15 Facts About Lydia Chukovskaya

Lydia Chukovskaya was the first recipient, in 1990, of the new Andrei Sakharov Prize for Writer's Civic Courage.

Lydia Chukovskaya's father was Kornei Chukovsky, a poet who was a children's writer.

Lydia Chukovskaya grew up in St Petersburg, the former capital of the empire torn by war and revolution.

Lydia Chukovskaya got into trouble with the Bolshevik authorities at an early age, when one of her friends used her father's typewriter to print an anti-Bolshevik leaflet.

Lydia Chukovskaya was exiled to the city of Saratov for a short period, but the experience did not make her particularly political.

Lydia Chukovskaya fell in love with a young physicist of Jewish origin, Matvei Bronstein, and the two soon married.

Lydia Chukovskaya was arrested in 1937 on a false charge and, unknown to his wife, was tried and executed in February 1938.

Lydia Chukovskaya was separated from her daughter Yelena, and kept in the dark about her husband's fate.

Out of favour with the authorities, yet principled and uncompromising, Lydia Chukovskaya was unable to hold down any kind of steady employment.

Lydia Chukovskaya was a lifelong friend of Anna Akhmatova, whom she visited seeking advice after her Bronstein's arrest.

Lydia Chukovskaya was one of the first to hear it recited in private and commit it to memory.

In 1964, Lydia Chukovskaya spoke out against the persecution of the young Joseph Brodsky; she would do so again for Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov.

Lydia Chukovskaya wrote a series of letters in support of Solzhenitsyn; these were published in Munich in 1970.

Indomitable as ever, Lydia Chukovskaya sued the publisher for full royalties and won.

In September 1973, unable to publish in the Soviet Union, Lydia Chukovskaya sent a letter abroad deploring the officially sponsored campaigns against Boris Pasternak in 1958, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1969, and the physicist Andrei Sakharov in 1973, and "professional stool pigeons" who supported them.