Background
Lev Kopelev was born on April 9, 1912 in Kiev, Kyyivs'ka Oblast', Ukraine. He was born to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1926, his family moved to Kharkov.
Kopelew
Lev Kopelev was born on April 9, 1912 in Kiev, Kyyivs'ka Oblast', Ukraine. He was born to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1926, his family moved to Kharkov.
While a student at Kharkov State University's philosophy faculty, Kopelev began writing in Russian and Ukrainian languages. He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages in 1935 in the German language faculty, and, after 1938, he earned a Doctor of Philosophy at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History.
Early in Lev's career, he worked for the Kharkov Trainbuilding Factory in the Ukraine as a metal worker, teacher, journalist, and editor of the factory’s newsletter. In the late 1930s he joined the faculty of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, History, and Literature as an assistant professor of German Literature.
During World War II Kopelev was accused of sympathizing with the enemy and was sent to prison and wasn’t released until the mid-1950s. Released from prison, he began work as a freelance writer before venturing to the Poligrafical Institute to teach in 1957.
From 1960 to 1968 Kopelev was a scientific fellow at the Moscow Institute of History of Arts. In 1968 he was fired from his job and expelled from the CPSU and the Writers' Union for signing protest letters against the persecution of dissidents. The Kopelevs were granted honorary German citizenship in 1981. While in Germany Kopelev continued to write and teach. Among his books were autobiographical accounts.
Lev was a fanatical Communist in his youth. He was expelled from the Party in 1968 for an article, published in the West.
Lev sharply criticized the atrocities against the German civilian population. He actively denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and also protested Solzhenitsyn's expulsion from the Writers' Union and wrote in defense of dissenting General Pyotr Grigorenko, imprisoned at a psychiatric hospital.
Kopelev was married for many years to Raisa Orlova, a Soviet specialist in American literature, who emigrated with him to Germany.