22 Facts About Andrei Sinyavsky

Andrei Sinyavsky emigrated to France in 1973 where he became a professor of Russian literature and published numerous autobiographical and retrospective works.

Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky was born on 8 October 1925 in Moscow, the son of Donat Evgenievich Sinyavsky, a Russian nobleman from Syzran who became a member of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, and a mother of a Russian peasant background.

Andrei Sinyavsky's family was evacuated to Syzran following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, where he graduated from school in 1943.

Andrei Sinyavsky was drafted into the Red Army after graduation and served as a radio engineer at an airfield.

In 1945, Andrei Sinyavsky became a philology student at Moscow State University, becoming a full-time student following his demobilization from the Red Army the next year, and studied the works of Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Andrei Sinyavsky graduated in 1949 and attended graduate school where he successfully defended his thesis in 1952.

Andrei Sinyavsky worked at the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow and taught at Moscow State University's Faculty of Journalism and the Moscow Art Theatre School.

Andrei Sinyavsky became one of the leading literary critics of the Novy Mir magazine, at the time headed by Aleksandr Tvardovsky.

Andrei Sinyavsky published his novels in the West under the pseudonym Abram Tertz, derived from the name of a historical Russian Jewish gangster, although Andrei Sinyavsky himself was not Jewish.

Andrei Sinyavsky's works were naturally rejected for publication by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during a time of extreme censorship.

On 4 September 1965, Andrei Sinyavsky was arrested along with fellow-writer and friend Yuli Daniel, and tried in the first Soviet show trial during which writers were openly convicted solely for their literary work.

On 14 February 1966, Andrei Sinyavsky was sentenced to seven years on charges of "anti-Soviet activity" for the opinions of his fictional characters.

Andrei Sinyavsky was forced to work as a stevedore at the Dubravlag, a labor camp of the Gulag system located near Yavas, Mordovian ASSR.

Andrei Sinyavsky was released early in 1971 as part of an initiative by Yuri Andropov, the Chairman of the KGB and the future General Secretary of the CPSU.

In 1973, Andrei Sinyavsky was allowed to emigrate to France at the invitation of Claude Frioux, a professor at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis specializing in Russia.

Andrei Sinyavsky became a professor of Russian literature at Sorbonne University, co-founded the Russian-language almanac Sintaksis with his wife Maria Rozanova, and actively contributed to Radio Liberty.

On 17 October 1991, Andrei Sinyavsky was featured in a report received by Izvestia on the review of convictions for several prominent Soviet individuals due to lack of corpus delicti in their actions.

In early 1996, Andrei Sinyavsky suffered a heart attack, and later that year was diagnosed with lung cancer with metastases in the brain.

Andrei Sinyavsky underwent unsuccessful operations and radiotherapy at the Curie Institute.

Andrei Sinyavsky was the catalyst for the formation of the Russian-English translation team of Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear, who have translated a number of works by Mikhail Bulgakov, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevski, Nikolai Gogol, and Leo Tolstoy.

At the time, Pevear believed Andrei Sinyavsky was still in a Russian prison; Volokhonsky had just helped him immigrate to Paris.

Pevear was surprised and pleased to be mistaken: "Larissa had just helped Andrei Sinyavsky leave Russia," Pevear recalled.