LEGACIES and MEMORIES

Interviews with the Relatives of Russian Literary Greats

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Stephan Solzhenitsyn

Son, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn

Interviewed by Anna Shlionsky

Stephan Aleksandrovich Solzhenitsyn is the son of Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He is most famous for writing One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago. The interview was conducted via an e-mail exchange.

A.S.: Please tell me about your career, hobbies and special interests. How has your father influenced the things that you devote your time to?

S.S.: I am an urban planner by profession. Built and natural environments draw my keen interest and attention. Much of the work centers on the responsible use of environmental and economic resources, which often require trade-offs. My father’s influence on my work has been great in the sense of how one approaches work. He has always seen his own work as a service--given the dramatic nature of the Soviet twentieth century, even a duty. I hope some of this attitude has rubbed off on me: that if what you do is of service to people, you will find joy in it, and the rest will fall in place.

A.S.: What are your particular interests in literature? What authors do you enjoy reading?

S.S.: That is a fairly easy list for me, but only because I cannot claim to be a real student of literature or of the arts in general. Of the Russian classics, I find Dostoevsky timeless. This, perhaps least progressive of authors, has the most enduring relevance to modern life. I will more often pick up poetry than prose, and am most likely to be caught reading Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva.

A.S.: How would you say your life has been influenced by the two countries you have lived in: the US and Russia? Since they are very different, how has each shaped you and what is your relationship to each?

S.S.: There has definitely been a synthesis, and it evolves continuously. Many universal values have to come to me through the Russian side. For example, I think Russian culture does a bit better job explaining magnanimity, why we act generously. I think about faith, love and friendship more in a Russian than American vocabulary. But having lived in America for much of my life, I have drawn inspiration not only from its physical beauty--my New England in particular--but from the American practice of governance, as well as from the attitude that great things are possible even from the individual. I care deeply about the histories of both lands.

A.S.: Describe your father’s career. We know he was involved in many different things besides writing, for instance, television. Where do you believe his greatest successes are?

S.S.: My father is a writer first and foremost. Political considerations always came second--and more importantly he never practiced politics per se, but spilled over into the political from the ethical/moral sphere. It is just that, living in the totalitarian century, the choice for a writer was either to immerse oneself in a fairly narrow aesthetic realm, or to tackle the surrounding world and its issues as well. The insistence of the Soviet regime was not just that authors write about socially relevant issues but that they tow the socialist line in doing so. A natural act of rebellion, therefore, would have been to avoid it altogether, and at least keep one’s own internal moral house in order. But my father did better: he bore witness to what he saw in life, truthfully, risking all. He never lost sight of those millions who had already lost their all, and his witness was for them. That is the greatest service of a writer, and his greatest success.

A.S.: Where in your father’s life do you find greatest inspiration?

S.S.: As a dad, he has always taught by example, without lecturing. His devotion, his love--to his family, to Russia--have been common facts of his existence. That has been deeply, if not loudly, inspiring.

Marina Ledkovsky

Niece, Vladimir Nabokov

Interviewed by Katarzyna Kozanecka

Marina Ledkovsky is the niece of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, the author of Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading, and Pale Fire, among many others. Ledkovsky is a retired professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at Barnard College.

Katarzyna Kozanecka: Please tell me a little bit about yourself and your view of Nabokov.

Marina Ledkovsky: I’m just the niece. Vladimir Nabokov was the first cousin of my mother. Their fathers were brothers. My grandfather, Dmitri Dmitrievich, and his father, Vladimir Dmitrievich, were brothers. My grandfather was the oldest son in the family; his father was the third son.

They all--the Nabokovs, my grandfather, Vladimir’s father and his brother, Sergey Dmitrievich--they were all courtiers, they were all very involved in court life. The ladies were ladies of the court--my grandmother, Vladmir’s mother, but not his grandmother--she did not belong to the nobility. Being monarchists, they wanted to save Russia. Everybody wanted to save Russia.

They all left almost together; the family of my mother and the family of Sergey Dmitrivich left on the first of April, 1919. They were all supposed to leave together but Vladimir Dmitrievich, the father of Uncle Volodya, had to produce a document to prove to the French, who were helping him evacuate, that he was a treasurer for the provisional government. He was detained for a day, so they left on the second of April. My grandparents went first to Constantinople, and then they stayed for awhile in Athens, because everyone thought the Bolshevik government wouldn’t last, and that they would return very soon. As they say, sideli na chemodanach (they sat on their suitcases). Then they realized it wasn’t going to be like that. My family went to Berlin, but the Vladmir Dmitrievich branch of the family went to London. The two boys, Sergei and Volodya, went to Cambridge.

Then he moved to America. I think he liked America very much. He was a very good, dedicated American citizen, which not everybody wants to acknowledge, because oh, America is awful for everybody who comes here, awful, awful, awful. He was happy, grateful to be here. He thought it was a great country. He was always on the defense when he was pushed by reporters. I wrote a paper on this; it has been published in a Russian Nabokovian review in St. Petersburg: “Nabokov i Amerika.” I based it on all his interviews.

