Vasily Aksenov was born on August 20, 1932 in Kazan. His father, Pavel Vasilyevich Aksenov, was a party leader, served as chairman of the Kazan City Council. The writer's mother, Evgenia Solomonovna Ginzburg, taught at the Kazan Pedagogical Institute, was engaged in journalism, and wrote several literary works. Vasily was the youngest child in the family and the only common child of his parents (Maya is the daughter of P.V. Aksenov, Alexei is the son of E.S. Ginzburg from his first marriage).

In 1937, the parents were convicted and sentenced (Evgeny Solomonovna - to 10 years in prison and camps, and her husband - to 15 years). Vasily's brother and sister were taken away by relatives, and he himself was not allowed to stay with his grandmothers, and he was sent to an orphanage for prisoners. In 1938, his uncle, Andrey Vasilyevich Aksenov, took him from the Kostroma orphanage, with whom he lived until 1948, when his mother, who left the camps in 1947 and lived in exile in Magadan, obtained permission to move Vasya to her.

He received a medical education, graduating from the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute in 1956, after which he worked on distribution in the Baltic Shipping Company on long-distance ships. Aksyonov also worked as a quarantine doctor in Karelia, in the Leningrad Sea Commercial Port and in a tuberculosis hospital in Moscow.

Starting in 1963, when Nikita Khrushchev subjected Aksyonov to devastating criticism at a meeting of the intelligentsia in the Kremlin, the writer began to have problems with the authorities. His works ceased to be published in the 70s, after the end of the "thaw", and the writer began to be called "non-Soviet" and "non-folk". It is not surprising that in 1977-1978 his works began to appear abroad, mainly in the United States, where he went on an invitation on July 22, 1980 (after which he was deprived of Soviet citizenship) and where he lived until 2004.

In 1980-1991, he actively collaborated in several major radio stations and magazines, wrote essays, and was a professor of Russian literature at one of the universities. Literary activity also continued. For the first time after nine years of emigration, Aksyonov visited the USSR in 1989. The following year, he was given back Soviet citizenship. In the last years of his life he lived with his family in Biarritz (France).

In 2008, the writer was diagnosed with a stroke. Since then, his condition has been "stably grave." On July 6, 2009, Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov died in Moscow. He was buried on July 9, 2009 at the Vagankovsky cemetery. In Kazan, the house where the writer lived in his youth was restored; in 2009, the Museum of his work was created there.

Literary activity

Vasily Aksyonov began his career as a writer by writing the story "Colleagues" in 1959 (in 1962, a film of the same name was made based on it). It was followed by the novel Star Ticket, written in 1961, which was also filmed in 1962 under the title My Little Brother. The year 1962 ends with the writing of the novel "Oranges from Morocco" (1962). Collections of short stories "Catapult", "Halfway to the Moon" are published in 1963 and 1966, respectively. In 1968, the fantastic story "The Overstocked Barrel" was published. In 1964, Aksenov became one of the nine authors of the collective novel "The one who laughs laughs", published in the newspaper "Nedelya".

In the 60s, Aksenov often published in the journal Yunost, of which he has been a member of the editorial board for several years. By 1970, the first part of the adventure dilogy for children "My grandfather is a monument" was written. The second part, entitled "A chest in which something knocks," young readers saw in 1972.

The experimental work "Search for a Genre" was written in 1972. At the first publication in the Novy Mir magazine, the genre of the work was indicated as such: "Searching for a Genre". There were also attempts at translation activities. In 1976, the writer translated E. L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime from English.

Novels written in the USA: Paper Landscape, Say Raisins, In Search of a Sad Baby, Egg Yolk, Moscow Saga trilogy, collection of short stories Goodie Negative, Sweet New Style, "Caesarean Glow".

In 2010, Aksyonov's unfinished autobiographical novel "Lend-Lease" was published.

The best books of the writer

• If you decide to study the work of this wonderful writer, I suggest starting with literature dedicated to children. The story "My grandfather is a monument" will serve as an excellent start. Adventures, seas, oceans, pirates, captains - romance! When reading, it is impossible not to recall the famous "Treasure Island" by Stevenson. Will not leave indifferent neither adults nor children.
• The story "Colleagues" is recommended if you plan to approach Aksenov's work thoroughly, since this work is his first literary experience, the starting point in his career. It tells about young doctors and their understanding of the world around them, finding themselves in it.
• Novel "Star ticket". I would very much like to be impartial, but alas, I cannot calmly write about my favorite work of the author. Three guys and a girl, the first trip, youthful maximalism, mistakes and experience, parting are the main "tags" of this story. It was here that the writer's style was born, it is for this novel that readers love him.
• "Island of Crimea". Historical and geographical alternative, where Crimea is a full-fledged island in the Black Sea. The plot is based on the biographies of the heroes; throughout the novel there is a satirical and political overtones.
• "The one who laughs laughs." The novel is interesting at least because 9 writers worked on it. The plot tells about a man who once returned home from work and did not find his wife and child at home. That same evening, wandering around the city, he learns that he is considered a foreign agent ...

Related videos

Sources:

• 24media

Advice 2: Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov: biography, career and personal life

In the history of any country there are tragic pages that excite the memory of the victims. For the Soviet people and their descendants, the events of the 1930s will be a subject of discussion for a long time to come. The construction of a new society was accompanied by an uncompromising struggle between supporters and opponents of cardinal changes. Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov, as a child, became a victim of these tragic events. The time spent in government institutions was forever imprinted in his memory. It was printed and manifested in literary creativity.

The son is not responsible for the father

Literary creativity is often based on dissatisfaction with life, one's position in society and relationships with power structures. Vasily Aksenov received the profession of a doctor, but he did not have a career in this area. And then he tried to become a writer. The young man had genetic prerequisites for this. His mother, Evgenia Solomonovna Ginzburg, was successfully engaged in journalism and literary creativity. Aksenov's biography developed dramatically from the very beginning. The boy was born on August 20, 1932 in the family of a party worker.

Parents lived in Kazan. His father worked in the City Council, his mother worked in the editorial office of a local newspaper. A son and a daughter were already growing up in the family. Vasily was the third child. Political events in the country developed along a steep route and, in the literal sense of the word, destroyed the Aksenov family nest. The parents were arrested, convicted and sent to places where they were assigned to serve their sentences. Four-year-old Vasya was placed in a special reception for the children of enemies of the people. The brother of the father, was looking for a nephew for a long time. Found. He took him from the orphanage and brought him to his own aunt.

Vasily had to live with close relatives for ten years, while waiting for his mother to be released from prison. In 1948, Evgenia Ginzburg was released, but she was forbidden to return to her homeland. She took her son to her infamous Magadan. Aksyonov had the opportunity for several years to observe how people live in exile. It was not difficult for the young man to finish school in this city. In order to get a decent education as the next step, he had to invent a legend for himself, go to Leningrad and graduate from medical school.

First books

Dissatisfaction with professional activities served as a powerful motivation for writing. In 1959, Aksenov completed the story "Colleagues" and a few months later it was published in the magazine "Youth". Further career developed on the rise. New works came out from the pen of the young writer and were enthusiastically received by readers. Novels, stories, novels are published in "thick" magazines and in separate books.

The personal life of the writer did not develop immediately. In the first marriage, Aksenov had a daughter. However, the child could not cement the family. The second time Vasily was legally married to Maya Carmen. Figuratively speaking, it was love at first sight. Husband and wife lived happy and long lives. The writer passed away in 2009. Maya was there until the last hour.

Sources:

• Vasily Aksenov

Advice 3: Sergey Valerievich Aksyonov: biography, career and personal life

Leadership qualities and incredible charisma helped Sergey Aksyonov to make a rapid career from a member of the local parliament to the head of the Republic of Crimea. All this became possible after the entry of the peninsula into Russia.

The beginning of the way

Sergei Aksenov is from the Moldovan city of Balti. He was born in 1972 to a family of local factory workers. The boy studied well and graduated from school with a silver medal. He was distinguished by an active social position and a love of sports. In 1989, the graduate entered the Simferopol Higher Military-Political Construction School.

