Alexander Zinoviev

Who was Alexander Zinoviev?

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zinovyev was a prominent Russian logician and dissident writer of social critique.

Born to a poor provincial family, he distinguished himself in the Second World War and later in the scholarship of logic. In the 1970s he arose with criticum of the Soviet political system, sacrificing his high academical station in Moscow. Eventually Zinoviev faced exile in 1978, after his novels Yawning Heights and The Radiant Future were published in Europe. He continued to develop his socio-philosophical ideas in subsequent publications, at times employing his original genre of the sociological novel.

After the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Zinovyev wrote a book A Russian Tragedy about the USSR's collapse, calling it a catastrophe. In his later life, he championed the Soviet system and regarded post-Soviet Russia with disdain. He considered Stalin as one of the greatest personalities in history.