Material is unprocessed. Please contact rbml@columbia.edu for more information.
This collection is located on-site.
Correspondence, published and unpublished manuscripts, photographs, personal documents and ephemera of Arkadii Belinkov (1921-1970), a well-known Soviet writer and dissident.
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Material is unprocessed. Please contact rbml@columbia.edu for more information.
This collection is located on-site.
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Arkadii Belinkov Papers; Box and Folder; Bakhmeteff Archive; Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, Columbia University Library.
Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. Contact rbml@columbia.edu for more information.
Purchase, Dmitry Rachmanov, 2019.
Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Belinkov received his higher education at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute and Moscow State University. During World War II, he was briefly employed as a correspondent for the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia. He wrote a number of literary works, including fiction and critiques.
In January 1944, during Joseph Stalin's rule, Belinkov wrote a novel called A Diary of Feelings that was tacitly circulated and read by friends and acquaintances. An anonymous informant leaked this information to the authorities, and Belinkov was arrested and initially sentenced to death. Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Viktor Shklovsky interceded for him: the execution was replaced by eight years of imprisonment in Karlag (Karaganda Gulag branch). However, while serving his sentence in 1950–1951, Belinkov wrote some anticommunist articles, and his sentence was increased by 25 years.
Upon release from prison, Belinkov returned to Moscow in the autumn of 1956, during the Khrushchev Thaw. He returned to writing, but his literary works contained anti-Soviet pathos that was incompatible with the official dogma of the time. He was allowed, however, to work as a literary scholar, and his biographical/analytical work Yury Tynyanov was received so enthusiastically that two editions appeared in a short space of time.
In 1968 Belinkov and his wife Natalia fled the Soviet Union. After a while they arrived in the United States, at New Haven, Connecticut. He found work as a lecturer at several universities, including Yale.
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches for other collections at Columbia University, through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, and through ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
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| Subject | ||
|---|---|---|
| Dissenters -- Soviet Union -- Correspondence | CLIO Catalog | ArchiveGRID |