Accidental Lives

11 hrs. 25 min.

Language Russian

Author Oleg Radzinsky

Narrator Oleg Radzinsky

Description

His childhood was the childhood of a “rep,” which, translated from the jargon of Litfond employees of the USSR, meant “a writer’s child.” And it’s no wonder that in the upper grades the son of the famous writer and playwright Eduard Radzinsky was a classic representative of the golden youth. Then—philology at Moscow State University, forbidden literature, Russian free-thinking classics. It all ended with an arrest on charges of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.

Then came dissent, searches, surveillance, Cell No. 117 of Lefortovo prison, Ward No. 4 of the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry, a five-year exile to Siberia for hard labor in the timber camps, release, forced emigration, graduate studies at Columbia University, working as a broker on Wall Street, and searching for mineral resources in the tropical jungles of Guyana. Such a life would have been enough for several biographies.

Contents:

First life. Soviet rep. 1958–1973
Rep’s childhood
Grandmother Lia and mandarins
Life didn’t work out
Conflict between city and village
Life in the second
Second life. Soviet major. 1973–1978
The incredible ease of being
Soviet majors
The end of the incredible ease of being
Third life. Anti-Soviet agitator. 1979–1982
Dissent as self-affirmation
We’ll build the new world
Pacifist Radzinsky
Cadet-grandpa
Suspect Radzinsky
The life of a dissenter told by himself
Love will come unexpectedly…
But you can’t hide from autumn… You can’t escape it…
Fourth life. Lodger of the “National” 1982–1983
All nights full of fire…
Cell No. 117
Sitting behind bars in a damp prison…
Questions and answers
New power
Ward No. 4
Spies
Big “houssie”
Glocler-2
Operation “Towel”
Letters from a happy past
The investigation established…
And who are the judges?
Judgment day
Proven guilty
Meetings again on Fridays…
Fifth life. Especially dangerous. 1983
Special stage: a train runs from the capital to remote taiga places…
Loading
“Stolypin”
Kolia Frunzenskij and other sufferers
Monster Ryzvanov
Sverdlovka
32nd post
Revolt
Long road
Tobolsk
Academy town
Final berth
Hunger strike
Instigator
Sixth life. Exiled. 1983–1987
Big Cordonn
SS man Kaltenbrunner and Bandera man Pasyuk
Decembristka
Daughter
Fiancés and brides
Notes of an unwilling man
Matvey the Polynesian
Change of seasons and change of places
Chopped down our Christmas tree
From other lives
Communion
Illness
From other lives
What time is it in the courtyard
Kirkhatch
Russo (but not Jean-Jacques)
From other lives
Fever
War and peace
Plot twist
Departure