Lev Anninsky

Lev Alexandrovich Anninsky (Russian: Лев Александрович Аннинский, April 7, 1934, Rostov-on-Don, USSR) is the Soviet, Russian literary critic and historian, publicist, essayist, author of more than 30 books.^[1][2] He is also a scriptwriter, and as such the three times TEFI laureate (1996, 2004, twice).^[3]

Biography

Lev Anninsky was born in 1934, a son of Alexander Anninsky, a cossack from stanitsa Novo-Anninskaya, and Anna Alexandrova, born in Lyubech, Ukraine. His father, first a teacher, then a Mosfilm producer, in 1941 went to the fight nazis and, apparently, died (officially, has 'gone missing'). Mother taught chemistry in a technical college for the rest of her life. In his early years he read a lot, mostly Russian classics and history books, but also philosophers like Hegel and Kant.^[1] In 1939 a five-year-old appeared on the screen, cast as a kindergarten boy in the film The Foundling (Подкидыш).^[3]

Anninsky debuted as a literary critic in 1956, as a student of Moscow University philological faculty with the analysis with Vladimir Dudintsev's novel Not by Bread Alone. After the graduation he was about to join the post-graduate courses, but this coincided with the events in Hungary. Since the uprising there has been instigated by literary men, the CPSU decided to "brush the ideology up" among the Soviet universities' elite and Anninsky found out that to re-join the University he'll have to do some practical work first. He spent half a year in the Sovetsky Soyuz magazine, got fired, joined the Literaturnaya Gazeta (1957-1960), then Znamya magazine (1960-1967). In 1965 The Nut's Core, his first major collection of critical essays came out.^[2]

Upon signing a letter supporting dissident Andrey Sinyavsky, his former University teacher, he was evicted from Znamya.^[4] In 1968-1972 Anninsky worked in the Institute of Sociological research at the Academy of Science, then joined Druzhba Narodov magazine (1972-1991), starting a career of a freelancer which brought him the reputation of an insightful and original author shying the existing literary factions. Anninsky, with his "embrace, connect, make peace" motto, was arguably the only major literary critic in the USSR whose essays could appear both in Oktyabr and Novy mir, two magazines not just radically different, but belonging to the two warring ('patriots'/'liberals') factions. Anninsky has never joined the Soviet Communist Party.^[2]

1970s saw the publication of several books by Anninsky, among them Betrothed to the Idea (on Nikolai Ostrovsky’s How the Steel Was Tempered, 1971) and Vasily Shukshin (1976). Anninsky's books of the 1980s included The Leo Hunters (Lev Tolstoy in cinema), 1980, 1989; Leskovian Necklace (1982, 1885), Contacts (1982), Branches Full of Sunlight (a study on Lithuanian photography, 1984), Nikolai Gubenko (1986) and The Three Heretics (1988), a trilogy of books on the mavericks of 19th-century Russian literature: Pisemsky, Melnikov-Pechersky and Leskov.^[2]

In 1990-1992 Anninsky worked in Literaturnoye obozrenye (The Literature Review), then joined the newly formed Rodina magazine and in 1998 became the editor of the short-lived Vremya y my (Time And Us) project. Among his works of the time were The Flying Curtain (Essays on Georgian literature, 1990), Men of the Sixties and Our Times (subtitled: "The Cinema that's Made History and the One that Never Did," 1991), The Bards (1999). His The Silver and the Black (subtitled: "The Russian, the Soviet, the Slavic and the Worldly in the Silver Age poetry", 1997), on the 12 poets of the early 20th century, formed the basis for the successful documentary series of the same title. Directed by Vitaly Maksimov and premiered on Kultura TV in 2004, it brought Anninsky two TEFIs (in "The Best Script" and "The Best TV Documentary categories"). In 2010 Lev Anninsky received Слон ([White] Elephant), the Russian Guild of Film Critics' award.^[5] Since 2003 Annensky is a member of the Yasnaya polyana literary award jury.^[6]

References

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