Alexander Zinoviev

Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev (Russian: Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Зино́вьев; October 29, 1922 – May 10, 2006) was a Soviet philosopher, writer, sociologist, and journalist.

In 1933, after graduating from elementary school, Alexander, on the advice of a mathematics teacher, was sent to Moscow.

He lived with relatives in a 10-meter basement room on Bolshaya Spasskaya Street.

Due to the impracticality of his father, he had to deal with economic issues.

Beggarly living conditions combined with interesting activities; in those years, the Soviet state actively modernized school education, and the reforms were accompanied by the propaganda of its social significance.

Alexander studied successfully; he liked mathematics and literature most of all.

His participation in the drawing circle did not work out – his drawings revealed the features of caricatures, the confusion happened with the redrawing of the portrait of Stalin for the Stalin's room; The experience in the drama club was also unsuccessful (Alexander didn't have a hearing or voice).

He read a lot additionally, was a frequenter of libraries; he read classics, both domestic and foreign.

In high school, he was already familiar with a large number of philosophical works – from Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau to Marx, Engels and Herzen.

Of the Russian classics, Zinoviev particularly singled out Lermontov, knew by heart many of his poems; from modern authors – Mayakovsky.

The most understandable and closest foreign writer was Hamsun ("Hunger").

Coming from a poor peasant family, a participant in World War II, Alexander Zinoviev in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the symbols of the rebirth of philosophical thought in the Soviet Union.

Having gained fame in the 1960s as a researcher of non-classical logic, in exile, Zinoviev was forced to become a professional writer, considering himself primarily a sociologist.

Works in the original genre of the 'sociological novel' brought international recognition to Zinoviev.

Often he is characterized as an independent Russian thinker, one of the greatest, most original and controversial figures of Russian social thought of the second half of the 20th century.

An anti-Stalinist in his youth, Zinoviev throughout his life held strong views on society, criticizing at first the Soviet system, then the Russian political system and the Western world, and at the end of his life, the processes of globalization.

Zinoviev's worldview was distinguished by tragedy and pessimism.

In the West, as in Russia, his non-conformist views were harshly criticized.

Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev was born in the village of Pakhtino in the Chukhlomsky District of Kostroma Province in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (now the Chukhlomsky District of the Kostroma Oblast).

He was the sixth child of Alexander Yakovlevich Zinoviev, a worker, and Apollinaria Vasilyevna (born Smirnova).

After the publication in the West of the screening book Yawning Heights, which brought Zinoviev world fame, in 1978 he was expelled from the country and deprived of Soviet citizenship.

He returned to Russia in 1999.

The creative heritage of Zinoviev includes about 40 books, covering a number of areas of knowledge: sociology, social philosophy, mathematical logic, ethics, political thought.

Most of his work is difficult to attribute to any tendency or to put in any framework, including academic.

The ancestors of Zinoviev, first mentioned in mid-18th-century documents, were state peasants.

Zinoviev's father spent most of his time working in Moscow while living in the countryside.

This gave him a Moscow residence permit, which probably saved his family from reprisals during the time of dekulakization.

Before the revolution, Alexander Yakovlevich was an artist who decorated churches and painted icons, later expanding into finishing work and stencilling.

Zinoviev somewhat disdainfully dismissed his father's profession as "painter."

Alexander Yakovlevich had a keen interest in art.

He provided his children with art supplies, illustrated magazines, and books.

Zinoviev's mother came from a wealthy family who owned property in Saint Petersburg.

The Zinovievs, whose house stood in the center of the village, were respected in the district and often hosted guests.

Biographers highlight the role of the mother in shaping Alexander's personality: Zinoviev recalled with love and respect her worldly wisdom and religious convictions, which determined the rules of behavior in the house.

The family, however, was not religious.

His father was a non-believer; his mother, although a believer, was indifferent to Church rites.

From childhood, Alexander became a staunch atheist, looking all his life upon Orthodoxy, the church and its clergy with disgust.

He considered atheism the only scientific component of Soviet Marxism.

Alexander from early childhood stood out for his abilities, he was immediately transferred to the second class.

As children grew older, their father took them to the capital.