Entrepreneur

With the collapse of the USSR, many young people took up entrepreneurship. Aksenov was no exception. He worked as an insurance agent, then worked in senior positions in cooperatives that sold food and industrial goods. During this period of his biography, the young businessman acquired useful contacts in the prosecutor's office and the State Property Fund. The entrepreneur managed to privatize several Crimean enterprises and shops in Simferopol, Yalta, Alushta. His next acquisitions were residential real estate, which were rented out and a company that provides services for issuing visas. Practical work required a certain theoretical base, so Sergey received an education in the specialty "Economics of enterprises", and then became a master in finance.

Politician

In the second half of the 2000s, the businessman decided to try himself in politics. He was active in the organizations "Russian Community of Crimea" and "Civil Assets of Crimea". In 2010, an experienced politician became the head of the Russian Unity movement, from this party he won the elections to the Crimean Parliament. The people's choice considered the support of domestic producers, differentiation in the taxation system and care for the poor segments of the population to be the priority areas of his work. The activity of the deputy created the basis for the further career of a politician.

"Crimean Spring"

At the time of the Crimean referendum on the entry of the peninsula into the Russian Federation, Aksyonov's leadership qualities were especially pronounced. The country's leadership saw in him a strong man capable of uniting the multinational Crimea and taking responsibility for its development in a new legal field. For four years, Sergei Valerievich has been the head of the Crimean Council of Ministers. During this time, the head of the republic showed himself as a competent, self-confident leader. Colleagues speak of him as an intelligent, energetic person who is able to develop. He considers the peninsula his home and devotes a lot of energy to the restoration of the national economy of the republic. Over the past two years, the fight against corruption and road construction have become important accents of his work. Particularly popular on the website of the republican government is an online form in which every resident of the peninsula can apply to its chairman. Openness and efficiency in decision-making helped Aksenov to earn the authority and recognition of the Crimeans.

Personal life

The famous politician is reluctant to share with journalists the details of his private life. With his wife Elena, he started a family more than twenty years ago. The wife received an economic education, is engaged in entrepreneurial activities. By the way, her official income is twice the salary of the official's husband. The couple has two children. Daughter Christina recently successfully graduated from high school. Son Oleg served in the army, enthusiastically engaged in Greco-Roman wrestling. This love was instilled in the young man by his father, who heads the Crimean Federation for this sport. The family spends their free time traveling.

Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov(August 20, 1932, Kazan - July 6, 2009, Moscow) - Russian writer.

Since 1980 he lived in the USA (where he taught at universities and worked as a radio journalist), in the last years of his life - in France. In addition to prose and drama in Russian, he wrote scripts for feature films, was a co-author of the group adventure novel "Jean Green - Untouchable", published one book in English ("Yolk of an Egg", 1989) and translated from this language.

early years

Vasily Aksyonov was born on August 20, 1932 in Kazan, in the family of Pavel Vasilievich Aksyonov (1899-1991) and Evgenia Solomonovna Ginzburg (1904-1977). He was the third, youngest child in the family (and the only common child of his parents). Father, Pavel Vasilyevich, was the chairman of the Kazan City Council and a member of the bureau of the Tatar regional committee of the CPSU. Mother, Evgenia Solomonovna, worked as a teacher at the Kazan Pedagogical Institute, then as head of the culture department of the Krasnaya Tatariya newspaper. Subsequently, having gone through the Stalinist camps, at the time of the exposure of the cult of personality, Yevgenia Ginzburg became the author of the book of memoirs "The Steep Route" - one of the first memoirs about the era of Stalinist repressions and camps, which told about the eighteen years spent by the author in prison, Kolyma camps and exile .

In 1937, when Vasily Aksyonov was not yet five years old, both parents (first mother, and then soon father) were arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison and labor camps. The older children - sister Maya (daughter of P. V. Aksyonov) and Alyosha (son of E. S. Ginzburg from his first marriage) - were taken in by relatives. Vasya was forcibly sent to an orphanage for the children of prisoners (his grandmothers were not allowed to keep the child). In 1938, P. Aksyonov's brother, Andrey Vasilyevich Aksyonov, managed to find little Vasya in an orphanage in Kostroma and take him to him. Vasya lived in the house of Ksenia Vasilievna Aksyonova (his paternal aunt) until 1948, when his mother Evgenia Ginzburg, having left the camp in 1947 and living in exile in Magadan, obtained permission for Vasya to visit her in Kolyma. Evgenia Ginzburg described the meeting with Vasya in The Steep Route.

Many years later, in 1975, Vasily Aksyonov described his Magadan youth in his autobiographical novel The Burn.

In 1956, Aksenov graduated from the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute and was assigned to the Baltic Shipping Company, where he was supposed to work as a doctor on long-distance ships. Despite the fact that his parents had already been rehabilitated, he was never given permission. Later it was mentioned that Aksyonov worked as a quarantine doctor in the Far North, in Karelia, in the Leningrad Sea Trade Port and in a tuberculosis hospital in Moscow (according to other sources, he was a consultant at the Moscow Research Institute of Tuberculosis).

The beginning of literary activity

Since 1960, Vasily Aksyonov has been a professional writer. The story "Colleagues" (written in 1959; the play of the same name together with G. Stabov, 1961; the film of the same name, 1962), the novels "Star Ticket" (written in 1961; the film "My Little Brother", 1962) was shot on it), the story "Oranges from Morocco" (1962), "It's time, my friend, it's time" (1963), the collections "Catapult" (1964), "Halfway to the Moon" (1966), the play "Always on sale" (staged by the theater " Sovremennik", 1965); in 1968, the satirical-fiction story "The Overstocked Barrel" was published. In 1964, he took part in the writing of the collective detective novel Laughs He Who Laughs, published in the newspaper Nedelya.

In the 1960s, the works of V. Aksyonov were often published in the journal Yunost. For several years he has been a member of the editorial board of the journal. Adventure dilogy for children: “My grandfather is a monument” (1970) and “A chest in which something knocks” (1972).

The story about L. Krasin "Love for Electricity" (1971) belongs to the historical and biographical genre. The experimental work "Search for a Genre" was written in 1972 (the first publication in the journal "New World"; in the subtitle indicating the genre of the work, "Search for a Genre" is also indicated).

In 1972, together with O. Gorchakov and G. Pozhenyan, he wrote a parody novel on the spy thriller "Jean Green - Untouchable" under the pseudonym Grivadiy Gorpozhaks (a combination of the names and surnames of the authors themselves).

1976 - translated from English the novel by E. L. Doctorow "Ragtime".

Social activity. Publications abroad

Back in March 1963, at a meeting with the intelligentsia in the Kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev subjected Aksyonov (together with Andrei Voznesensky) to devastating criticism.

On March 5, 1966, Vasily Aksyonov participated in an attempted demonstration on Red Square in Moscow against the alleged rehabilitation of Stalin and was detained by vigilantes. In 1967-1968, he signed a number of letters in defense of dissidents, for which he received a reprimand from the Moscow branch of the Writers' Union of the USSR.

In the 1970s, after the end of the "thaw", Aksyonov's works ceased to be published in his homeland. The novels The Burn (1975) and The Island of Crimea (1977-1979, partly written during his stay in Koktebel) were created by the author from the very beginning without any expectation of publication. At this time, criticism of Aksyonov and his works became more and more harsh: such epithets as "non-Soviet" and "non-folk" were used. In 1977-1978, Aksyonov's works began to appear abroad, primarily in the United States.

In 1978, V. Aksyonov, together with Andrei Bitov, Viktor Erofeev, Fazil Iskander, Evgeny Popov and Bella Akhmadulina, organized and authored the uncensored almanac Metropol, which was never published in the Soviet censored press. The Almanac was published in the USA. All participants in the almanac were subjected to "study". In protest against the subsequent expulsion of Popov and Erofeev from the Writers' Union of the USSR in December 1979, Aksyonov, as well as Inna Lisnyanskaya and Semyon Lipkin, announced their withdrawal from the joint venture. The history of the almanac is set out in the novel with the key "Say" raisins "".

In exile

On July 22, 1980, he left for the United States at the invitation, after which he was deprived of Soviet citizenship. Until 2004 he lived in the USA.

Since 1981, Vasily Aksyonov has been a professor of Russian literature at various US universities: George Washington University (GWU) (1982-1983), Goucher College (1983-1988), George Mason University (GMU) (1988-2009) ), and was also a fellow (fellow) of the George Kennan Wilson Institute Center in Washington.

