Random Lives is Oleg Radzinsky’s autobiographical book published in 2018 by Corpus . The book covers the first thirty years of the author’s life and through the prism of personal experience shows the different aspects of life in the USSR of the 1960s – 1980s.
| Random lives | |
|---|---|
| Genre | autobiography |
| Author | Oleg Radzinsky |
| Original language | Russian |
| Date of first publication | 2018 |
| Publishing house | Corpus |
Brief
Born in a prosperous family of Soviet writers (“sovpisov”), already in his early youth Oleg fell into the midst of dissidents . In 1982, he was imprisoned in Lefortovo prison for his activities. After the trial, Oleg was sent to exile in the Tomsk region , where he worked at a logging site . In 1986, after a serious illness, his punishment was mitigated, replacing the link in the harsh conditions of Siberia with a link in central Russia , in the city of Kirzhach , which was also caused by internal political changes in the country. In January 1987 , among other dissidents, Oleg was pardoned and deported from the country.
According to the figurative expression of the author, his rich life experience breaks up into several different lives, each of which is devoted to a separate chapter of the book. The childhood and youth spent in the literary environment left a “literary” imprint on the entire work, and the chapters devoted to this time, illustrated with photographs from the family archive, draw the history of several generations of the Jewish family. The description of the gloomy prison life was executed in the detached manner of a scientist, which allows not only to be horrified by the bestial conditions of people, but also to see life in prison from an unusual perspective, and at the same time to get acquainted with the fate of prisoners from different social backgrounds . With all the horror of what is described, the author manages to avoid plunging into deep despair and maintain a detached view of what is happening in his own life and in the country. And, perhaps, it would not be an exaggeration to call this book “a cast of the late Soviet era” [1]
Notes
Links
- Controversial book: Oleg Radzinsky, "Random Lives" . Peterbook . krupaspb.ru. Date of treatment December 7, 2018.