Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky was a Russian writer, dissident, political prisoner,Professor of Sorbonne University, magazine founder, and publisher.
Background
Andrei Sinyavsky was born on October 8, 1925 in Moscow. His father, Donat Sinyavsky, was a Russian nobleman from Syzran, who turned Social Revolutionary and was arrested several times as an "enemy of the people." During his last stay in jail Donat Sinyavsky became ill and after his release, developed mental illness.
Education
Andrei received his education at Moscow State University.
Andrei Sinyavsky devoted his career to writing. A protégé of Boris Pasternak, Sinyavsky described the realities of Soviet life in short fiction stories. In his early career, he worked as a senior research fellow at the Gorki Institute of World Literature in Moscow. He also was a lecturer on Russian literature at Moscow University. Both of these posts ended with his imprisonment in 1966.
Sinyavsky received international attention when he and fellow writer Yuli M. Daniel were arrested and brought to trial for allegedly creating works that the USSR government considered "anti-Soviet." Some of the novelist’s works had been secretly taken out the country for publication abroad under the pseudonym Abram Tertz — a move that angered Soviet authorities when they discovered the true identity of Tertz. Ultimately Sinyavsky was sentenced to six years in a labor camp, but was released after about five.
Sinyavsky was released in 1971 and allowed to emigrate in 1973 to France, where he was one of co-founders, together with his wife Maria Rozanova, of the Russian-language almanac Sintaksis. He also actively contributed to Radio Liberty. He died in 1997 in Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris.