Lev Kopelev
| Lev Zalmanovich (Zinovyevich) Kopelev | |
|---|---|
Lev Kopelev at a reading in Bad Münstereifel, the 1980s
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| Native name | Лев Залма́нович (Зино́вьевич) Ко́пелев |
| Born |
April 9, 1912 Kiev, Russian Empire (modern Ukraine) |
| Died | June 18, 1997 (aged 85) Cologne, Germany |
| Citizenship |
Soviet Union Germany |
| Alma mater | Kharkov State University, Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages |
| Occupation | author |
| Movement | dissident movement in the Soviet Union |
| Spouse(s) | Raisa Orlova |
Lev Zalmanovich (Zinovyevich) Kopelev (Russian: Лев Залма́нович (Зино́вьевич) Ко́пелев, German: Lew Sinowjewitsch Kopelew, 9 April 1912, Kiev – 18 June 1997, Cologne) was a Soviet author and dissident.
Kopelev was born in Kiev, then Russian Empire, to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1926, his family moved to Kharkov. While a student at Kharkov State University in the philosophy faculty, Kopelev began writing in the Russian and Ukrainian languages; some of his articles were published in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
An idealist communist and active Bolshevik, he was first arrested in March 1929 for "consorting with the Bukharinist and Trotskyist opposition," and spent ten days in prison.
Later, he worked as an editor of radio news broadcasts at a locomotive factory. In 1932, as a correspondent, Kopelev witnessed the NKVD's forced grain requisitioning and the dekulakization. Later, he described the Holodomor in his memoirs The Education of a True Believer. Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow later quoted him directly (see also Collectivisation in the USSR).
He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages in 1935 in the German language faculty, and, after 1938, he taught at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History where he earned a PhD.
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