The Many Voices of Vladimir Voinovich

Abstract

The fate of most outstanding Russian writers both in Tsarist and Soviet Russia has been perilous when their artistic endeavors followed their social and philosophical commitments. Solzhenitsyn's strident clamor for freedom and his subsequent repression was followed by Voinovich's satirical portrayal of totalitarian society on behalf of sanity and common sense. Both writers suffered social ostracism, and both were exiled from their homeland. In a peculiar way, their fates were interwoven as Voinovich stood up to defend Solzhenitsyn's right to artistic freedom and thereby caused his own downfall and exile. Vladimir Voinovich, a dissident Russian writer who is now residing in the United States, was born in the Tadzhik Republic in Stalinabad (now changed to Dushanbe) in 1932. His social and educational background are atypical for a Soviet writer. He worked as a cabinet maker and carpenter among other manual occupations, completing only five years of the ten-year gymnasium. His father was a journalist with literary ambitions, and his mother was a teacher. His literary career resembles that of Maxim Gorky and proletarian writers in the twenties for whom life was their only school. His entry into Soviet literature was quite different from that of other writers of his own generation; Yevtushenko, Voznesensky, Aksyonov, Kuznetsov, and others who were graduates from the Gorky Literary Institute and other institutions of higher learning. Twice he applied for acceptance to the Gorky Literary Institute, and twice he was rejected. After coming back from the Eastern regions of the Soviet Union and settling in Moscow he studied without much enthusiasm at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute for a year and a half. His life seemed to have led nowhere until 1961 when he wrote a patriotic poem, March of the Cosmonauts' which became an overnight success and almost an official anthem of the Soviet space flight program. This poem brought him fame and recognition.