Sergey Donatovich Dovlatov was born on September 3, 1941 in Ufa, where his parents were evacuated during the war, in the family of theater director Donat Isaakovich Mechik (1909-1995) and literary proofreader Nora Sergeevna Dovlatova (1908-1999).
In 1944, the family returned to Leningrad.
Soon Sergey Dovlatov's father Donat Isaakovich left the family.
They rarely communicated, mainly through notes.
In 1959, Dovlatov entered the Philological Faculty of the Leningrad State University named after Zhdanov (Department of the Finnish Language).
During his studies, he became friends with young Leningrad poets Yevgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, and Joseph Brodsky.
However, he had to leave the university after two and a half years of study (he was expelled from the second year for failing).
From 1962 to 1965, Sergey Dovlatov served in the army, in the system of protection of correctional labor camps in the north of the Komi ASSR.
After demobilization, he entered the Faculty of Journalism of LSU, at the same time working as a journalist in the multi edition of the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute "For Personnel to Shipyards".
He was a member of the Leningrad group of writers "Citizens" together with V. Maramzin, I. Efimov, B. Vakhtin, etc.
At one time he worked as a personal secretary for the writer Vera Panova.
In 1972-1975 he lived in Tallinn, worked as a correspondent for the newspapers "Soviet Estonia" and "Evening Tallinn".
In 1976, he returned to Leningrad, was accepted into the staff of the magazine "Koster".
He wrote reviews for the literary magazines "Neva" and "Zvezda".
He worked as a tour guide in the Pushkin Nature Reserve near Pskov (Mikhailovskoye).
He wrote prose, but nothing came of numerous attempts to be published in Soviet magazines.
The set of his first book was destroyed by order of the KGB.
Since the late 60s, Dovlatov has been published in Samizdat, and in 1976 some of his stories were published in the West in the magazines "Continent"," Time and We", for which he was expelled from the Union of Journalists of the USSR.
In 1978, due to the persecution of the authorities, Dovlatov emigrated to Vienna, and then moved to New York.
He published the" dashing "liberal emigrant newspaper "New American", from 1980 to 1982 he was its editor in chief.
One after another, books of his prose are published — "The Invisible Book" (1978), "Solo on Underwood" (1980), the stories "Compromise" (1981), "Zone" (1982), "Reserve" (1983), " Our " (1983) , etc.
By the mid 80s, he had achieved great reader success, was published in the prestigious New Yorker magazine, becoming the second Russian writer after Vladimir Nabokov to be published in this solid publication.
During the twelve years of his life in exile, he published a total of twelve books that were published in the United States and Europe.
In the USSR, the writer was known for samizdat and the author's program "The Writer at the microphone" on radio Liberty.
Dovlatov was officially married twice.
From his first marriage with Asya Pekurovskaya, he has a daughter, Maria (b.1970).
Two children — Ekaterina (b. 1966) and Nikolai (b.1984) — from his second wife Elena Dovlatova.
Daughter of Alexander (b. 1975) - from his common law wife Tamara Zibunova.
Sergey Dovlatov died at the age of 49 on August 24, 1990 from heart failure, in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.
He was buried in New York at the Mount Hebron Cemetery.
The grave of Sergei Dovlatov
A tombstone by the New York sculptor Leonid Lerman (source).
Address:
130-04 Horace Harding Expressway
Flushing, NY 11367
Sergei Dovlatov
Block 9, Ref 20, Sec H, Line 14, Grave 4
Cemetery website:
www.mounthebroncemetery.com
* * *
I have to give some details of my biography, otherwise much will remain unclear.
I'll make it short, dotted.
A fat, shy boy...
Poverty...
The mother self critically left the theater and works as a proofreader...
School...
Friendship with Alyosha Lavrentiev, for whom a Ford is coming...
Alyosha is naughty, I am entrusted to educate him...
Then they will take me to the dacha...
I become a little tutor...
I am smarter and have read more...
I know how to please adults...
Black courtyards...
The incipient craving for the plebs...
Dreams of strength and fearlessness...
The funeral of a dead cat behind the sheds...
My funeral speech, which caused the tears of Jeanne, the daughter of an electrician...
I can talk, tell...
Endless twos...
Indifference to the exact sciences...
Co education...
Girls ...
Alla Gorshkova...
My long tongue...
Clumsy epigrams...
The heavy burden of sexual innocence...
the year is 1952.
I am sending four poems to the newspaper" Lenin's Sparks".
One, of course, about Stalin.
Three — about animals...
The first stories.
They are published in the children's magazine "Koster".
They resemble the worst things of average professionals...
Poetry is over forever.
With innocence, too...
A certificate of maturity...
Work experience... a printing house named after Volodarsky...
Cigarettes, wine and men's conversations...
A growing craving for the plebs.
