Tsypkin, Leonid Borisovich

Early years

Born in Minsk in a hereditary medical family. His grandfather, a graduate of the Imperial University of Dorpat Moses (Movsha-Haim) Abramovich Polyak (1868 - December 25, 1938), was in charge of the Central Maternity Hospital and the obstetric department at the 2nd Soviet Hospital of Minsk ^[1] . The doctor was the grandfather's brother, Michel Abramovich Polyak. The whole family of the father, doctor of medical sciences (1936), professor of the department of traumatology and orthopedics of the Belarusian Medical Institute and senior researcher of the Belarusian State Institute of Physiatry, Orthopedics and Neurology Boris Naumovich Tsypkin (1897-1961), died in the Minsk ghetto (parents, sister, nephews ; displayed in the story of L. B. Tsypkin "Bridge over the Neeroch"); the brother and two sisters of his father died in the camps, and he himself was only briefly arrested in 1934 and after the war he again worked as a professor at the Minsk Research Institute of Orthopedics and Reconstructive Surgery (later the Research Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics of the Ministry of Health of the BSSR). The future writer's mother, Vera Moiseevna Poliak (1895–1981) ^[2] , worked as a tuberculosis specialist ^[3] . Only mother’s sister, literary critic Lydia Moiseevna Poliak (an employee of the Institute of World Literature ) and her husband, a famous linguist Ruben Ivanovich Avanesov , with whom L. B. Tsypkin was very close in his youth, were associated with literature.

With the beginning of World War II, the Tsypkin family managed to evacuate to Ufa , where L. B. Tsypkin in 1942 entered the local medical institute . A year after graduation, in 1948, he married economist Natalia Iosifovna Michnikova and got a job as a pathologist at the Moscow Regional Psychiatric Hospital No. 2 named after V. I. Yakovenko in the village of Meshcherskoye (now Chekhovsky Municipal District ).

In 1957, L. B. Tsypkin and his family moved to Moscow , where he was accepted as a researcher (later senior researcher) in the Department of Immunology and Virology of Tumor Diseases of the Institute of Poliomyelitis and Viral Encephalitis of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR , as well as making friends with a housemate pianist M. V. Yudina (it is told about her in the story “Ave Maria!”, 1972). In addition to scientific work and the production of vaccines at the institute, until the end of the 1960s, part-time worked as a prosector in a city hospital.

Thesis for a candidate of medical sciences on the topic “Observations on the growth of brain tumors during repeated surgical interventions” was defended in 1952. He defended his doctoral thesis on the study of the morphology and biological properties of monolayer cell cultures from trypsinized tissues in 1968 ^[4] .

Scientific work

The first scientific publication of L. B. Tsypkin, in the journal Issues of Neurosurgery in 1951, is devoted to the histological features of the cerebellum medulloblastoma . It was followed by a series of works in the field of oncology - a histological description of astrocytomas , Ewing's sarcoma , malignant neoplasms of the bladder , as well as work on the methodology of fixing histological sections and microglial reactions in senile dementia . After moving to Moscow, he was involved in experimental virology of oncological diseases, physiology of normal and tumor growth of cell cultures, their reaction to viral infections, and the morphology of various tumors. The last scientific work (1979) is devoted to changes in the morphological characteristics of the nervous tissues subjected to experimental cultivation in human and animal embryos. Some works have been published abroad (cf. Observations on the growth of monkey cerebral cells in monolayer cultures. Acta anatomica, Basel , 50: 50-63, 1962). ^[five]

Literary creativity

L. B. Tsypkin began writing poetry in the early 1960s, ^[6] prose in the early 1970s. During the 1970s, he wrote the stories “The Bridge over the Neeroch” (1973) and “Norartakir” (1976), the stories “The Smell of Burned Leaves” (1976), “The Third Question” (1977), “Deal”, “Cockroaches "(1978), short stories and essays" Abduction of the Sabinean Woman "(1971)," Your Health! "(1971)," Seeing Off "(1971)," A Holiday That Is Always With Me "(1971)," Ten Minutes of Waiting " (1971), “Last Kilometers” (1972), “Hitcher” (1972), “Swings” (1972), “Up the River”, “From the Notes of the Pathologist”, “Scheherazade”. ^[7] In the same period, after several years of preparatory work, Leonid Tsypkin, passionately fond of the works of F. M. Dostoevsky , compiled an album of his own photographs of places related to the life and works of Dostoevsky in Leningrad - “In places of Dostoevsky and his heroes in St. Petersburg ". He never made any attempts to publish anything he had written.

The most famous work of L. B. Tsypkin - the documentary novel (novel) “ Summer in Baden ” about young Dostoevsky — was completed in late 1980 , shortly before the first refusal received by the Tsypkin family on January 7, 1981 in response to the petition filed two years earlier. emigration. The original style of the work - long sentences with numerous pretexts and minimal punctuation - can be traced in the early Norartakir story, but only appears in a polished form in the last novel of the writer.

Last years of life

After emigrating to the United States the only son in 1977, L. B. Tsypkin was dismissed from the institute to reduce (1979), then reinstated, already in the position of junior research assistant at part-time, and applied for departure from the USSR . Until the end of life was in denial . On March 15, 1982, L. B. Tsypkin was again dismissed from the institute and on the same day he learned about the publication of his novella Summer in Baden, which began two days earlier, on March 13, in the New York newspaper Novaya Gazeta (the manuscript of the novel was forwarded abroad and was handed over to the editorial office of Novaya Gazeta ^{[8] by a} close friend of the writer (journalist Azari Messerer in early 1981). ^[9] A few days later, on March 20 , on the day of his birth and exactly one week after his first publication outside the scientific field, L. B. Tsypkina was no more. He was buried, according to the will, next to his parents at the Eastern Cemetery in Minsk .

The first book publication of the stories and tales of Leonid Tsypkin in Russia was carried out in 1999 by the Moscow Art Theater publishing house. The novel “Summer in Baden” was published in a separate edition in 2003 by the publishing house “New Literary Review” (UFO), and in 2005 a volume of the writer's selected works was published, including the photo album “Dostoevsky Places in St. Petersburg”. The story “The Bridge over the Nerech” was first published in the Jerusalem magazine “22” (No. 39, 1984).

In 2001, the novel “Summer in Baden” was published in English with a preface by Susan Sontag , who put him on a par with the best examples of world prose of the 20th century and called it “the last masterpiece of Russian literature”. Success in the USA was followed by translations into a half dozen languages ​​of the world. The first translation of Leonid Tsypkin's other stories and short stories into English (including the story “The Bridge over the Neeroch”) appeared in book form in 2013. ^{[10] [11] [12]}

The son is an American political scientist Mikhail Leonidovich Tsypkin ( Mikhail Tsypkin , born 1950 ), an employee of the National Security Department of the Center for Contemporary Conflicts of the Naval School in Monterey ( California ) ^[13] , Ph.D. in Political Science (1985, Harvard University ), author of:

• "Soviet-American exchanges: Promises and problems" ("Soviet-American relations: promises and problems"). - Monterey: Naval Postgraduate School, 1988;
• "The" new thinking "and quality of Soviet military manpower" ("" New thinking "and the quality of Soviet military power"). - Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1989;
• “Military influence in Russian politics” (“Military influence in Russian politics”). - Monterey: Naval Postgraduate School, 1992;
• "Rudderless in a Storm: the Russian Navy 1992-2002" ("Lost during the storm: the Russian fleet 1992-2002"). - Monterey: Conflict Studies Research Center, 2002;
• "Russia's Security and the War on Terror" ("Russia's Security and the War on Terror"). - London — New York: Routledge, 2007.