Childhood and youth Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev was born in the village of Pakhtino in the
Chukhlomskoy Uyezd of
Kostroma Governorate 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). 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. As biographers noted, in his youth, Zinoviev was seized with the desire to "build a new world" and faith in a "bright future", he was fascinated by dreams of social justice, the ideas of equality and
collectivism, material asceticism; his idols were
Spartacus,
Robespierre, Decembrists and Populists. As Konstantin Krylov wrote, the ideas corresponded to his personal experience: Zinoviev recalled that "he was a beggar among beggars", emphasizing that the
communist utopia was the idea of beggars. On the one hand, the social, cultural and economic changes that occurred in the 1930s contributed to optimism; on the other hand, Alexander noticed an increasing inequality, saw how families of party and state officials live; drew attention to the fact that in the advancement of the social scale the most successful were activists, demagogues, talkers and scammers; observed the discrimination of the peasants in comparison with the working class, the degradation of the village and the formation of the new
"serfdom" of the collective farms, which he witnessed when he came on holidays in Pakhtino. Among his fellow students were later well-known philosophers Arseny Gulyga, Igor Narsky, Dmitry Gorsky and Pavel Kopnin. The atmosphere at the institute, the forge of the "fighters of the ideological front", was heavy. Zinoviev was almost without funds, the meager scholarship was not enough, his father stopped helping him. As Pavel Fokin writes, Zinoviev was in a state of physical and nervous exhaustion. In search of an answer to the question of why the bright ideals of communism proclaimed were at variance with reality, Zinoviev thought about the figure of Stalin: "The Father of Nations" became the cause of the perversion of communist ideals. Konstantin Krylov noted that sincerity and lack of heroism in the descriptions of events testify in favor of their authenticity. Zinoviev spent most of the war at the Ulyanovsk Aviation School. Initially, he served in the Primorsky Territory as part of the
cavalry division. In the spring of 1941, the troops were transferred to the west, he was credited with a tank gunner in a tank regiment. On the eve of 22 June, the advanced unit was sent to a flight school in Orsha, which was soon evacuated to Gorky, and in early 1942 to the Ulyanovsk military aviation school of pilots. At the aviation school, Zinoviev spent almost three years, mostly in reserve. He learned to fly a biplane, later – on the
Il-2. In Ulyanovsk, he had a son, named Valery (1944). He graduated from the aviation school at the end of 1944 and received the title of "junior lieutenant". As Alexander Pyatigorsky recalled, Zinoviev "was not afraid of anything"; he was one of the few who continued to communicate with Karl Kantor in the midst of the struggle against cosmopolitanism, demonstratively releasing "antisemitic" jokes about his friend. Georgy Shchedrovitsky recalled that Zinoviev hated Soviet socialism, in which socialist principles superimposed on archaic social structures (mass bonded labor and
camps), but which corresponded to the national character and cultural traditions. Pessimism was intensified by the fact that socialism was considered as the inevitable and unalternative future of mankind. In future society, Zinoviev did not see a place for himself, because he did not consider himself to be in any class and believed that he had survived by a miracle. Konstantin Krylov, commenting on Shchedrovitsky's memories, referred Zinoviev to the victims of the
Russian Revolution and contrasted him in this sense to Shchedrovitsky, who recognized that his personal prospects were more optimistic because of social status. in September 1954. The opposition of the "old men" was counterbalanced by the support of the Minister of Culture Academician George Alexandrov, which he managed to get through Karl Kantor. The opponents were
Teodor Oizerman and Pavel Kopnin, the post-graduate students Mamardashvili and Grushin and Schedrovitsky supported the defense of Zinoviev. The text of the dissertation was later distributed in numerous reprints in samizdat and was published only in 2002. The peripetias of those events Zinoviev grotesque described in the novel "On the Eve of Paradise". textbooks, collections, collective monographs were published, and methodological seminars were held.
