- Lydia Chukovskaya
Lydia Korneievna Chukovskaya ( _ru. Лидия Корнеевна Чуковская) (OldStyleDate|24 March|1907|11 March –
February 8 ,1996 ) was aRussia n writer and poet. Her deeply personal writings reflect the human cost ofSoviet totalitarianism, and she devoted much of her career to defendingdissident s such asAleksandr Solzhenitsyn andAndrei Sakharov . She was herself the daughter of the celebrated children's writerKorney Chukovsky , wife of the scientistMatvei Bronstein , and close associate and chronicler of the poetAnna Akhmatova .Early life
Lydia Chukovskaya was born in 1907 in
Helsingfors (present-day Helsinki) in theGrand Duchy of Finland , then a part of theRussian Empire . Her father was Korney Chukovsky, a poet who is regarded today as perhaps the best-loved children's writer inRussian literature .She grew up in
St Petersburg , the former capital of the empire torn by war and revolution. Chukovsky recorded that his daughter would muse on the problem of social justice while she was still a little girl. But Lydia's greatest passion was literature, especiallypoetry . It could hardly have been otherwise, given her pedigree and circumstances — their house was frequently visited by leading members of the Russian literati, such as Blok, Gumilyov and Akhmatova. The city was also home to the country's finest artists — Lydia sawChaliapin perform at the opera, for instance, and also met the painterIlya Repin .Lydia got into trouble with the
Bolshevik authorities at an early age, when one of her friends used her father's typewriter to print an anti-Bolshevik leaflet. Lydia was exiled to the city ofSaratov for a short period, but the experience did not make her particularly political. Indeed, upon her return from exile, she returned to Leningrad's literary world, joining the state publishing house in 1927 as an editor of children's books. Her mentor there wasSamuil Marshak , perhaps her father's biggest rival in Russian children's literature. Her first literary work, a short story entitled "Leningrad-Odessa", was published around this time, under the pseudonym "A. Uglov".Soon, Chukovskaya fell in love with a brilliant young
physicist ofJewish origin, by the name of Matvei Bronstein. The two got married. In the late 1930s,Stalin 'sGreat Terror enveloped the land. Chukovskaya's employer came under attack for being too "bourgeois ", and a number of its authors were arrested and executed. Matvei Bronstein also became one of Stalin's many victims. He was arrested in 1937 on a false charge and, unknown to his wife, was tried and executed in February 1938. Chukovskaya too would have been arrested, had she not been away from Leningrad at the time.Later life and career
For several years, her life was to remain nomadic and precarious. She was separated from her daughter Yelena, and kept in the dark about her husband's fate. In 1939-40, while she waited in vain for news, Chukovskaya wrote "
Sofia Petrovna ", a harrowing story about life during theGreat Purges . But it was a while before this story would achieve widespread recognition. Out of favour with the authorities, yet principled and uncompromising, Chukovskaya was unable to hold down any kind of steady employment. But gradually, she started to get published again: an introduction to the works ofTaras Shevchenko , another one for the diaries ofMiklouho-Maclay .By the time of Stalin's death in 1953, Chukovskaya had become a respected figure within the literary establishment, as one of the editors of the cultural monthly "
Literaturnaya Moskva ". During the late 1950s, "Sofia Petrovna" finally made its way through Russia's literary circles, in manuscript form throughsamizdat .Khrushchev's Thaw set in, and the book was about to be published in 1963, but was stopped at the last moment for containing "ideological distortions". Indomitable as ever, Chukovskaya sued the publisher for full royalties and won. The book was eventually published inParis in 1965, but without the author's permission and under the somewhat inaccurate title "The Deserted House". There were also some unauthorized alterations to the text. The following year, aNew York publisher published it again, this time with the original title and text restored.Chukovskaya was a lifelong friend of Anna Akhmatova, and her next major work "Spusk pod Vodu" ("Descent Into Water") described, in diary form, the precarious experiences of Akhmatova and
Mikhail Zoshchenko . This book too was banned from publication in her native land. In 1964, Chukovskaya spoke out against the persecution of the youngJoseph Brodsky ; she would do so again for Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov. She wrote a series of letters in support of Solzhenitsyn; these were published inMunich in 1970.In supporting Soviet dissidents, Chukovskaya lost her own right to publish inside Russia. Although the
KGB monitored her closely, it is thought that the Soviet state refrained from meting out harsher punishment, because of her reputation in the West but also because of her father’s indisputable stature in Russian culture.Her relationship with Akhmatova was the subject of two more books. Throughout her life, Chukovskaya also wrote poems of an intensely personal nature, touching upon her life, her lost husband, and the tragedy of her people.
In her old age, she shared her time between Moscow and her father’s dacha in
Peredelkino , a village that was the home to many writers includingBoris Pasternak . She died in Peredelkino in February 1996."Sofia Petrovna" became legally available for the Soviet readers only in February 1988 after it was published in the magazine "Neva". This publication made possible publications of the other Lydia Chukovskaya’s works as Chukovskaya explicitly forbade any publications of her fiction in the Soviet Union before an official publication of "Sofia Petrovna" [http://www.chukfamily.ru/Lidia/Biblio/dubinskaia.htm] .
Translated works
* "The deserted house" Translated by Aline B. Werth. (1967)
* "Going under" Translated by Peter M. Weston. (1972) ISBN 0214654079
* "To the memory of childhood" Translated by Eliza Kellogg Klose. (1988) ISBN 0810107899
* "Sofia Petrovna" Translated by Aline Werth; emended by Eliza Kellogg Klose. (1994) ISBN 0810111500
* "The Akhmatova journals" Translated by Milena Michalski and Sylva Rubashova; poetry translated by Peter Norman. (1994) ISBN 0374223424Awards
* 1990, the first recipient of the
Andrei Sakharov Prize For Writer's Civic Courage . [http://www.chukfamily.ru/Lidia/Biblio/Rasskazova.htm "For Writer's Civic Courage"] , "Literaturnaya Gazeta ", October 31, 1990]References
* [http://chukfamily.ru/ Website of the Chukovsky family]
Persondata
NAME=Chukovskaya, Lydia Korneievna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Чуковская, Лидия Корнеевна (Russian)
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Russia n writer and poet
DATE OF BIRTH=March 24 ,1907
PLACE OF BIRTH=Helsingfors ,Grand Duchy of Finland
DATE OF DEATH=February 8 ,1996
PLACE OF DEATH=Peredelkino ,Russia
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.