Vladimir had a hard time when he came to America, as everybody does. He came here with the help of Aleksandra Lvovna Tolstaya, the granddaughter of Tolstoy. Nowhere does he write about that. Nabokov’s son, Dmitri, with whom I stay in touch, is very touchy about things that he doesn’t want people to know; for example, his father’s first years in America, when he had a hard time getting money. But everybody had this problem, so there’s nothing terribly new there.

Aleksandra Lvovna had nothing to offer him. But [he knew] if he had a bicycle, which he had to acquire, [he could] deliver milk around the city. That was the first job that he had, [along with delivering] newspapers. Can you imagine? So she had no feeling that he was a person that should be taken care of differently, not at all. He was just an ordinary person, who had to feed his family. That was in the 1940s. Already then Aleksandra Lvovna was organizing the Tolstoy foundation for refugees, because there were so many refugees coming from Europe, most of them Jewish. Vera [Nabokov’s wife] was Jewish; they had to go, because when the Germans invaded it was very dangerous. It was fantastic what Aleksandra Lvovna did, but the attitude was, you work like everybody else.

But eventually Vladimir met people who were interested in him; he was able to publish, The New Yorker took his stories, he got positions as a teacher. He adapted very quickly. He was very cosmopolitan. Like the whole family. We went with my mother to his poetry readings at the 92nd Street Y and the Russkii Dom. He was so aristocratic. It was so simple, nobody was screaming. They all scream, the new poets.

Lolita made him famous--Lolita was the book that everybody read. The other novels and stories are not so much valued, as this Lolita. Of course, there are Nabokov societies, and admirers, but it is a very select kind of readership. He likes to delve into those niceties of the language. He is very selective of language. He forces you to remember, to play the game with him together. People say he is boring. To me this is pleasure. Nabokov  is pure art, I don’t know another writer like that. I love his commentaries on Pushkin. Again, there are people who complain that he plays games, he likes all these anecdotes. My favorite book is of course Pnin, because it’s so funny.

I wonder sometimes if he stayed in Russia, if he would have gone into literature. He said himself that he became a writer because there was nothing else for him to do. He had this ease with poetry--you know, everybody in the serebrianny vek was a poet--but then Vera persuaded him to write prose instead. Because he was so inventive with language. How can you earn money by writing poetry?

Volodya hated the Soviets. His poems denounced it, proclaimed he would never recognize their rule. But he always kept Russia in his heart. It was a dreamland, a land of his childhood, that he could never forget, this little booklet (Ten’ ruskoj vetki) brings it out very much. The quotations from his writing. He remembered everything. The paths in the woods, and the river, and the windings. In almost every work he wrote, there is something about Russia; it’s brought to you in a different way. “Zembla” and all of that [a reference to Nabokov’s Pale Fire].... This person found it all, even Russian translations of English novels. He compiled them into this little book. The end of Pale Fire: “History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain...”.

I read him and I think, if I were able to express my nostalgia [for my childhood], for the happy gatherings, I would do it this way.

Evgeny Pasternak

Son, Boris Pasternak

Interviewed by Katerina Vorotova

Evgeny Borisovich Pasternak was born to Evgenia and Boris Pasternak in 1923. He studied physics and engineering, worked as an engineer for the Red Army, and later taught at the Moscow Energy Institute. He has compiled several volumes of his father’s writing and is the author of his father’s biography, entitled Boris Pasternak: The Tragic Years: 1930-1960. Boris Pasternak is most famous for being the author of Doctor Zhivago, a novel for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958. Unfortunately, he was forced to decline the award.

Katerina Vorotova: For the readers of The Birch, can you describe the milestones of your life?

Evgeny Pasternak: I’ve led a fairly ordinary life. I was born in 1923. Until 1931 when I turned seven years old, my parents and I lived together as one family. In 1931, my father divorced my mom and since visited us every week and wrote us letters. There is a book about this, which was translated into English and French, Boris Pasternak: Letters to Evgenia Pasternak. This book is my biography. Then I went to school, graduated. During the war, I studied at a military academy, and graduated with an engineering degree in 1946. I was never sent to the front, but I served in the army for twelve years until 1954, I received a PhD and then I began teaching at a technical college, and later at Moscow Energy Institute. This continued until 1974. In my later years, my wife and I decided to work on literary publishing of my father’s works and I began writing his biography. Before he passed away in 1960, which was a tremendous loss for us, we were witnessing the last years of his life: the Nobel Prize, the refusal. Then his first books were beginning to be printed, very rarely, about one every ten to fifteen years, and my wife and I were involved in their preparation and publication. My wife, Elena Vladimirovna, is a philologist. At this time we were raising our children and were doing this work.