(That is, literally not a single intelligent friend.)
Zhdanov University. (It sounds no worse than "Al Capone University")
...
Philology ...
Truancy...
Student literary exercises...
Endless re examinations...
An unhappy love that ended in marriage...
Acquaintance with young Leningrad poets — Rein, Naiman, Brodsky...
. . .
1960.
A new creative upsurge.
Stories that are vulgar to the extreme.
The theme is loneliness.
The invariable entourage is a party.
Bulging edges of the subtext.
Hemingway as a literary and human ideal...
Short boxing classes...
A divorce marked by a three day drunkenness...
Idleness...
A summons from the military enlistment office...
Three months before that, I left the university.
In the future, I spoke about the reasons for leaving — vaguely.
He mysteriously touched on certain political motives.
In fact, everything was simpler.
I passed the German language exam four times.
And every time he failed.
I didnot know the language at all.
Not a single word.
Except for the names of the leaders of the world proletariat.
And finally I was kicked out.
I, as usual, hinted that I was suffering for the truth.
Then I was drafted into the army.
And I got into the convoy guard.
Obviously, I was destined to go to hell...
("Craft")
* * *
The fate of the writer was invented by his wife
One of the most common myths about Sergei Dovlatov attributes to him don juan tendencies and as many as 200 passions in Leningrad alone.
However, according to people who knew him intimately, Dovlatov was... afraid of women!
And in the life of the writer there were only two passions: he loved one — Asya, and the second — Elena — he owed everything.
He met Asya Pekurovskaya on the filfakovskaya stairs.
Dovlatov loved her madly, but Asya, who soon gave birth to his daughter Masha, preferred the more successful Vasily Aksenov, whose novels were already published in the magazine "Yunost", to the loser Sergei, who was expelled from the university.
When she announced to Dovlatov that she was leaving, he initially threatened suicide.
Seeing that this did not help, he locked himself in a room with his beloved, pointed a gun at her and shouted that he would kill her if she did not stay with him!
But Asya was adamant — and a desperate Dovlatov pulled the trigger…
Fortunately, his hand shook, and the bullet went into the ceiling.
Hearing the shot, his mother burst into the room, and Pekurovskaya managed to escape.
She never came back.
Dovlatov, as he wrote later, noted the departure of his beloved woman with a three day drunkenness.
Only after 18 years, Asya decided to show Dovlatov her daughter, but he treated his child coldly — Masha was too similar to the mother who once abandoned him.
Now Dovlatov's eldest daughter lives in San Francisco and writes slogans for posters, earning for each as much as her father did not receive in his entire life.
They say that he would never have realized himself if not for his second wife, Elena.
Reserved and silent, she had that masculine character that Dovlatov himself lacked so much.
Although he writes that his wife was not at all interested in his prose, it was she who typed the complete collection of his works on a typewriter with her own hands.
One movement of Lenin's eyebrows was enough for Sergei to understand that the story needed to be redone.
It was she, according to family friends, who made all the important decisions in his life.
Despite the fact that once they temporarily separated, Lena continued to live in his apartment with his mother and their daughter Katya.
One day Lena said to Dovlatov: "Here's a poplin shirt for you, and sign on a piece of paper that you donot mind your daughter leaving for America."
And he signed it!
According to some reports, Elena also arranged the emigration.
It all started with a small thing — Sergey went to see Lena and Katya off to the airfield, where he waved his scarf after them for a long time.
Because of the icy wind, his throat immediately ached, and he called the self propelled barge "Altai", where he then worked as a watchman, so that they would take care of him, and he went home.
Without waiting for the doctor, he actively engaged in self medication he drank vodka.
Therefore, the doctor who arrived instead of the hospital stated that Dovlatov was intoxicated.
At this time, on the barge, they were on duty for him and recorded working hours in his name — and this was a natural forgery, for which the authorities subsequently deprived Dovlatov of his job.
Further — more: after his dismissal, he was threatened with being arrested for parasitism, from which he escaped in a very original way.
He bribed a journalist friend for a bottle of vermouth, who was sitting on the first floor and was looking out for the policemen who came for Dovlatov.
As soon as they were announced, the journalist picked up the phone and said two words to Sergei: "They're fucking coming."
At this signal, Dovlatov closed the door on the latch and climbed under the blanket with his head — so he managed to hide for a long time.
However, in addition to the police, the KGB was also hunting for him, where they found out about the publication of Dovlatov's works abroad, which he himself did not even suspect!
They caught him during one of the exits to the store — and in prison, a KGB colonel started a conversation with him from afar: "Sergei Donatovich, do you love your wife?
If you donot want to leave — we will help you…
So Dovlatov found himself overseas, where he married his own wife again.
SOURCE: Sergey DOVLATOV: "I was destined to go to hell"
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