Vasily Aksyonov
| Vasily Aksyonov | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov August 20, 1932 Kazan, Soviet Union |
| Died | July 6, 2009 (aged 76) Moscow, Russia |
| Occupation | Doctor, writer |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Alma mater | Kazan University and First Pavlov State Medical University of St. Peterburg |
| Period | 1950s–2000s |
| Notable works | The Burn, The Island of Crimea and The Moscow Saga, known in English as Generations of Winter |
Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov (Russian: Васи́лий Па́влович Аксёнов; IPA: [vɐˈsʲilʲɪj ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ɐˈksʲɵnəf]; August 20, 1932 – July 6, 2009) was a Soviet and Russian novelist. He is known in the West as the author of The Burn (Ожог, Ozhog, from 1975) and Generations of Winter (Московская сага, Moskovskaya Saga, from 1992), a family saga depicting three generations of the Gradov family between 1925 and 1953.
Vasily Aksyonov was born to Pavel Aksyonov and Yevgenia Ginzburg in Kazan, USSR on August 20, 1932. His mother, Yevgenia Ginzburg, was a successful journalist and educator and his father, Pavel Aksyonov, had a high position in the administration of Kazan. Both parents "were prominent communists." In 1937, however, both were arrested and tried for her alleged connection to Trotskyists. They were both sent to Gulag and then to exile, and "each served 18 years, but remarkably survived." "Later, Yevgenia came to prominence as the author of a famous memoir, Into the Whirlwind, documenting the brutality of Stalinist repression."
Aksyonov remained in Kazan with his nanny and grandmother until the NKVD arrested him as a son of "enemies of the people", and sent him to an orphanage without providing his family any information on his whereabouts. Aksyonov "remained [there] until rescued in 1938 by his uncle, with whose family he stayed until his mother was released into exile, having served 10 years of forced labour." "In 1947, Vasily joined her in exile in the notorious Magadan, Kolyma prison area, where he graduated from high school." Vasily's half-brother Alexei (from Ginzburg's first marriage to Dmitriy Fedorov) died from starvation in besieged Leningrad in 1941.
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