18 August 1929 year
Born in Kyiv Anatoly Kuznetsov — a writer and defector. Author of "Babi Yar."
In the USSR I would have gone crazy
As a teenager, he kept a diary during the German occupation of Kyiv. These entries later formed the basis for his novel "Babi Yar."
He was unable to enroll in the Moscow Literary Institute because he was "located in occupied territory." He studied at a ballet studio and danced at the Kiev Opera House. He published stories in Pioneer and Komsomol newspapers.
At 19, he left the Komsomol and destroyed his membership card. At 22, he rejoined the Komsomol, and then the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He went to work on Komsomol construction projects.
After Stalin's death in 1955, he entered the Literary Institute. While studying, he worked part-time as a concrete worker on the construction site of the Irkutsk Hydroelectric Power Station. At 28, he wrote his first long story about this, "Continuation of the Legend."
In 1966, he wrote the novel "Babi Yar," about life in occupied Kyiv. It included not only the author's memoirs but also those of other survivors of the massacre at Babi Yar, a ravine near Kyiv where over 100,000 people perished. Censors reluctantly passed it, and the novel was published in an abridged version.
In the summer of 1969, he went on a business trip to London to gather material for a book commemorating Lenin's centenary. To secure permission to leave the Soviet Union, he spent almost a year as a KGB agent, informing on writer friends. Yevtushenko, Aksenova and others. Once abroad, he refused to return and requested political asylum.
I reached a point where I could no longer work. For 25 years, not a single one of my works had been published in the USSR the way I wrote it.
Kuznetsov's stories were immediately banned in the USSR, and films based on his scripts were withdrawn from distribution.
Kuznetsov himself lived in London, working for Radio Liberty. In 1970, the full text of "Babi Yar" was published in Germany. He wrote no more new books.
He suffered two heart attacks and died in 1979 from cardiac arrest, two months before his 50th birthday.