In 1980-1991, as a journalist, he actively collaborated with Voice of America and Radio Liberty. Collaborated with the magazine "Continent" and the almanac "Verb". Aksenov's radio essays were published in the author's collection "A decade of slander" (2004).

The novels “Our Golden Iron” (1973, 1980), “The Burn” (1976, 1980), “The Island of Crimea” (1979, 1981), a collection of short stories "Right to the Island" (1981).

In the USA, V. Aksyonov wrote and published new novels: “Paper Landscape” (1982), “Say Raisin” (1985), “In Search of a Sad Baby” (1986), “Egg Yolk” (1989, in English) , the Moscow Saga trilogy (1989-1993), a collection of short stories "The Negative of the Positive Hero" (1995), "A New Sweet Style" (1996) (dedicated to the life of Soviet emigration in the USA), "Caesarean Glow" (2000).

For the first time after nine years of emigration, Aksyonov visited the USSR in 1989. In 1990, V. Aksyonov was given back Soviet citizenship.

After 1991

In the last years of his life he lived with his family in Biarritz (France).

The Moscow Saga trilogy (1992) was filmed in Russia in 2004 by A. Barshchevsky in a 24-episode television series.

In 1992, he actively supported Gaidar's reforms. In his words: "Gaidar kicked Mother Russia."

In 1993, during the dispersal of the Supreme Council, he sided with those who signed the letter in support of B. N. Yeltsin.

The book of memoirs "The Apple of the Eye" (2005) is in the nature of a personal diary.

In 2007, the novel "Rare Earths" was published.

On January 15, 2008, in Moscow, V. Aksyonov suddenly felt very ill, was hospitalized in hospital No. 23, where he was diagnosed with a stroke. A day after hospitalization, Aksenov was transferred to the Sklifosovsky Research Institute, where he underwent an operation to remove a carotid thrombus. On January 29, 2008, doctors assessed the writer's condition as extremely serious. As of August 28, 2008, the condition remained "stably grave." On March 5, 2009, new complications arose, Aksyonov was transferred to the Burdenko Research Institute and operated on. Later Aksyonov was transferred back to the Sklifosovsky Research Institute.

On July 6, 2009, after a long illness, Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov died in Moscow, at the Sklifosovsky Research Institute.

In Kazan, the house where the writer lived in his adolescence was restored, and in November 2009 the Museum of his work was created there.

In October 2009, Vasily Aksyonov's last completed novel, Mysterious Passion. A novel about the sixties”, separate chapters of which were published in 2008 in the magazine “Collection of a caravan of stories”. The novel is autobiographical; its main characters were the idols of Soviet literature and art of the 1960s: Robert Rozhdestvensky, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akhmadulina, Andrei Voznesensky, Bulat Okudzhava, Andrei Tarkovsky, Vladimir Vysotsky, Ernst Neizvestny, Marlene Khutsiev, Roman Karmen, Marina Vladi, Yuri Nagibin and others . To distance himself from the memoir genre, the author gave fictitious names to the characters of the novel. At the same time, the names were changed so consonantly that everyone was easily recognizable. In 2015, based on this novel, a series was filmed, the premiere of which took place in November 2016 on Channel One.

In 2010, Aksyonov's unfinished autobiographical novel "Lend-Lease" was published.

Peer ratings

“Aksenov has always been fashionable. He succeeded in what all writers dream of - to cross the line of generations. He conquered everyone - both the romantic readers of the Yunost magazine, and the bearded dissidents, and today's Russia ”(Alexander Genis).

Aksenov at that time was called a connoisseur of urban life. “There are villagers, but he, Aksyonov, is in the city.” (Georgy Sadovnikov. My classmate Vasya / “Vasily Aksyonov is a lonely long-distance runner”).

“Aksenov in America remained a well-known writer for a narrow circle. I suspect that he wanted to be an American bestseller and was very upset that nothing came of it. In my opinion, even theoretically it could not work. To create an American bestseller, you have to write badly and about nonsense. But Aksyonov, with all his efforts, will not be able to do this. (Anatoly Gladilin. Aksenovskaya saga).

“Talented white hand. I didn’t sniff life ... ”(Vil Lipatov).

“Aksenov is swing, swinging rhythm, buildup, jazz and jazz optional style” (Dmitry Bykov).

Awards, honorary titles, prizes

In the USA, V. Aksyonov was awarded the honorary title of Doctor of Humane Letters. He was a member of the PEN Club and the American Authors' League. Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts.

2004 - "Russian Booker" award for the novel "Voltaireans and Voltaireans".

2005 - Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters (France)

2007 - Medal "In memory of the 1000th anniversary of Kazan"

2007 - Laureate of the Tsarskoye Selo Art Prize

Memory

Since 2007, the Aksyonov-Fest International Literary and Musical Festival has been held in Kazan every autumn (in October) (the first was held with his personal participation), in 2009 the building was recreated and the Aksyonov Literary House-Museum was opened, in which the city literary club operates.

In 2015, the Aksyonov Garden was opened in Kazan after the reconstruction. The opening of the nominal square was the end of the Aksyonov-fest Festival. "Aksyonov's Garden" began its work with the opening of a memorial sign dedicated to Vasily Aksyonov. This sign is a self-portrait of the author, made in the caricature genre, as he signed his manuscripts.

In 2016, a sculptural composition dedicated to the writer appeared in the Aksyonov Garden.

In 2017, on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of Vasily Aksyonov, the Aksyonov Island portal began to operate.

Books about Aksenov

• 2011 - Alexander Kabakov and Evgeny Popov. Aksyonov. The authors are extremely concerned about the issue of "writer's fate", related to the intricacies of biography, the birth of a great Personality. The super-task of the book is to resist the distortion of facts for the sake of this or that conjuncture.
• 2012 - Victor Esipov. "About Lost Time".
• 2012 - Dmitry Petrov. "Aksenov" (a book from the series "Life of Remarkable People").
• 2012 - Dmitry Petrov. Vasily Aksyonov. Sentimental Journey.
• 2012 - Collection "Vasily Aksyonov - a lonely long-distance runner" (edited by Viktor Esipov). The collection includes memoirs of contemporaries about the writer, part of his correspondence and interviews.
• 2016 - Victor Esipov "Four Lives of Vasily Aksyonov".

Studies of creativity V. P. Aksyonov

• 1998 - Torunova Galina Mikhailovna. The evolution of the hero and the genre in the work of Vasily Aksyonov: From prose to dramaturgy. Dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences.
• 2005 - Karlina Natalia Nikolaevna. The myth of America in American and Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century: E. L. Doctorow and V. Aksyonov. Dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences.
• 2006 - Malikova Tatyana Alexandrovna. The work of V. Aksyonov in the 1960s-1990s in English-language literary criticism and criticism. Dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences.
• 2006 - Popov Ilya Vladimirovich. The artistic world of the works of Vasily Aksyonov. Dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences.
• 2007 - Chernyshenko Olga Vasilievna. The novels of V. P. Aksyonov: genre originality, the problem of the hero and features of the author's philosophy. Dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences.
• 2009 - Barruelo-Gonzalez Elena Yurievna. Roman V.P. Aksyonov "Moscow Saga". Genre issue. Dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences.
• 2009 - Shcheglov Yuri Konstantinovich. "Overstocked Barrel" by Vasily Aksyonov.
• 2011 - Aksyonova Violetta Vladimirovna. Genre originality of V. Aksyonov's prose in the 1960s-1970s. Dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences.

A family

• Sister (by father) - Maya Pavlovna Aksyonova (1925-2010), teacher-methodologist, author of methodological and teaching aids on teaching the Russian language.
• Brother (by mother) - Alexei Dmitrievich Fedorov (1926-1942), died during the Leningrad blockade.
• The mother's adopted daughter is actress Antonina Pavlovna Aksyonova (original surname Khinchinskaya, born 1945).
• First wife - Kira Ludvigovna Mendeleva (1934–2013), daughter of brigade commander Layosh (Ludwig Matveyevich) Gavro and great-niece of the famous pediatrician and healthcare organizer Yulia Aronovna Mendeleva (1883-1959), founder and first rector (1925-1949) of the Leningrad Pediatric Medical Institute .
  • Son - Alexei Vasilyevich Aksyonov (born 1960), production designer.
• The second wife is Maya Afanasievna Aksyonova (1930-2014), nee Zmeul, the daughter of the nomenklatura worker Afanasy Andreevich Zmeul, who at the end of his life headed the foreign trade association "International Book". In her first marriage, Ovchinnikova, in her second marriage to R.L. Karmen, she graduated from the All-Union Academy of Foreign Trade, worked at the Chamber of Commerce, and taught Russian in the USA.
  • Stepdaughter, daughter of Maya Aksyonova - Elena (Alena) Grinberg (1954-2008).

