Iurii Dombrovskii/ Yury Dombrovsky was born in Moscow in 1909. His mother, Lidiia Alekseevna Kraineva, of Polish origin, was a Biology teacher, and his father, Iosif Vital’evich, of Jewish origin, a lawyer. Dombrovskii often played with his national identity. At different stages in his life, he had called himself Jewish, Polish and Russian, and after many years in labour camps decided to adopt the identity of a Gypsy. In a short exposé written about Gypsies, “Tsygane shumnoiu tolpoi” [“In a Boisterous Crowd the Gypsies...”], published posthumously in
Voprosy literatury[
Literary Questions] in 1983 and written in the mid-60s, Dombrovskii explains that he sees the identity of a Gypsy as a way of life, rather than as a genetic lineage. It was the love of freedom that the Gypsy…
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Citation: Shulga, Jekaterina. "Yury Osipovich Dombrovsky". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 May 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12908, accessed 04 December 2024.]