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Contents • • • • • • • • Early life [ ] “ 'When I was in Kazan during my student years, I was under surveillance by the KGB. I didn’t realize it at first—it was only after they began 'inviting' my friends in to talk that I realized they were following me, and our whole group. It wasn’t like it is here at an American university—we were all one group in our class, a group of about 30 which existed together the entire six years of study; we had all of our classes together and were all living together. ' ” — Vasily Aksyonov remembers his life as a student, Vasily Aksyonov was born to Pavel Aksyonov and in, on August 20, 1932. His mother, Yevgenia Ginzburg, was a successful journalist and educator and his father, Pavel Aksyonov, had a high position in the administration of Kazan. Both parents 'were prominent communists.' In 1937, however, both were arrested and tried for her alleged connection to.

They were both sent to and then to exile, and 'each served 18 years, but remarkably survived.' 'Later, Yevgenia came to prominence as the author of a famous memoir, Into the Whirlwind, documenting the brutality of Stalinist repression.' Aksyonov remained in Kazan with his nanny and grandmother until the arrested him as a son of ', and sent him to an orphanage without providing his family any information on his whereabouts.

Aksyonov 'remained [there] until rescued in 1938 by his uncle, with whose family he stayed until his mother was released into exile, having served 10 years of forced labour.' 'In 1947, Vasily joined her in exile in the notorious, prison area, where he graduated from high school.' Vasily's half-brother Alexei (from Ginzburg's first marriage to Dmitriy Fedorov) died from starvation in besieged in 1941. His parents, seeing that doctors had the best chance to survive in the camps, decided that Aksyonov should go into the medical profession. The cool lupe fiasco free mp3 download. 'He therefore entered the and graduated in 1956 from the ' and worked as a doctor for the next 3 years. During his time as a medical student he came under surveillance by the KGB, who began to prepare a file against him. It is likely that he would have been arrested had the liberalisation that followed Stalin's death in 1953 not intervened.

Career [ ] Reportedly, 'during the liberalisation that followed Stalin's death in 1953, Aksyonov came into contact with the first Soviet countercultural movement of zoot-suited hipsters called (the ones 'with style').' As a result, He fell in love with their slang, fashions, libertine lifestyles, dancing and especially their music. From this point on began his lifelong romance with jazz. Interest in his new milieu, western music, fashion and literature turned out to be life-changing for Aksyonov, who decided to dedicate himself to chronicling his times through literature.

He remained a keen observer of youth, with its ever-changing styles, movements and trends. Like no other Soviet writer, he was attuned to the developments and changes in popular culture.

In 1956, he was 'discovered' and heralded by the Soviet writer for his first publication, in the liberal magazine Youth. 'His first novel, Colleagues (1961), was based on his experiences as a doctor.' 'His second, Ticket to the Stars (1961), depicting the life of Soviet youthful hipsters, made him an overnight celebrity.' In the 1960s Aksyonov was a frequent contributor to the popular ('Youth') magazine and eventually became a staff writer. Aksyonov thus reportedly became 'a leading figure in the so-called 'youth prose' movement and a darling of the Soviet liberal intelligentsia and their western supporters: his writings stood in marked contrast to the dreary, socialist-realist prose of the time.' 'Aksyonov's characters spoke in a natural way, using hip lingo, they went to bars and dance halls, had premarital sex, listened to jazz and rock'n'roll and hustled to score a pair of cool American shoes.' 'There was a feeling of freshness and freedom about his writings, similar to the one emanating from black-market recordings of American jazz and pop.'

'He soon became one of the informal leaders of the – which translates roughly as 'the '60s generation' – a group of young Soviets who resisted the Communist Party's cultural and ideological restrictions.' 'It was amazing: We were being brought up robots, but we began to listen to jazz,' Aksyonov said in a 2007 documentary about him.'

For all his hardship, Aksyonov, as a prose stylist, was at the opposite pole from Mr., becoming a symbol of youthful promise and embracing fashion and jazz rather than dwelling on the miseries of the gulag. Ultimately, however, he shared Mr. Solzhenitsyn's fate of exile from the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn is all about the imprisonment and trying to get out, and Aksyonov is the young person whose mother got out and he actually can live his life now, said Nina L. Khrushcheva, who is a granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev and a friend of the Aksyonov family and who teaches international affairs at the New School in New York.