Yuz Aleshkovsky

Yuz Aleshkovsky (Юз Алешковский) is a Russian writer of songs and stories who has lived in the United States since 1979.

Biography

Aleshkovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk, in Soviet Siberia, in hospital on Dictatorship Street, in 1929.

His songs Comrade Stalin, you are the Top Scholar and Little Cigarette butt were popular in the 1960s, mistaken by most for simple folk songs. His novel Kangaroo was censored in 1975, and the Hand in 1978.

Along with many other Russian Jews, Aleshkovsky emigrated in 1978, first settling in Vienna. The following year he was invited to Connecticut, USA, by Wesleyan University.

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

35 преступлений (collection, Vermont 1984)

• Книга последних слов / Kniga Poslednikh Slov - Shoemaker in the Wind

Screenplays

• Chto s toboy proisxodit (1975) - What s happening to you ?
• Kysh i Dva portfelya (1974) - Kysh and Two Briefcases
• Proisshestviye (1974) - An Accident
• Vot moya derevnya (1972) - Here Is My Village

Children's Novellas

Vneklassnoe chtenie - Extra-mural reading

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

Importance & Critical reception

Aleshkovsky writings were published in the Bulgarian literary journal Fakel.

  Time has not been kind to Yuz Aleshkovsky's linguistic innovations. Russian culture has al-
 ways been prudish, and the printed language has lagged far behind the richness and inventive
 -ness of the vernacular. Mr. Aleshkovsky was one of the first to use an earthy vocabulary in 
 his writing. In fact, a few of his smaller pieces - the novella Nikolai Nikolayevich, which 
 is about a sperm donor - are minor classics. His best-known and most appreciated works may  
 be some anti-Stalinist songs, which have become part of an urban folk tradition in the Sov-
 iet Union and are even mistakenly considered by some to be anonymous.