Before his arrest in 1965 for smuggling “anti-Soviet propaganda,” Andrei Sinyavsky was a senior research associate at the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow and had become a well-known literary critic, focusing primarily on modern Russian literature. After emigrating to Paris in 1973, he published more criticism as well as book-length literary essays. The works that led to his arrest, however, were, except for the literary essay Chto takoe sotsialisticheskii realizm (1959; On Socialist Realism, 1960), fiction: two novels and some half-dozen stories. All appeared in the West under the pseudonym Abram Tertz. He also wrote a book of aphorisms, Mysli vrasplokh (1966; Unguarded Thoughts, 1972), and the nonfiction works Soviet Civilization: A Cultural History (1990) and The Russian Intelligentsia (1997).

Andrei Sinyavsky’s literary efforts served as a daring challenge to the tenets of Socialist Realism, the doctrine that was supposed to guide Soviet authors in their choice of subject matter as well as in their treatment of it. His essay On Socialist Realism, written in 1956, at the height of the post-Stalinist thaw, contained an attack on the very conjunction of the words “socialist” and “realism,” as well as a historical analysis of the manner in which the doctrine had harmed Soviet literature. His own underground fiction was both antisocialist, in his effort to include a religious dimension antithetical to Marxism, and antirealistic with a strong inclination toward the fantastic and the grotesque. The consequences of writing in isolation as well as of determinedly breaking with the dominant tradition sometimes show—he occasionally seems to be trying too hard for effect or to make a point—but Sinyavsky nevertheless stands as a writer who helped undermine the influence of Socialist Realism.

Along with his fellow writer Yuli Daniel he also helped popularize the very notions of samizdat (self-publishing) and tamizdat (publishing “there,” or abroad). Despite the government’s persecution of these two authors, many others throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s came to write outside the permissible norms—sometimes circulating their work privately, sometimes attempting to publish outside the Soviet Union, and sometimes simply writing “for the drawer.” His example did much to help a clandestine Soviet literature flourish during a trying period. In 1978, Sinyavsky received the Bennett Award from the Grolier Club.

Andrei Sinyavsky (sihn-YAHV-skee) is the author of an important book-length essay, Chto takoe sotsialisticheskii realizm (1959; On Socialist Realism, 1960), published under the pseudonym Abram Tertz, in which he maintains with some humor that realism is not the proper medium for the mythmaking inherent in a communist society. Because he believed that the grandiose neoclassicism inherited from eighteenth century Russian literature had also become inadequate, Sinyavsky proposed that the more appropriate genre would be fantasy, and he himself became a writer of fantasy. His collection Fantasticheskie povesti (1961; Fantastic Stories, 1963; also known as The Icicle, and Other Stories, 1963), including a novella and several short stories, is surrealistic, an excursion into the literature of the absurd. Mysli vrasplokh (1966; as Tertz; Unguarded Thoughts, 1972), a collection of aphorisms, came as a revelation to Sinyavsky’s Western readers, disclosing for the first time his profound faith as a Russian Orthodox believer.

In addition to these works, all of which were signed with the pen name Abram Tertz and published abroad before his arrest, Sinyavsky has published a number of important critical studies, including an introductory essay to Boris Pasternak’s Stikhotvoreniya i poemy (1965, 1976; verses and poems); an analysis of the nineteenth century writer Nikolai Gogol, V teni Gogolya (1975; in the shadow of Gogol); and a book on the poet Alexander Pushkin, Progulki s Pushkinym (1975; walks with Pushkin). Sinyavsky’s