The Russian Variant

Yuri Galperin is one of the most interesting Russian prose writers of the second half of the 20th century, and is scarcely known in Russia.

Born into a musician’s family. In 1964 he wrote his first story; that same year he entered the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute, which he left of his own accord, after which he was drafted into the army and served for 3 years (1966–1968) in the far north.

In 1970 he enrolled in the History Department of Leningrad State University, graduating in 1976.

After his first publications in local newspapers, in 1971 Galperin managed to print two stories in the almanac «Young Leningrad.» Together with the young philologist E. Belodubrovskiy (under the pseudonym K. Begalin), he wrote the play «The Boy Was Thirteen Years Old» which was staged in 1972 at the Leningrad Theatre of Young Spectators.

In 1978 he married a Swiss citizen, and in 1979 moved to Bern while keeping Soviet citizenship. There, beginning in 1980, he works at the Historical Museum.

His three main works—«Let’s Play the Blues,» «A Bridge over Lethe,» and «The Russian Version»—could not be published in Soviet Russia. For a broad home audience, they became available only in the mid-nineties, but they were swallowed up by the stream of «returned literature.» Of course, this is unfair.

According to Andrei Bitov, «Galperin leans toward that branch of culture that has been grafted onto the trunk of Russian literature by Nabokov.»

Indeed, Galperin’s ironic, stylish, intelligent prose is comparable in purity and craftsmanship to Nabokov’s; however, with one difference: Galperin’s prose is warmer and more humane. It is addressed primarily to the living and immediate emotion of the reader.