January 9, 2019
A 88-year-old man died in Moscow. Anatoly Lukyanov — the last Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Gorbachev's ally who became his adversary.
Politics is the absolute knowledge of how people might respond to your decision.
Born in 1930, in Smolensk, In a military family. The father died at the front.
From 1943, he worked as a laborer at a defense plant. In 1948, he graduated from high school with a gold medal, and in 1953, from the law faculty of Moscow State University.
I've been interested in mountaineering since my student years. I studied in the same class as Mikhail Gorbachev and lived with him in the same dormitory.
He worked as a lawyer for the USSR Council of Ministers, then for the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He traveled on assignments to Eastern Europe and drafted the 1977 USSR Constitution.
In the late 1980s, he became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and took the post of Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Initially an ally of Gorbachev, he later became his opponent.
As for perestroika, very soon, while working on this idea, I realized we were heading in the wrong direction. We had many serious discussions about it, but no one thought it would end with the restoration of capitalism.
In 1990, he replaced Gorbachev as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Under his leadership, the Supreme Soviet passed laws significantly expanding citizens' rights, including laws on freedom of the press (prohibiting censorship and allowing private media outlets) and on public associations (citizens were given the opportunity to establish public organizations without government permission and collaborate with foreign colleagues).
In August 1991, he supported the State Emergency Committee. He was arrested until December 1992 and accused of treason.
If this was a conspiracy, then where have you seen the conspirators go to the very person they're conspiring against? Or maybe it's a coup? But where have you seen a coup in defense of the existing system? It was a poorly organized attempt by people to go to the country's leader and negotiate with him about not signing a treaty that would destroy the Union.
He was released on bail and refused to testify in the State Emergency Committee case.
How many misconceptions there were,
Hope and hard work.
There was both joy and sorrow,
And darkness, and lightning of insights.
But here, behind the thick wall,
In the melancholy that weighs on my shoulders,
I will say: there is nothing to repent of,
I have always been with my country
(from a prison notebook)
In 1994, he was amnestied and became a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Central Committee. He was elected to the State Duma three times. He taught at Moscow State University.
Was friends with Lev Gumilyov:
We met in the late 1960s, when I was helping him win back Anna Akhmatova's inheritance in court so he could donate her archive to the Pushkin House. We became friends and stayed in touch until my arrest.
He collected the voices of poets and writers of the 20th century - his audio collection contained hundreds of recordings - voices Mayakovsky, Bryusov, Yesenin, Bunin. Part of the collection was published in the 2000s as an audiobook, “100 Poets of the 20th Century: Poems Performed by the Author.”
The poets I love and appreciate most are those of the Silver Age. For me, the Silver Age is the greatest flowering of 20th-century poetry as a whole. <> For me [as a communist], it often doesn't matter who the poet is or what his views were, as long as it resonates with my soul, with my view of things.
I dream of the voices of poets,
who are no longer alive.
Unique signs,
special rhythm, minted verse.
By these quiet voices
from old records and cassettes
distant descendants will find out
our difficult age, signs of the years
He wrote poetry under the pseudonyms Anatoly Osenev and Dneprov.
Daughter Elena — lawyer, attorney (in 2006-2014 she defended Mikhail Khodorkovsky), professor of the Department of Constitutional Law at Moscow State University and former lecturer at the Higher School of Economics (fired in 2020 after publicly criticizing the adopted amendments to the Constitution), one of the founders and now rector of the Free University.
I believe we will put all the pieces together.
Into some kind of unified system,
Let's finally build our own warm home
And let's put together a quiet poem -
A poem of understanding and kindness
Of starry grey silver