Selected works

Prose

• 1958 - "One and a half medical units" (story)
• 1959 - "Colleagues" (story), film adaptation of "Colleagues" (1962)
• 1961 - "Star Ticket" (novel), film adaptation of "My Little Brother" (1962)
• 1962 - "Oranges from Morocco" (novel)
• 1963 - "It's time, my friend, it's time" (story)
• 1964 - "Catapult" (story and stories)
• 1965 - "Victory" (story with exaggeration)
• 1965 - “It is a pity that you were not with us” (story), “Steel Bird” (story with digressions and solo for cornet)
• 1966 - "Halfway to the Moon" (book of stories)
• 1968 - "Overstocked Barrel" (story), performance at the Moscow theater-studio "Snuffbox"
• 1969 - "Love for electricity" (a story about L. B. Krasin)
• 1969 - "My grandfather is a monument" (story)
• 1971 - "The Story of a Basketball Team Playing Basketball" (feature)
• 1972 - "Search for the genre" (search for the genre)
• 1972 - "Jean Green Untouchable", et al. with Ovid Gorchakov and Grigory Pozhenyan
• 1973 - "Our Golden Iron" (novel)
• 1975 - "Burn" (novel)
• 1976 - "A chest in which something knocks" (story)
• 1976 - "Round the clock non-stop" (novel)
• 1979 - "Island of Crimea" (novel)
• 1982 - "Paper Landscape" (novel)
• 1983 - "Say raisins" (novel)
• 1987 - "In search of a sad baby"
• 1989 - Yolk of the Egg (translation into Russian - "Egg Yolk", 2002)
• 1981 - "Sviyazhsk" (story)
• 1992 - "Moscow Saga" (epic novel), film adaptation of "Moscow Saga (TV series)"
• 1996 - Sweet New Style (novel)
• 2000 - "Caesarean Glow" (novel)
• 2004 - "Voltairians and Voltairians" (novel, Russian Booker Prize)
• 2006 - "Moscow Kva-Kva" (novel)
• 2007 - "Rare Earths" (novel)
• 2007 - “Mysterious passion. A novel about the sixties”, film adaptation of “Mysterious Passion”, (2016)
• 2008 - "Lend-Lease". (unfinished novel)
• 2009 - “Lion's Lair. Forgotten stories "(stories)
• 2014 - "One continuous Caruso" (unpublished stories, essays and diaries)
• 2015 - "Catch the pigeon mail" (letters 1940-1990)
• 2017 - "Personality Island" (essays and journalism)

Film scripts

• 1962 - When the bridges are raised
• 1962 - Colleagues
• 1962 - My little brother
• 1966 - Journey (film almanac)
• 1967 - Stormy life in the south
• 1970 - Master
• 1972 - Marble House
• 1975 - Center from the skies
• 1978 - While the dream is mad
• 2007 - Tatyana
• 2009 - Jester

Plays

• 1965 - "Always on sale"
• 1966 - "Your killer"
• 1968 - "Four Temperaments"
• 1968 - "Aristophaniana with frogs"
• 1980 - "Heron"
• 1998 - "Woe, woe, burn"
• 1999 - "Aurora Gorelik"
• 2000 - "Ah, Arthur Schopenhauer"

Screen adaptations

• 1962 - Colleagues
• 1962 - My little brother (based on the novel Star Ticket)
• 1966 - Journey (film almanac based on the stories "Dad, Fold!", "Breakfasts of the forty-third year", "Halfway to the Moon")
• 2004 - Moscow Saga (TV series)
• 2015 - Mysterious passion (TV series)

Bibliography

• Aksenov V. "Colleagues" - M., Soviet writer, 1961. - 150,000 copies.
• Aksenov V. "Catapult" - M., Soviet writer, 1964. - 30,000 copies.
• Aksenov V. "It's time, my friend, it's time." - M., Young Guard, 1965. - 115,000 copies.
• Aksenov V. "Halfway to the Moon". - M., Soviet Russia, 1966. - 100,000 copies.
• Aksenov V. “It is a pity that you were not with us” - M., Soviet writer, 1969. - 384 p., 100,000 copies.
• Aksenov V. "Love of Electricity" - M., Politizdat, 1971. - 200,000 copies; 2nd ed. 1974. - 200,000 copies.
• Aksenov V."My grandfather is a monument." - M., Children's literature, 1972., 208 p., 100,000 copies.
• Aksenov V. A chest in which something knocks. - M.: Children's literature, 1976
• Aksyonov V. "Island of Crimea". - M., Ogonyok, 1990. - 200,000 copies.
• Aksyonov V. Burn. - M., Ogonyok, 1990. - 200,000 copies.
• Aksenov V. "In search of a sad baby" - M., MAI - "Text", 1991. - 320 p., 100,000 copies.
• Aksyonov V. My grandfather is a monument. Kemerovo, 1991
• Aksyonov V. Rendezvous. - M.: Text-RIF, 1991
• Aksenov V."In search of a sad baby" "Two books about America". - Independent almanac "The End of the Century", 1992, - 50,000 copies.
• Aksenov V. Moscow saga. In 3 books. - M., Text, 1993-1994., - 50,000 copies.
• Aksenov V."Right to the Island". - M., Moscow worker, 1991. - 624 p. - 75,000 copies.
• Aksenov V. Moscow saga. Book. 1 "Generation of winter". - Isographus.
• Aksenov V. Moscow saga. Book. 2 War and Prison. - Isographus.
• Aksenov V. Moscow saga. Book. 3 Prison and Peace. - Isographus.
• Aksenov V."Negative of a positive hero." - Vagrius-Izograph, 1996. - 304 p., 10,000 copies.
• Aksenov V."Negative of a positive hero." - Vagrius-Izograph, 1998. - 304 p., 5,000 copies.
• Aksenov V.
• Aksenov V."Death of Pompeii". - Isograph.
• Aksenov V."Caesarean Glow". - Izographus-EKSMO-press, 2001. - 640 p. - 15,000 copies.
• Aksenov V."Voltaireans and Voltairians". - Isographus.
• Aksyonov V. Overstocked barrels. - M., Izograph-EXMO-press, 2001
• Aksenov V. Overstocked barrel. - M., Izograf-EKSMO, 2002
• Aksenov V."Oranges from Morocco" - M., Eksmo-Isographus., 2003.
• Aksenov V. Egg yolk. - M., Izographus-EKSMO., 2003
• Aksenov V. "American Cyrillic" - M., NLO, 2004. - 3,000 copies.
• Aksenov V."Rare Earths". - EXMO.
• Aksenov V. Moscow Kva-Kva. - EKSMO, 2006.
• Aksenov V."A decade of slander". - Isographus-EKSMO, 2004. - 7,100 copies.
• Aksenov V."In Search of the Sad Baby". - M., Izograph - Eksmo, 2005. - 7,000 copies.
• Aksenov V."Egg yolk" - Isographus - EKSMO, 2005. - 7,000 copies.
• Aksyonov V. Z atomic barrel. - M., Izograph-EKSMO, 2005
• Aksenov V."Say raisins." - RIA "InfA".
• Aksenov V."Say raisins." - EXMO.
• Aksenov V."Island of Crimea". - MIF Literary Agency.
• Aksenov V."Island of Crimea". - ISOGRAPH.
• Aksenov V."Mysterious Passion" (a novel about the sixties). - Seven days, 2009. - 591 p.
• Aksenov V."Lend-Lease". - EXMO.
• Aksenov V."Lion's Lair". - AST; Astrel.-5.
• Aksenov V."Oh, this flying youngster!" - EKSMO, 2012.
• Aksenov V."One solid Caruso." Compiled by V. Esipov. - M., EKSMO, 2014.
• Aksenov V.“Catch pigeon mail. Letters. Compiled by V. Esipov. - M., AST, 2015.
• Aksenov V."Lion's Lair". Compiled by V. Esipov. M., Astrel.-5
• Aksenov V. Mysterious passion ”(a novel about the sixties). Author's version. - M., IP Biryukova Oksana Anatolyevna, 2015. - 738 p. - 25,000 copies.