K.V.: What was it like to grow up while being surrounded by brilliant minds and famous names?

E.P.: My family had a great impact on my childhood. My mom was an artist; I knew closely such artists as Robert Falk, Sarra Lebedeva. Most important to my childhood was my grandfather Leonid Pasternak, who already then lived with my grandmother in Germany. My mom and I twice visited them there. These short trips left a profound impression on me. This gave me a certain degree of freedom, certain feelings of personal self-worth, although the times were dangerous during communism. Even though I was tied to the regime, like my father repeatedly told me, in some respect I never lost my inner freedom, that is, the ability to react to things like a human being.

K.V.: What was the hardest part of writing your father’s biography?

E.P.: It was a very long project that involved a lot of tedious work. It was very difficult to write about the latest years in the first and even the second editions, because we did not completely understand what was being done to my father during the years when he received the Nobel Prize, which he was forced to decline. He was persecuted, and he died from a quickly-spreading cancer, which was definitely the result of stress, disappointment and grief which he experienced in his final years. We began to write about these years in the first edition, but it was impossible to write about this, or even Doctor Zhivago, in great detail in the first edition. Even in the second edition, we still had no knowledge and only a few documents about his persecution. He did not like to talk about such horrible things. He protected his loved ones, tried not to upset them, was always fairly cheerful, did not talk about his pain. He was a heroic man. These things are not sufficiently reflected. But in the short, more compact version, which came out recently in St. Petersburg as the third edition, titled Life of Pasternak, the entire biography is abridged and written more compactly, but these latest years are expanded upon. (Translated into English as Boris Pasternak: The Tragic Years 1930-60).

K.V.: What is your fondest memory of your father?

E.P.:  My fondest memories are my childhood memories of living together as a family, how my father talked to me, went on walks with me down Moscow streets. This is how I remember Moscow, the Moscow I saw through his eyes. And on the other hand, I remember the last summer of his life in 1959, when we all lived together at our summer estate. We already had our eldest son. My father lived in the house. I talked to him, he worked until late at night. He was writing the play he never managed to finish called Blind Beauty. He also wrote to people who sent him letters of consolation from different countries of the world.  By the way, Leonard Bernstein, the great composer and conductor, once visited my father then. This was his last summer.

K.V.: How would you describe his personality? Did he joke often? Was he mostly serious? What was his sense of humor like?

E.P.: He did joke. He stood out. Everything that he said had meaning. Everything attracted attention and impressed people. He was an intelligent speaker. When he spoke, he did not say empty words. He joked and he spoke seriously. He said things that people did not expect of him. He was unpredictable in his judgments. It was always a very unique experience speaking to him.

K.V.: How did Pasternak manage to preserve his poetic voice during times of severe repression and criticism?

E.P.: Well, if you read his poems, some of them were written after these things, then you’ll realize.... His poems from 1956 are still light, happy, but such poems as “God’s World” and “Nobel Prize” are more tragic. He was cheerful, he had enough emotional strength to react to everything as an artist. When Bernstein visited Pasternak, he was offended by something; the minister of culture criticized Pasternak in the paper. And he came to Pasternak and said, “How can you live with such a minister?” Pasternak answered, “What are you talking about? An artist speaks to God, and God gives him various plots, puts him in various situations, and of course, the artist has to write about them. And this could be a vaudeville or a tragedy.” For Pasternak, it was a tragedy, for which he did not have enough physical strength and health. He had lived a fairly difficult 70 years that God gave him to write about.

K.V.: How close is Doctor Zhivago to Pasternak’s life? 

E.P.: The plot of Doctor Zhivago is close to his life because it takes place during the time of his life. But in general, there are fewer biographical elements in Doctor Zhivago than in his other works. He wanted to make his protagonist as free as possible. He made him Russian, a boy from the nobility; he made him a doctor, a physician, rather than a professional writer. He freed him from those things that would hinder Pasternak from expressing what he meant to say, and which would keep the hero from writing evangelical poetry. They are Christian poems, so open and so free--not one poet could write about evangelical events from the first person as if he were a witness.

K.V.: Is there something special you would like to convey to the readers of The Birch about your father?

E.P.: I’d like to show what a great artist Boris Pasternak was. Almost all of his poetry and prose is translated into different languages and read all over the world. We tried to collect a third form of his creative production, that is, his letters. Letters during communism played an enormous role, because saying something in print was difficult and dangerous. Father wrote Doctor Zhivago without any hope of publishing it. Letters written day by day are defined by the content of what the writer wants to express. This is better than the diaries that some people kept in our time. They had these diaries and reflected in them very few things, distorted and senseless. But letters must be written in such a way that they contain a certain message, otherwise there is no sense in writing them. And Pasternak wrote letters wonderfully. We have over 2,500 of his letters. We published some of them, such as letters to my mom, to his parents and sisters and so on.

The previous interviews were edited and abridged because of space constraints. We thank all of the family members for their participation.