In Memorium, Russian Philosopher And Writer Alexander Zinoviev

MOSCOW, May 10, 2006 (AFP) - "Russian writer and former Soviet dissident turned fierce Perestroika critic Alexander Zinoviev died aged 83 late Wednesday in Moscow of brain cancer, his wife Olga Zinovieva told AFP.

His body will lie in state at Moscow State University to give his admirers an opportunity to pay their last respects before he is buried on Monday, Zinovieva said.

Zinoviev, a former philosophy professor, spent over 20 years in exile, mostly in Germany, following the 1977 publication in the West of his master work, "The Yawning Heights," a devastating criticism of the Communist regime.

But the former dissident turned into a Communist supporter and a sharp critic of Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Zinoviev finally returned to Russia in 1999."

Agence France Presse "Russian writer and ex-Soviet dissident Alexander Zinoviev dies at age 83" May 10, 2006





















Alexander Zinoviev, Portrait As A Young Man And Idealist

"Zinoviev will, I predict, be read by millions… in the tradition of Hobbes, Voltaire, Swift, George Orwell..."

Alexander Nekrich in the New York Review of Books

Photo credit: Zinoviev Web-site Site (English version) and Photo Gallery. With thanks.

www.zinoviev.ru/ photo.html