Vasily Aksenov was born on August 20, 1932 in Kazan, in the family of Evgenia Solomonovna Ginzburg (1904-1977) and Pavel Vasilievich Aksyonov (1899-1991). He was the third, youngest child in the family (and the only common child of his parents). Father, Pavel Vasilyevich, was the chairman of the Kazan City Council and a member of the bureau of the Tatar regional committee of the CPSU. Mother, Evgenia Solomonovna, worked as a teacher at the Kazan Pedagogical Institute, then as head of the culture department of the Krasnaya Tatariya newspaper. Subsequently, having gone through the horror of the Stalinist camps, at the time of the exposure of the cult of personality, Yevgenia Ginzburg became the author of the book of memoirs "The Steep Route" - one of the first memoirs about the era of Stalinist repressions and camps, which told about the eighteen years spent by the author in prison, Kolyma camps and link.

In 1937, when Vasily Aksyonov was not yet five years old, both parents (first mother, and then soon father) were arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison and labor camps. The older children - sister Maya (daughter of P.V. Aksyonov) and Alyosha (son of E.S. Ginzburg from his first marriage) were taken by relatives. Vasya was forcibly sent to an orphanage for the children of prisoners (his grandmothers were not allowed to keep the child). In 1938, P. Aksyonov's brother, Andrey Vasilyevich Aksyonov, managed to find little Vasya in an orphanage in Kostroma and take him to him. Vasya lived in the house of Moti Aksyonova (his paternal relative) until 1948, when his mother Evgenia Ginzburg, leaving the camp in 1947 and living in exile in Magadan, obtained permission for Vasya to visit her in Kolyma. Evgenia Ginzburg will describe the meeting with Vasya in The Steep Route.

Many years later, in 1975, Vasily Aksyonov described his Magadan youth in his autobiographical novel The Burn.

In 1956, Aksenov graduated from the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute and was assigned to the Baltic Shipping Company, where he was supposed to work as a doctor on long-distance ships. Despite the fact that his parents had already been rehabilitated, he was never given permission. Later it was mentioned that Aksyonov worked as a quarantine doctor in the Far North, in Karelia, in the Leningrad Sea Trade Port and in a tuberculosis hospital in Moscow (according to other sources, he was a consultant at the Moscow Research Institute of Tuberculosis).

A family

• Half-sister (by father) - Maya Pavlovna Aksyonova, teacher-methodologist, author of methodological and teaching aids on teaching the Russian language. Half-brother (by mother) - Alexei Dmitrievich Fedorov (1926-1941), died during the Leningrad blockade. The mother's adopted daughter is actress Antonina Pavlovna Aksyonova (original surname Khinchinskaya, born 1945).
• The first wife is Kira Ludvigovna Mendeleva, the daughter of brigade commander Layosh (Ludwig Matvevich) Gavro and the granddaughter of the famous pediatrician and healthcare organizer Yulia Aronovna Mendeleva (1883-1959), founder and first rector of the Leningrad Pediatric Medical Institute (1925-1949).
  • Son - Alexei Vasilyevich Aksyonov (born 1960), production designer.
• The second wife, Maya Afanasyevna Aksyonova (nee Zmeul, Ovchinnikova in her first marriage, Carmen in her second marriage; born 1930), graduated from the Institute of Foreign Trade, worked at the Chamber of Commerce, and taught Russian in America.
  • Stepdaughter - Elena (Alena) (1954 - August 2008).

Since 1960, Vasily Aksyonov has been a professional writer. The story "Colleagues" (written in 1959; the play of the same name together with Y. Stabov, 1961; the film of the same name, 1962), the novels "Star Ticket" (1961) (the film "My Little Brother", 1962) was filmed on it), the story " Oranges from Morocco (1962), It's time, my friend, it's time (1963), the collections Catapult (1964), Halfway to the Moon (1966), the play Always on Sale (staged by the Sovremennik Theater , 1965); in 1968, the satirical-fiction story "The Overstocked Barrel" was published.

In the 1960s, the works of V. Aksyonov were often published in the journal Yunost. For several years he has been a member of the editorial board of the journal. On March 5, 1966, Vasily Aksyonov participated in an attempted demonstration on Red Square in Moscow against Stalin's alleged rehabilitation. He was detained by vigilantes. In 1967-1968, he signed a number of letters in defense of dissidents, for which he received a reprimand from the Moscow branch of the Writers' Union of the USSR.

Back in March 1963, at a meeting with the intelligentsia in the Kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev sharply criticized Aksyonov (together with Andrei Voznesensky). And in the 1970s, after the end of the "thaw", Aksyonov's works ceased to be published in his homeland. The novels The Burn (1975) and The Island of Crimea (1979) were created by the author from the very beginning without any expectation of publication. At this time, criticism of V. Aksyonov and his works is becoming more and more harsh: such epithets as "non-Soviet" and "non-folk" are used. In 1977-1978, Aksyonov's works began to appear abroad, primarily in the United States.

In 1972, together with O. Gorchakov and G. Pozhenyan, he wrote a parody novel on the spy thriller "Jean Green - Untouchable" under the pseudonym Grivadiy Gorpozhaks (a combination of names and surnames of real authors). 1976 - translated from English the novel by E. L. Doctorow "Ragtime".

In 1978, V. Aksyonov, together with Andrei Bitov, Viktor Erofeev, Fazil Iskander, Evgeny Popov, Bella Akhmadulina, became one of the organizers and authors of the uncensored almanac Metropol. Never published in the Soviet censored press, the almanac was published in the USA. Like all participants in the almanac, he underwent "studies". In protest against the subsequent exclusion of Popov and Erofeev from the Union of Writers of the USSR in December 1979, V. Aksyonov, as well as Inna Lisnyanskaya and Semyon Lipkin, announced their withdrawal from the joint venture. The history of the almanac is set out in the novel "with the key" "Say" raisins "".

On July 22, 1980, he left for the United States at the invitation, after which in 1981 he was deprived of Soviet citizenship. Until 2004 he lived in the USA.

Since 1981, Vasily Aksyonov has been a professor of Russian literature at various US universities: Kennan Institute (1981-1982), George Washington University (1982-1983), Goucher College (1983-1988), George Mason University (1988-2009).

In 1980-1991, as a journalist, he actively collaborated with Voice of America and Radio Liberty. Collaborated with the magazine "Continent" and the almanac "Verb". Aksenov's radio essays were published in the author's collection "A decade of slander" (2004).

The novels “Our Golden Iron” (1973, 1980), “Burn” (1976, 1980), “Island of Crimea” (1979, 1981), written by Aksyonov in Russia, but first published only after the writer’s arrival in America, came out in the USA in the USA. collection of short stories "The Right to the Island" (1981). Also in the USA, V. Aksyonov wrote and published new novels: “Paper Landscape” (1982), “Say Raisin” (1985), “In Search of a Sad Baby” (1986), the Moscow Saga trilogy (1989, 1991 , 1993), a collection of short stories "The Negative of a Good Hero" (1995), "A New Sweet Style" (1996) (dedicated to the life of Soviet emigration in the United States), "Caesarean Glow" (2000).

The novel "The Yolk of an Egg" (1989) was written by V. Aksyonov in English, then translated into Russian by the author.

In the USA, Aksyonov was awarded the honorary title of Doctor of Humane Letters. He was a member of the PEN Club and the American Authors' League.

For the first time, after nine years of emigration, Aksyonov visited the USSR in 1989 at the invitation of the American Ambassador J. Matlock. In 1990, Aksyonov was returned to Soviet citizenship.

Recently he lived with his family in Biarritz, France, and in Moscow.

The Moscow Saga trilogy (1992) was filmed in Russia in 2004 by A. Barshchevsky in a serial television series.

In 1993, during the dispersal of the Supreme Council, he sided with those who signed the letter in support of B. N. Yeltsin.

