Alexander Esenin-Volpin



Alexander Sergeyevich Esenin-Volpin (Russian: Александр Сергеевич Есенин-Вольпин) is a prominent Russian-American mathematician.

Born on May 12 1924 in the former Soviet Union, he was a notable dissident, political prisoner, poet, and mathematician. Volpin was a leader of the human rights movement and he spent total of fourteen years incarcerated and repressed by the Soviet authorities in prisons, psikhushkas and exile.

His mother, Nadezhda Volpin, was a poet and translator from French and English. His father was Sergei Esenin, a Russian poet, who never knew his son. He and his mother moved from Leningrad to Moscow in 1933. In 1946 Esenin-Volpin graduated from Moscow State University. He wrote and often publicly read his poetry.

Volpin-Esenin was free from conscription due to "psychiatric" reasons. His psychiatric imprisonments took place in 1949 for "anti-Soviet poetry", in 1959 for smuggling abroad samizdat, including his Свободный философский трактат (Free Philosophical Tractate), and again in 1968. Vladimir Bukovsky was quoted as saying that Volpin's diagnosis was "pathological honesty". 

In September 1950, Volpin was exiled for five years to Karaganda as a "socially dangerous element". In 1953, after the death of Joseph Stalin, he was amnestied. Soon he became a known mathematician specializing in the fields of ultrafinitism and intuitionism.

Volpin was the first dissident in the history of the Soviet Union who proclaimed that it is possible and necessary to defend human rights by strictly observing the law.

On December 5 1965, the Soviet Constitution Day, he organized a legendary "митинг гласности" (the glasnost meeting), a demonstration at the Pushkin Square in the center of Moscow. Western journalists were invited to provide press coverage. The leaflets written by Volpin and distributed by samizdat method, asserted that recent arrest of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel violates Article 3 of the Soviet constitution and Article 18 of RSFSR Criminal Code. The meeting was attended by about 200 people, many of whom turned out to be KGB operatives. The slogans read: "Требуем гласности суда над Синявским и Даниэлем" (We demand an open trial for Sinyavski and Daniel) and "Уважайте советскую конституцию" (Respect the Soviet constitution). The demonstrators were promptly arrested.

In 1968 he circulated his famous "Памятка для тех, кому предстоят допросы" (Memo for those who expects to be interrogated) Text (in Russian) widely used by fellow dissidents. In 1970, Volpin joined the Human Rights Committee of the USSR and worked with Yuri Orlov, Andrei Sakharov and other activists.

In May 1972, he emigrated to the United States, but his citizenship was not revoked as was customary at the time. He worked at Boston University. In 2005 Esenin-Volpin participated in "They Chose Freedom", a four-part television documentary on the history of the Soviet dissident movement.

In Russian

 * Bio & Bibliography
 * Bio & writings at Anthology of Samizdat
 * Poetry
 * Interview at Radio Liberty

Alexander Jessenin-Wolpin Есенин-Вольпин, Александр Сергеевич Єсенін-Вольпін Олександр Сергійович