Andrei Siniavsky, who is probably better known by the literary pen name of “Abram Tertz” (or “Terts”), was one of the most important figures (second, perhaps, only to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) in the Soviet literary dissident movement, and then in the “third emigration”. For several decades, indeed, Siniavsky (as his principal English-language critic, Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, has put it) “pursued two separate but complementary writing careers – one under his own name and the other under his pseudonym Abram Terts”.

From 1959 a series of unusual Russian literary works began to appear in the West (initially in French translation) under the authorship of “Abram Tertz”. A strikingly original critical essay, “Chto takoe sotsial

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First published 24 June 2004

Citation: Cornwell, Neil. "Andrei Siniavsky". The Literary Encyclopedia. 24 June 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5760, accessed 9 February 2010.]