wrote songs and performed them. Some, especially Товарищ Сталин, вы большой ученый" 'Comrade Stalin, You Are the Top Scholar and "Окурочек" Little Cigarette Butt, became extremely popular in the Soviet Union and are considered folk classics.

Aleshkovsky also wrote screenplays for movies and television and soon after was accepted into the Writers Union.

From the very beginning of his career, Aleshkovsky did not compromise his writing to conform to official Soviet doctrine, and for this reason his novellas and novels were available only in cамиздат (self-publishing). Some of his songs were included in the subversive self-published almanac, "Metropol." (1979)

With no hope of being published officially in the Soviet Union, Aleshkovsky emigrated to the West in 1979 and resided in Austria. The following year, he was invited to the United States by Wesleyan University, and settled in Middletown, Connecticut where he presently lives and serves, at Wesleyan, as a Visiting Russian Emigre Writer in the Russian Department. In 2001 Aleshkovsky won a very prestigious literary award - the Pushkin Prize.

Style and Themes

Aleshkovsky has a distinct style of writing - a combination of "skaz" (narration that colors the described textual reality in which the narrator typically comes from a lower social class)and satire of soviet social or scientific experiments. The novella, Nikolai Nikolaevich, mocks soviet stupidity in pseudo-scintific biological experiments. His novel, "Kengaroo," tells the story of an old thief and his ordeals during the Stalinist era trials. Another essential element of Aleshkovsky's style is fantasy and the grotesque. In "Kengaroo," Stalin himself shows up in the story. His novel, "The Hand," defines soviet communist doctrine as a modern representation of absolute evil.

The book "Книга последних слов" (The Book of Last Words) deals with an essential theme of Russian literature - "проблема маленького человека" - the difficulty of the social existence of a simple but honest man. The theme was opened by N. Gogol, and further enhanced and dramatized by F. Dostoevsky.

The majority of Aleshkovsky's writings are humorous and profoundly witty.

Yuz Aleshkovsky was one of the first to use explitives in his writing. His best-known and most appreciated works are his anti-Stalinist songs, which have become part of an urban folk tradition in the Soviet Union and are even mistakenly considered by some to be anonymous.

Works

Novels

• Никoлaй Никoлaeвич (1970) - Nikolai Nikolaevich
• Кeнгуру - Kangaroo
• Предпоследняя жизнь - the Penultimate Life
• Антология Сатиры и Юмора России XX века (Том 8) - Anthology of Russian Satire & Humour (Vol.8)
• Sobranie sochinenii (V 3 tomakh) - Works (3 volumes to date)

Short stories

• Книга последних слов - 35 преступлений - The Book of Last Words - 35 Crimes (collection, Vermont 1984)

Screenplays

• Chto s toboy proisxodit (1975) - What's Happening to You ?
• Kysh i Dva portfelya (1974) - Kysh and Two Schoolbags
• Proisshestviye (1974) - An Accident
• Vot moya derevnya (1972) - Here is My Village

Children's Novellas

Vneklassnoe chtenie - Extra-Curricular Reading

• Kysh, Dva portfelya i tselaya nedelya - Kysh, Two Schoolbags & the Whole Week
• Kysh i ya v Krymu - Kysh and I in the Crimea

Importance

Aleshkovsky writings were published in the Bulgarian literary journal Fakel.