Dissident Zinoviev. "Yawning Heights" In scientific and teaching activities, Zinoviev openly ignored the official ideology, in the late 1960s his position in the scientific community deteriorated. As Pavel Fokin writes, he declined the proposal of the vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union,
Pyotr Fedoseyev, to write a "Marxist–Leninist" article for the journal
Kommunist, although he was promised his own department and election as a
corresponding member. The scientist was in conflict with representatives of the "liberal" wing of the Soviet intelligentsia, and, as biographers believe, their attitude towards Zinoviev was worse than that of the orthodox communists. In the "liberal" composition of the editorial board of the journal
Problems of Philosophy (Merab Mamardashvili,
Bonifaty Kedrov, Theodor Oizerman, Yuri Zamoshkin, Vladislav Kelle) took an extremely sharp position on the quality of the reviewed works, indignant at the authors raid over
Leonid Brezhnev; Zinoviev noted "()" – "()" – to texts that could not be criticized. After the suspension of his publications, Zinoviev left the editorial board. In the fall of 1968, he was fired from the post of head of the department of logic at Moscow State University. He openly made friends with the well-known dissident
Alexander Esenin-Volpin, inviting him to seminars on logic, and with
Ernst Neizvestny, who he often visited. He continued his scientific activities, preparing graduate students. In 1973 he was not re-elected to the Academic Council of the institute, a year later he was not allowed to speak at the All-Union Symposium on the theory of logical inference; they were not allowed to travel abroad, in particular, to Finland and Canada; problems arose with his graduate students. At the same time, Zinoviev was elected a foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences (1974) after a visit to the Soviet Union by the famous Finnish logician
Georg von Wright. Zinoviev was proud of this fact, Finnish logic had a high scientific authority. Zinoviev was called the heir to the satirical tradition – from
Aristophanes and
Apuleius through
François Rabelais and
Jonathan Swift to Saltykov-Shchedrin,
Anatole France,
Franz Kafka and
George Orwell. Among
dissidents, the reaction was more heterogeneous, there were also negative opinions, for example, among
Andrei Sakharov, who called the book decadent, or
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In the Soviet Union, the book was immediately declared anti-Soviet, its reading was equated with anti-Soviet activity; "Yawning Heights" were actively distributed in samizdat. As Lev Mitrokhin recalled, despite the flaws, the book made a strong impression by "author's ingenuity, imagery, accuracy of social diagnosis, and violent black humor". Many intellectuals, for example, mocked in the novel Mamardashvili, considered the book a libel or even a denunciation. discussed "anti-Soviet actions", gave "slanderous information" to correspondents of capitalist countries to "attract attention to his person". Zinoviev continued to write, soon finishing the story "The Night Watchman's Notes", the novel "On the Eve of Paradise" and the novel "A Bright Future", published in Switzerland in early 1978. In the first half of the 1980s, Zinoviev led an active public activities, enjoyed great popularity in the media, especially in France, Germany and Italy. He was almost the main newsmaker of Russian emigration. Publications of his books in different countries were published quarterly, Zinoviev participated in presentations, attended various congresses and symposia, where he gave reports, participated in conversations, gave interviews. Zinoviev tried to avoid the emigrant community, close relations were formed only with Vladimir Maximov; European intellectuals were friends with
Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The language barrier was also a problem - Zinoviev mastered professional vocabulary, but on the whole, he did not know German well, spoke mainly in English. The expression of loneliness became the oil painting "Self-portrait", according to Pavel Fokin, the image of suffering, pain, truth and hopelessness. In the essay "Why I will never return to the Soviet Union" (1984),
nostalgia and the desire to return to Russia were combined with the realization that "there is nowhere to return, there is no need to return, there is no one to return"; in 1988, in an interview with
Radio Liberty, he stated that he considered his emigration a punishment, and his principle was "always to write the truth and only the truth". he denied the possibility of success of Russian reforms, believing that they would only lead to a catastrophe. At the same time, he called Stalin the only great politician in the history of Russia, which, Konstantin Krylov notes, was not at all praise, but shocked the public. In 2000, the publishing house "Centrpoligraf" published 5 volumes of collected works; director Viktor Vasilyev made the documentary film "I am a sovereign state", which was not released on the screens. In 2002, to the anniversary of Zinoviev, under the auspices of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, the anthology "The Phenomenon of Zinoviev" was published. His latest novel was the "Russian Tragedy" (2002). He kept radical rhetoric, giving account of the indifference and opportunism of the majority of the population; and attached importance to any protest and resistance, speaking, for example, in support of Eduard Limonov. He was carried away by the anti-scientific theory of
Anatoly Fomenko, and wrote a preface to his book. The
New Chronology was consonant with Zinoviev's thoughts about modern falsification of Soviet history, he was impressed by her boldness and originality. In 2016, on the eve of the 95th anniversary of Zinoviev, a new species of butterflies was named in his honor – "Zinoviev's Fan Wing" (Alucita zinovievi). ==Philosophical thought==