Varankin, Vladimir Valentinovich

Born November 12, 1902. His father, Valentin Yegorovich (died in 1921), was in charge of the savings bank before being mobilized into the Red Army , his mother, Nina Alekseevna (died in 1953), was a librarian. By education - historian, specialist in Western European history. He was the director of the School of Foreign Languages ​​(then transformed into the 2nd Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages). Since 1935, he also headed the Department of World History at the Moscow Historical and Archival Institute ^[2] .

Since 1919 - Esperantist ; took an active part in the Soviet Esperanto movement ^[1] . Already in 1920 he organized about 40 Esperanto cells in the Nizhny Novgorod province ^[2] . When the Union of Esperantists of the Soviet Countries was founded at the 3rd All-Russian Congress of Esperantists in Petrograd in June 1921 (renamed the Union of Esperantists of the Soviet Republics in 1927), V.V. Varankin was elected to the Central Committee of the Union and took an active part until the end of his life participation in the work of the Union.

In the second half of the 1930s. clouds were gathering over the Soviet Esperanto movement; almost the entire composition of the CECR Central Committee and many ordinary Esperantists were repressed on trumped-up charges of “espionage” ^[3] . VV Varankin was arrested on the night of February 7-8, 1938 - as “a member of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist terrorist organization and a member of the so-called“ Union Center “of this organization” ^[4] . Further, the name Varankina is found in the section “Moscow Region. 1st category ” ^[5] “ The list of persons subject to trial by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR ”dated September 29, 1938, prepared by the NKVD of the USSR and endorsed by IV Stalin and VM Molotov ^[6] ; this fate of Varankine was a foregone conclusion, since the first category meant "capital punishment." On October 3, 1938, the Military College sentenced Varankin to be shot, and on the same day the sentence was carried out ^[4] . May 11, 1957 Varankin was rehabilitated, and the criminal case was closed for lack of corpus delicti ^[2] .

Wife: Varankina (nee Muravina) Augusta Nikolaevna, b. 1902, died

Daughter: Varankina (aka Dmitrieva, aka Zhiguleva) Feina Vladimirovna), born in 1924, lives in Nizhny Novgorod

V.V. Varankin has written many works on Esperantology - first of all, articles published in the printed organ of the SECD - the journal "International Language". The work "Teorio de Esperanto" ("Theory of Esperanto") ( 1929 ) is devoted to the study of the etymology of Esperanto vocabulary, as well as the phonetics, morphology and syntax of this language ^[1] .

In 1933, the publishing house EKRELO (Publishing Cooperative of Revolutionary Esperanto Literature, Amsterdam ) published Varankin ’s novel Metropoliteno (Metropolitan) ^[7] . The theme of the novel, which was distinguished by an exciting plot and masterful characteristics of the characters, was the preparation for the construction of the subway in Moscow in 1928-1929. The protagonist of the novel is a young Soviet engineer sent to Berlin to study the experience of building the subway. There he gets acquainted with the life and political struggle of the German Communists, and also writes an autobiographical novel about his life in Moscow before a business trip and events in Berlin ^[8] .

Literary scholars unanimously include Varankina - along with Kabe , A. Wallen , G. Loyken , A. A. Sakharov , R. Schwartz , D. Bagi , C. Rossetti - in the list of key figures with which the formation of Esperanto prose is connected ^{[9] [ 10]} . In 1977, when the second edition of the Metropolitan novel was published in Copenhagen, Esperanto Academy Chairman W. Old praised the novel, welcoming the reissue of the “Forgotten Masterpiece” ^[1] , and included the novel in its list of 50 most outstanding works created on Esperanto in the first hundred years of its existence ^[2] .

Esperantology Works

• Varankin V. Teorio de Esperanto. - Moskvo: CK SEU, 1929 .-- 67 p.

Editions of the Metropolitan

• Varankin V. Metropoliteno. - Amsterdam: EKRELO, 1933 .-- 200 p.
• Varankin V. Metropoliteno. 2 eld. - Kopenhago: Thorben Kehlet, 1977 .-- 252 p. - ISBN 87-87089-10-6 .
• Varankin V. Metropoliteno. - Antwerpen: Thorben Kehlet - Stafeto, 1979.- 312 p. - ISBN 90-6336-016-9 . (Translation into English by Martha Evans)
• Varankin V. Metropoliteno. - Moskva: Progreso, 1992 .-- 244 p. - ISBN 5-01-002952-9 . (Reprint of the 1933 edition)
• Varankin V. Metropoliteno. 3 eld. - Jekaterinburg: Sezonoj, 1992 .-- 260 p.
• Varankin V.V. Metro. - M .: Impeto, 2008 .-- 272 p. - ISBN 87-87089-10-6 . (Translation into Russian by A. Alexandrov)

• Korolevich A. I. The book about Esperanto. - Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1989 .-- 256 p. - ISBN 5-12-000985-9 .
• Tokarev B.V. On Esperanto Poetry // Problems of the International Auxiliary Language. - M .: Nauka, 1991 .-- 263 p. - ISBN 5-02-016810-6 . - S. 143—161.

• V.V. Varankin. Esperanto agitation and propaganda technique. Lecture 5 (1926)
• Online edition of the Metropolitan (Esperanto)
• Network publication of the novel “Metropolitan” (in Russian; translation by E. A. Budagyan)