In 2004, V. Aksyonov was awarded the Russian Booker Prize for the novel Voltaireans and Voltaireans. In 2005, Vasily Aksyonov was awarded the Order of Arts and Literature.

On January 15, 2008, in Moscow, V. Aksyonov suddenly felt very ill, was hospitalized in hospital No. 23, where he was diagnosed with a stroke. A day after hospitalization, Aksenov was transferred to the Sklifosovsky Research Institute, where he underwent an operation to remove a carotid thrombus. On January 29, 2008, doctors assessed the writer's condition as extremely serious. As of August 28, 2008, the condition remained "stably grave." On March 5, 2009, new complications arose, Aksyonov was transferred to the Burdenko Research Institute and operated on. Later Aksyonov was transferred back to the Sklifosovsky Research Institute.

On July 6, 2009, after a long illness, Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov died in Moscow, at the Sklifosovsky Research Institute.

Since 2007, the International Literary and Musical Festival Aksyonov-Fest has been held in Kazan since 2007 every autumn (in October) (the first was held with his personal participation), in 2009 the building was recreated and the Aksyonov Literary House-Museum was opened, in which the city literary club operates.

In October 2009, Vasily Aksyonov's last completed novel, Mysterious Passion. A novel about the sixties”, separate chapters of which were published in 2008 in the magazine “Collection of a caravan of stories”. The novel is autobiographical; its main characters were the idols of Soviet literature and art of the 1960s: Robert Rozhdestvensky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akhmadulina, Andrei Voznesensky, Bulat Okudzhava, Andrei Tarkovsky, Vladimir Vysotsky, Ernst Neizvestny, Marlen Khutsiev and others. In order to distance himself from the memoir genre, the author gave fictitious names to the characters in the novel.

In 2010, Aksyonov's unfinished autobiographical novel "Lend-Lease" was published.

In 2011, Alexander Kabakov and Evgeny Popov published a joint book of memoirs "Aksenov". The authors are extremely concerned about the issue of "writer's fate", related to the intricacies of biography, the birth of a great Personality. The super-task of the book is to resist the distortion of facts for the sake of this or that conjuncture.

Vaxon Akson, Gravadiy Gorpozhaks - pseudonyms; Aksenov Vasily Pavlovich; Kazan, Russia; 08/20/1932 - 07/06/2009

Vasily Aksenov is a fairly significant figure in world literature. His works have been translated into many languages ​​of the world. Nevertheless, Vasily Aksenov's books received most of the awards in Russia. And one of the most significant of them can be called the Russian Booker Prize, which the writer was awarded in 2009. The writer's contribution can also be assessed by screen adaptations of Aksenov's books. At the moment, there are 4 of them, but given the number of scripts written by the writer, this number may increase.

Biography of Vasily Aksenov

Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov was born in 1932 in Kazan. His father was the chairman of the Kazan City Council, and his mother was a teacher at the Kazan Institute. In addition, she was in charge of the culture department at the local newspaper. But in 1937, both parents were arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Four-year-old Vasily was sent to an orphanage for the children of political prisoners. Only a year later, his father's brother managed to pick him up from his grandfather and take him to a relative in Kostroma. Vasily Aksenov lived here until 1948. By this time, his parents had served time and the mother managed to get her son to move to her in Magadan. She was not allowed to go to Kostroma. In 1956 Aksenov graduated from the Leningrad Medical Institute. By distribution, he was sent to the Baltic Fleet. But he did not receive any paperwork. Therefore, he worked in the Far North, then in Leningrad, and then he managed to move to Moscow.

Around this time, Aksenov declared himself as a writer. His debut was the story "One and a half medical units", which was published in 1959. It became possible to read the first story by Vasily Aksenov in 1960. The work was called "Colleagues" and became a reworking of Aksenov's play of the same name, written in collaboration a year earlier. A film adaptation of this story was released in 1962. Then there was another story - "Star Ticket", which was also filmed in 162 under the title "My Little Brother". Soon several more works of the writer will be published, which are published in the magazine "Youth". But in 1966, Vasily Aksenov succumbed to criticism from Nikita Khrushchev. In the same year, he participated in a rally on Red Square against the rehabilitation of Stalin. In later years, he regularly signed petitions in defense of dissidents. All this led to the fact that by 1970 Aksenov's books were completely ceased to be published.

But Vasily Pavlovich does not stop working. In 1975, he wrote the novel "The Burn", initially assuming that it would not be possible to publish it in the USSR. In 1977, the writer visits the United States several times until he emigrates there completely in 1980. Almost immediately, he was deprived of Soviet citizenship. In the USA, Aksenov works as a professor of the Russian language at various universities. Here he publishes many of his new works. In addition, he works as a journalist for Radio Liberty and Voice of America. Aksenov again visits the USSR only in 1989, and in 1990 he was returned to Soviet citizenship.

With the beginning of the 90s, the books of Vasily Aksenov, like those, begin to appear in our country. At the same time, not only the old works of the writer are published, but also new books. The writer actively supports the reforms of Gaidar, as well as Boris Yeltsin as head of state. In 2004, Aksyonov's novel "Voltaireans and Voltaireans" was published, which in the same year was awarded the Russian Booker Prize. In early 2008, the writer had a stroke. After a long treatment in the summer of 2009, Vasily Petrovich Aksenov died.

Books by Vasily Aksenov on the Top Books website

Vasily Aksenov's books are quite popular to read in our country. This popularity was especially active after the release of the film "Mysterious Passion", which was released in 2015. This film adaptation aroused interest in the writer's work and allowed his works to get into our rating. In addition, Aksenov's novels are presented in our rating. And given the high interest in the writer's work, this is far from the limit.

Vasily Aksyonov list of books

1. Aurora Gorelik
2. Oranges from Morocco
3. Aristophaniana with frogs
4. Ah, Arthur Schopenhauer.
5. paper landscape
6. In search of a sad baby
7. Voltaireans and Voltaireans
8. Always on sale
9. Woe, woe, burn
10. Gene Green untouchable
11. It's a pity you weren't with us
12. egg yolk
13. overstocked barrel
14. star ticket
15. Our Golden Iron
16. Catapult
17. Cesarean glow
18. Colleagues
19. Round the clock non-stop
20. lend-lease
21. Catch pigeon mail
22. Lion's lair. Forgotten stories
23. Love for electricity
24. My grandfather is a monument
25. Moscow Kva-Kva
26. Halfway to the Moon
27. New sweet style
28. One solid Caruso
29. Crimea Island
30. Victory
31. Searching for a genre
32. One and a half medical units
33. It's time my friend, it's time
34. A story about a basketball team playing basketball
35. rare earths
36. Sviyazhsk
37. say raisins
38. steel bird

September 20-21 House of Russian Diaspora named after. A. Solzhenitsyn organized an evening of memory, an exhibition and a scientific conference for the 80th anniversary of the birth of Vasily Aksenov. Especially for RG, the writer Zoya Boguslavskaya, the widow of Andrei Voznesensky, shares his memories of a friend and colleague in the "sixties".

He was leaving for the States on a sultry July evening in 1980. There were a lot of people at the dacha in Peredelkino. Everyone laughed, poisoned jokes, but the taste of hysteria from the consciousness that, perhaps, we would never see each other, was felt, growing. The farewell coincided with the wedding. Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov was entering a new life. Ahead is an uninhabited country, a new woman - Maya, whom he passionately fell in love with, conquered for a long time.

On that day, everything was intertwined: the celebration of love, the expectation of a miracle and separation, the bitterness of loss - everything was tragically unpredictable. From the wedding, there was a picture where Vasily and I, dressed up, are standing in an embrace against the background of his car, pretending that everything is fine, that he has finally escaped, ahead of freedom, new sensations, everyday comfort.

And a week before, in our apartment with A. Voznesensky on Kotelnicheskaya, we argue furiously about their upcoming departure. Vasily and Maya, I and Andrey with distorted faces, running around the room, uselessly and recklessly discuss the ways and meanings of the current emigration. Will he come back, won't he? If it were given to look into the book of fate ... If only I knew ... If I knew? ..

You can't be there, - Andrey insists, turning pale, - without the elements of the Russian language, when faces, nature, smells - everything is only in memory. In addition, there are a dime a dozen of their celebrities.

