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Mikhail (Melik) Agursky | |
|---|---|
| Михаил Самуилович Агурский | |
| Born | 1933 Moscow, USSR |
| Died | August 21, 1991 (58 years old) Moscow, USSR |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Citizenship | Soviet Union,Israel |
| Occupation(s) | Cybernetist, historian, publicist |
| Spouse | Vera Fiodorovna Kondratieva |
| Children | 2 |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Soviet Academy of Sciences |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | ЭНИМС,НИИТМ,Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| Notable works | The Ideology of National Bolshevism |
Mikhail Samuilovich Agursky (Russian:Михаи́л Самуи́лович Агу́рский; 1933 – 21 August 1991), real nameMelik Samuilovich Agursky (Russian:Мэ́лик Самуилович Агу́рский), was aSovietcyberneticist anddissident, who after emigration became a prominentSovietologist andhistorian ofNational Bolshevism.[1]
Mikhail Agursky was born inMoscow in 1933 to a Jewish family. His father,Samuil (Shmuel) Haimovich Agursky, was a revolutionary and later historian who had left the Russian Empire and spent time in England and the United States before returning to Russia during theRevolution.[2] Samuil Agursky would fall foul of the authorities during the Stalin era, suffering internal exile to Kazakhstan, where he died in 1947. In 1955 Mikhail Agursky married Vera Fiodorovna Kondratieva, with whom he had a son and a daughter.
Mikhail Agursky received an education in engineering, and worked at theЭНИМС before completing hisaspirantura incybernetics at theSoviet Academy of Sciences in 1969.[3] After graduating he found employment at theНИИТМ, an institute directly subordinate to theMinistry of General Machine Building, where he worked until the autumn of 1970. During this period he also published a series of scientific works in specialised journals. In 1970 Agursky ended up unemployed after leaving the НИИТМ but failing to secure employment in the field of biocybernetics at the Institute of Automatization and Telemechanics (ИАТ). Having a family to support, he ended up working as a translator for academic journals and for theJournal of the Moscow Patriarchate, and cataloguing materials at theMoscow Theological Academy.
Agursky's activity was not limited to his sphere of expertise. Already in the 60s he had become acquainted withAlexander Men, and through him he was introduced to Soviet underground currents of thought, and in the 1970s, coinciding with the turmoil in his professional life, he became active in the dissident movement. In this period Agursky metAlexander Solzhenitsyn,Igor Shafarevich and others, collaborating with them insamizdat publications, most notablyИз-под глыб.
His opposition to the Soviet regime eventually culminated in Agursky emigrating toIsrael in 1975,[4] where he became a fellow of the Soviet and East European Research Center at theHebrew University of Jerusalem. He defended a second PhD thesis in Slavic Studies at theSorbonne in 1983, titled "The National Roots of Soviet Power", and largely based on his book,The Ideology ofNational Bolshevism, which he had published (in Russian) inParis in 1980.[5] In that same year he became a lecturer at theHebrew University of Jerusalem. In Israel he combined his academic activity with political analysis in the media as well as commentary on Soviet affairs.
Invited to a congress in his native Moscow, Agursky was found dead of a heart attack in his hotel room on August 21, 1991, amid the political chaos unleashed by theAugust putsch.[6]
