Lev Kopelev | |
|---|---|
Лев Копелев | |
 Kopelev in the 1980s | |
| Born | (1912-04-09)9 April 1912 |
| Died | 18 June 1997(1997-06-18) (aged 85) Cologne, Germany |
| Citizenship | Soviet Union Germany[1] |
| Alma mater | National University of Kharkiv,Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages |
| Occupation | author |
| Movement | dissident movement in the Soviet Union |
| Spouse | Raisa Orlova |
Lev Zalmanovich (Zinovyevich) Kopelev (Russian:Лев Залма́нович (Зино́вьевич) Ко́пелев,German: Lew Sinowjewitsch Kopelew, 9 April 1912 – 18 June 1997) was aSoviet author and dissident.
Kopelev was born inKyiv, thenRussian Empire, to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1926, his family moved toKharkiv. While a student at Kharkiv State University's philosophy faculty, Kopelev began writing in Russian andUkrainian languages; some of his articles were published in theKomsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
An idealistcommunist and active party member, he was first arrested in March 1929 for "consorting with theBukharinist andTrotskyistopposition," 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 theNKVD's forced grain requisitioning and thedekulakization. Later, he described theHolodomor in his memoirThe Education of a True Believer.Robert Conquest'sThe Harvest of Sorrow later quoted him directly (see alsoCollectivisation 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 theMoscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History [hy;pl;ru;uk] where he earned a PhD.
When theGerman–Soviet War broke out in June 1941, he volunteered for theRed Army and used his knowledge of German to serve as a propaganda officer and an interpreter. He was tasked with subverting and indoctrinating Germans, and on one occasion persuaded the German garrison ofGraudenz (Grudziądz) to mutiny.[2] When he enteredEast Prussia with the Red Army throughout theEast Prussian Offensive, he sharply criticized theatrocities against the German civilian population and was arrested in 1945 and sentenced to a ten-year term in theGulag for fostering "bourgeois humanism" and for "compassion towards the enemy". In thesharashka Marfino he metAleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Kopelev became a prototype for Rubin fromThe First Circle.
He was released in 1954 and in 1956 was rehabilitated. Still an optimist and believer in the ideals of communism, during theKhrushchev Thaw he restored hisCommunist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) membership. From 1957 to 1969 he taught in the Moscow Institute of Polygraphy and the Institute of History of Arts. It was Kopelev who approachedAleksandr Tvardovsky, editor of the top Soviet literary journal, theNovy Mir (New World) to urge publication of Solzhenitsyn'sOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
From 1968 onward Kopelev actively participated in the human rights and dissident movement. In 1968 he was fired from his job and expelled from the CPSU and the Writers' Union for signing protest letters against the persecution of dissidents, publicly supportingAndrei Sinyavsky andYuli Daniel and actively denouncing theSoviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He also protested Solzhenitsyn's expulsion from the Writers' Union and wrote in defense of dissenting GeneralPyotr Grigorenko,imprisoned at apsikhushka.
Kopelev's books were distributed viasamizdat (underground publishing), smuggled out of Russia and published in the West.
For his political activism and contacts with the West, he was deprived of the right to teach or be published in 1977.
As a scientist, Kopelev led a research project on the history of Russian-German cultural links at theUniversity of Wuppertal. In 1980, while he was on a study trip toWest Germany, his Soviet citizenship was revoked. After 1981 Kopelev was a professor at the University of Wuppertal.
Kopelev was an honorary PhD at theUniversity of Cologne and a winner of many international awards. In 1990Soviet General SecretaryMikhail Gorbachev restored his Soviet citizenship.
Kopelev was married for many years toRaisa Orlova, a Soviet specialist in American literature, who emigrated with him to Germany. Her memoirs were published in the United States in 1984.
Lev had a brother by the name of Simon Kopelev (Russian: Симон копелев). Simon is survived by his son Nikolai S. Kopelev and his grandson Samuel Luke Nicholas Kopelev.
Lev Kopelev died inCologne, Germany on 18 June 1997 at the age of 85, and was buried in theNew Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow.