Nothing like that, - Maya answers with gritted teeth, - they will honor him there. He will not hear daily threats, phone swearing. Lord, just think that the cavils for every word, the persecution of censorship, will end! Already, American publishers are arguing over who will be the first to publish his new book.

Well, yes, - I scoff, - 40 thousand couriers alone. This will not happen! Each manuscript will go through an unbearably slow process of ordering reviews, then, even if they are enthusiastic, they will wait for the assessment of the publisher's internal experts.

That's not the point, Zayata (Zoya), - Vasya mumbles. - It's just not possible anymore. Pressed from all sides, there is nothing to breathe.

I knew that behind these words of Aksyonov there is a harsh prehistory associated with the publication of the novel "The Burn", the most significant work for him in recent decades. Censored in our journals, it has already been in demand by several foreign publishers. The author's hesitations were painful, he began a secret correspondence about the possible publication of "Burn" in the West. Soon Aksyonov was summoned to the KGB, where he was warned "in a friendly way": "If this anti-Soviet comes out abroad," he will either be imprisoned or deported. A softening of the tough alternative could only be Aksyonov's consent to voluntary emigration within a month. The threat was real.

We well remembered how a decade ago N.S. Khrushchev smashed the exhibitions of abstract artists, the almanac Tarusa Pages, and during a historic meeting with the intelligentsia on March 8, 1963, he yelled that he would expel Andrei Voznesensky from the country:

Why do you advertise that you are not a party member? Breaking loose, the leader waved his fist. - Look what you are, you understand! "I'm not a party member!" He wants us to create some kind of non-party party. Here, you know, liberalism has no place, Mr. Voznesensky. Enough!..

And then Khrushchev saw that Aksyonov was not applauding: "And why are you standing silently?" he switched to Vasily Pavlovich. "Avenge the death of your parents, Aksyonov?" - "Nikita Sergeevich, my parents are alive," Vasily Pavlovich quietly corrected him. "Our family sees your merit in this."

Khrushchev threw an angry glance at the disinformers who put him in a stupid position, and continued his study. This performance of "public" flogging, perhaps unique in Soviet cult history, connected the two impudent idols of that time for the rest of their lives.

Subsequently, Aksyonov would sign one of his books to Voznesensky: "Dear Andrei! Do you remember how we stood with you under the dome of the Blue Hall, where we both had so much fun? With love, your Vasya."

And Voznesensky recalls this moment in verse: "The first meeting: / the monster blew - we were not mowed down. / Both stood before the numb elements. / The second meeting: over the black father's grave / I felt your hand, Vasily. / ... / Are we guilty of the terms in which they were friends, / that the city - venous - rivers repulsed us?

Of course, Khrushchev's violent outburst against the two young writers was no accident. It was prepared by a denunciation by the Polish writer Wanda Wasilewska, who, during a personal meeting with Khrushchev, accused A. Voznesensky and V. Aksenov of ideological sabotage. She quoted an interview they gave to their leading newspaper while in Poland, where they dared to assert that "socialist realism" was not the main and not the only method of Soviet art.

So the historical meeting of the head of the country with the intelligentsia marked a hard watershed in the life of Soviet artists. Between the "Khrushchev thaw" of 1961 and the "Gorbachev glasnost and perestroika" of 1985, a black hole was dug into which a whole layer of outstanding creators of the generation of the 60s and 70s of various genres and directions fell through.

After the arrest and exile of I. Brodsky (1972) and A. Solzhenitsyn (1973), under the most severe pressure, they pushed out of the country: V. Voinovich, G. Vladimov, Yu. Aleshkovsky, A. Galich, S. Dovlatov, M. Baryshnikov , R. Nuriev, M. Shemyakin, N. Makarov, Y. Cooper, O. Tselkov, L. Zbarsky, I. Rabin, O. Ioseliani, P. Lungin and many other now revered classics of the 20th century.

The Aksyonovs left in 1980, when the movement to the West seemed to slow down somewhat. However, at the border they endured all those bullying of officials who took away manuscripts, paintings, tape recordings that accompanied the forced emigrants...

When Aksenov came to America, our communication did not stop. It so happened that his arrival in New York coincided with my stay at Columbia University, for two months I was an invited "guest writer" to work on the book "American" ... One of the most memorable for me was our intersection - in the moment of the gravest drama in Aksenov's life. On that day, he learned from newspapers and phone calls that he had been deprived of Russian citizenship.

We are sitting with him in the professors' cafeteria at Columbia University. In the US, meals for students and teachers are provided separately. - Criminals! Aksyonov shouts, ignoring his chewing colleagues. - You can’t deprive a person of the Motherland! .. They want to cross out my life for all the past years, my books, parents, Magadan childhood in the Kostroma shelter, son Leshka (Kit in his stories), who continues to live in the Union.

I have nothing to argue, I fully share his indignation. Then we wandered along the dark embankment for a long time, the damp branches of the park tickled our faces. Both of us did not know that the citizenship taken away was only an episode in the long creative life of the writer Aksenov.

And so he returned, began to live in his own country with Maya, in the same city with his children - Alyosha and Alena. They were given an apartment in a high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, and now Andrei and I had an apartment right above them.

Personal history, as it happens, returned to normal ...

We witnessed the beginning of Aksenov's romance with Maya. They arrived from Yalta by train, together with Bella Akhmadulina, having fun all the way. Aksenov and Maya decided not to leave, both had families. Maya and Roman Karmen lived with us in the same house, all in the same skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya. I became friends with Maya, she often came to me in horror from the situation. Nothing seemed to suggest her divorce from Carmen, the highest-flying documentary film maker. Roman Carmen was a kind of legend, an eyewitness to the Spanish events, a friend of Hemingway and Castro, he captured unique footage of the Great Patriotic War.

Golden-haired Maya was admired by secular society for her youth, temperament, and surprisingly insightful mind. She went to Aksenov at the peak of his disgrace, his only elegant outfit for the wedding was brought from America by her. And since then they have never parted. His main character "beauty" is always Maya in different variations. In one of his plays (I think in "Heron") he portrayed Maya and us all as girls for all tastes.

At the end of the 60s, - recalled Aksyonov, - the turning point in my worldview was partly due to the general generational hangover (Czechoslovakia, Brezhnevism, totalitarianism). It seemed to me that I had slipped past something that could illuminate my life and my writing. And then, in 1970, in Yalta, I met Maya. We experienced a very strong romantic love, and then it grew into a spiritual intimacy. She knows me as flaky, I am smaller than her, but both of us, especially now, in old age, understand who we can rely on ...

In addition to Moscow housing, the Aksenov couple had two working apartments in the West - one in Washington, the other on the ocean in Biarritz, essentially an artist's studio.

Years passed, almost everyone who suffered because of the "Metropol", time paid off. Almost all of the writers returned, fate thanked them for persecution with increased attention from others, an increase in book circulation, universal love and demand. It seemed that justice had triumphed ... But who can calculate how many ideas, loves and affections, experience, lost joy of communication and lack of creative connections, emigration can cost an artist?

“How to describe everything not in a letter that replaces everything that is taken away in art,” complains Bella Akhmadulina from Moscow in a letter to Aksenov in Washington, “to see, chat, talk and make a reservation, or should I always write a letter to you? .. My beloved and ours! Forgive the inconsistency of my speeches, my thought about you is my constant occupation, but where to start, how to end - I don’t know "... Her husband, artist Boris Messerer, joins in, rhyming:" Here is a new day that I will send you / to announce the tearing of the heart / when I walk on snow and on ice / through the forest and the abyss between me and you.

“Vaska, I congratulate you on your birthday,” Bella Akhmadulina writes another time. “I miss you very much and, as always, I talk to you “through hundreds of separating miles.” And later, when I was already seriously ill, I made a diagnosis: "The soul - overpowered the body" ...

How do you evaluate the American period of your life? - I ask Aksenov just before his return to Russia. - I mean teaching at the university, writing, America itself.

I gave 21 years of my life to the "American university", more precisely, teaching Rus-lit and my own phil-concept to boys and girls (sometimes of respectable age) from different states and countries. The university campus is the most natural environment for me, but now I'm already thinking about resigning. Where I will spend more time, I do not know yet.

I remember our later conversation, when he spent a lot of time in Biarritz and once again returned to Moscow. Traditionally, we sit in the CDL, drink juices and some water. There were many versions about how Vasily Pavlovich "tied up". In fact, I have already stated more than once how I personally witnessed his conversation with the doctor, which instantly stopped his libations. Today he could taste a glass of wine, no more.

Aksyonov divided himself, his time into several equal pieces. “We live in two houses,” he explained, “in Washington and in Moscow. Now a small house in the Basque Country has also joined this. You constantly forget where you left your sweater or pants. “Maya, you don’t know where my suit is, that , the other?" And she replies: "Do you remember, Vasya, where my raincoat hangs, on Kotelniki or in Fairfax?"

Why do you write better in French Biarritz than in Moscow?

Because in Biarritz I have only one interlocutor at my desk, - Aksenov smiles. - There are too many interlocutors in Russia, and I am talking too much. Sometimes I have the feeling that writing and emigration are quite close concepts.

Well. But you often look absolutely happy. When, at what moment does this happen to you?

In the process of writing a novel, - Aksyonov declares extremely seriously. - While I'm writing it, I'm absolutely happy. I feel pretty sad when I say goodbye to him. You see, in the new novel I create a special world and only from those characters that interest me...

I don’t remember Aksenov casually dressed, in a rumpled suit or washed shirt. In his outfit is always "firm", famous labels. I attribute his enduring fascination with corporate identity, technology, charming women to those hardships in childhood, when, perhaps, as a teenager, he stood in front of a smart shop window, like heroes from a fairy tale, dreaming that someday he, too, could buy all this. I could and I bought it.

Does your personal life influence your creativity? Biographical facts, an aura of infatuation? I remember Yuri Nagibin used to say: "Each of my novels is my unwritten novel." For you too?

I agree that every completed novel (in this case, a love affair) can become a heap of fascinating pages. But it is worth adding to this that a failed love adventure can become a heap of even more exciting pages...

I think that the decades after returning to Moscow were the most disturbing and fruitful for the late Aksenov. Inexhaustible creative energy (he wrote almost a novel a year), a constant feeling of being in demand and the realization that there was no longer the former courage ... It seemed that Aksenov's presence in our art and life, as well as in gossip columns, is immutable, undeniable. If would know?

There was no long-term illness, ailments, special nervous breakdowns or depressions ... The suddenness of a severe illness that instantly paralyzed his activity came as a shock to everyone around him. He failed to grow old. Nature preserved in him the need for writing, external attractiveness and charm, an outstanding talent as a writer. Back at 75, he daily included morning jogging along the Yauzskaya embankment in his routine, the intense rhythm of a jazz fan, easily hit the basketball basket with the ball, and planned several pages of text every day on the Macintosh.

On that fateful day, he was driving a car with his editor, when suddenly his brain turned off, he lost consciousness, the car skidded, and only a miracle saved the passengers from a fatal collision on the roadway. The companion called an ambulance, Vasily Pavlovich was placed in the Tagansky district hospital, and then in the Institute. Sklifosovsky, where a cerebral thrombus was removed.

In recent months, he was in the Burdenko clinic with Academician A.N. Konovalov. Alexander Nikolayevich himself and the attending physician, neuropathologist Vladimir Naidin, did everything using the latest achievements of world medicine, but everything was useless. He spent many months in a coma from which he never came out.

I am next to him in the bunker of the Burdenko clinic for the "forgotten". It is impossible to believe that Aksyonov has been lying here unconscious for so long. A calm face, a slight blush, almost untouched thick hair. The body of a man, which seemed to retain muscle strength and charm. It is like a shell of a person from whom a personality, a biography, and strongest passions have been taken out. And I'm sitting next to him, flipping through the pages of his life.

You will talk to him, Zoya, talk, ”Alena, the daughter of Maya, who loved Vasily Pavlovich very much, instructed me. It is she who sits next to him for many hours without a break. She is sure that this is temporary anyway, he will wake up and it will turn out that he heard everything, everything that was broadcast to him while he was in a coma. Following her instructions, I look at Aksenov's prostrate body, studded with wires, and tell him the latest news. I set out in detail the gossip around the "Mysterious Passion", which he managed to read in the "Caravan of Stories" in a truncated form. The boom of enthusiasm and indignation was caused by the recognition of the prototypes caricatured in the novel. But the author did not think about it. It was written to him, the flight of fantasy led away from reality. Some grievances continued after the death of Vasily Pavlovich. His inventions for Andrey and I caused only emotion.

I remember him at the time when his mother was still alive - perhaps the most fateful person in the development of Aksenov as a writer. As a personality, Vasily Pavlovich was constructed from the first impressions of the Kostroma orphanage for the children of "enemies of the people", then - Magadan, where he settled at the age of 12 with his exiled mother Evgenia Semyonovna Ginzburg. According to Vasily Pavlovich, the circle of real characters in The Steep Route (written by his mother) consisted of prominent people of that time: repressed scientists, politicians, artists, who formed a kind of "salon", the content of which was discussions on the highest topics. The impact of this reasoning on children's consciousness is difficult to measure.

Even in his youth, - he says, - my mother had a tendency to create around herself a kind of "salon" of thinking people. The first such salon, which included Professor Elvov, a Trotskyist exiled to Kazan, cost her her freedom.

The reader of The Steep Route will find such a Ginzburg saloon in the camp barracks. In post-camp exile, in Magadan, another salon, already of an international class, arose ... The Soviet youth Vasya Aksenov was simply stunned in such a society: “I never imagined that such people exist in real Soviet life ... My mother and I immediately became friends. She revealed to me one of the main Soviet secrets, the existence of the “Silver Age.” In addition, she introduced me to the idol of her youth, Boris Pasternak.

By the end of school, I knew by heart many of his poems, which could not be obtained anywhere else in printed form ... In addition, I learned from her how to cheat with power, that is, how to find human qualities in "Soviet people."

There was a short period when I had a chance to communicate quite closely with Evgenia Semyonovna Ginzburg. She lived in Peredelkino at the dacha of screenwriter Joseph Olshansky. Its porch merges with the birches and pines of the vast area. On this porch she read to me the final chapter of The Steep Route, which after her death remained a document of the era...

At this time, Maya, who was in love with him, came to Peredelkino almost daily. We already knew that Evgenia Semyonovna was mortally ill with the most terrible disease of the century, vitamins, vegetables, fruits were needed for the stability of her condition. Maya brought freshly squeezed carrot juice and something else that she cooked herself. They became close, which played an important role in the marriage.

Aksenov himself had an unusually close relationship with his mother. His love for her, his willingness to take on the most difficult situations, is a rare gift. And, perhaps, the great feat of the son was his journey with his mother by car around Europe in the last year of her life. Hiding his despair, he fulfilled Yevgenia Semyonovna's dream and repaid what had not rightfully taken her life. She traveled her last journey with her son, talked with friends in France, Germany, and enjoyed the originals of world masterpieces in museums. They left and returned to Paris, to the same hotel where I was - L Eglon (Eaglet), whose windows overlook the Montparnasse cemetery. I watched their last holiday and how happy they were both!

She was buried on a dank May day in 1977, it was raining, there were few people. It was striking that there were no those who would have been present if not for the rain.

Aksyonov behaved courageously, from time to time turning away from the mourners, pressed his face against the tree, his shoulders trembled. For him, that part of his being that was connected with his family, which fell under the skating rink of Stalin's time, was gone forever. He said goodbye to his mother, who became the judge and lawyer of his life, whom no one can replace.

I hope that the boot that once gave me a kick in the ass will not grow again in my homeland, he laughs.

If you didn't write, what would you do? I ask him.

To be honest, I can't even imagine such a situation ...

Now Vasily Pavlovich would be eighty years old.

Andrey Voznesensky - about Aksenov

"For 20 years our country has been listening to Aksenov's confessional monologue, listening eagerly - children have become fathers, villages have become cities, country roads have become highways, skies have become everyday life, "fashion" has become a classic - but the voice has remained the same purity, it has not betrayed us, the artist, the tape recorder of our existence, we have not betrayed him.

Aksyonov is a tape recorder, almost uncensored recording of today's time - a city, a person, a soul. Once I wrote him poems for his fortieth birthday... "Falcon-year-old Vasily! / Sirin jeans, an artist in flight and strength, / rusty jeans your mouth was shod with mustaches, Vasily, / knock off youth ... / O crowned name - Vasily."