Alexander Isaakovich Gelman
Encyclopedia
Alexander Isaakovich Gelman (born 25 October 1933, Donduşeni
), original given name Shunya , is a Bessarabia
n-born Soviet and Russia
n playwright
, writer
, and screenwriter
.
A survivor of the Holocaust
during childhood, Gelman became a playwright and screenwriter after working as a newspaper journalist in Leningrad
in the 1960s, winning the USSR State Prize
in 1976. He has resided in Moscow
since 1978.
A supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev
's reforms, Gelman was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1989 and to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
upon Mikhail Gorbachev
's recommendation in 1990, before leaving the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
less than a year later.
(now in Moldova
), a Bessarabia
n village that had been part of the Russian Empire
before its Romania
n annexation during the Russian Civil War
and Soviet annexation in 1940. His parents were Isaak Davydovich Gelman (1904—1981) and Manya Shayevna Gelman (1910—1942). After the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941
, the occupying German forces deported the Gelman family to the Bershad
ghetto in Transnistria
, where his mother died. Only Alexander Gelman and his father (from 14 deported members) survived a death march upon leaving the camp near the end of the war.
Gelman graduated from a vocational school
in Chernovtsy, Ukrainian SSR
in 1951 and attended a naval school in Lvov (Lviv) in 1952-1954 and became an officer in the Soviet Navy
, serving between 1954 and 1960 in the Black Sea Fleet
's coastal defense and on the Kamchatka Peninsula
in the Soviet Far East. He also worked in factories and in construction.
In 1966 he moved to Leningrad
, where he worked as a journalist for the municipal newspapers Smena (The Work Shift) and Stroitelny Rabochy (Construction Worker). During this period he started learning and working on screenwriting
.
(with his future wife Tatyana Pavlovna Kaletskaya). It was later filmed as Night Shift. The next screenplay, also together with Tatiana, led to the movie Xenia, Wife of Fyodor (Lenfilm
, 1974), which won an award in a USSR-wide competition.
His career reached an early peak with the 1974 play Protokol odnogo zasedaniya (Minutes of a Meeting, also translated as A Party Committee Meeting) and staged in Leningrad at the Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theater
by Georgy Tovstonogov
and a year later at the Moscow Art Theatre
by Oleg Yefremov
; it was filmed in 1975 as Premiya (Salary Bonus). It depicted a construction crew's rejection of a salary bonus on the grounds that they felt cheated by bad management and poor workplace organization. Acclaimed as a sociological drama, the film won director Sergey Mikaelyan and screenwriter Gelman the USSR State Prize
in 1976. Many people called Protokol odnogo zasedaniya prophetic, "presaging the strikes of summer 1980 and the workers' movement in Poland."
Other plays are Obratnaya svyaz [Feedback] (1976), My, nizhepodpisavshiesya [We, the undersigned] (1979), Skameika [The bench] (1983), Zinulya (1984), and Poslednee budushchee [The most recent future] (2010). Boris Kagarlitsky writes of his plays (through the late 1980s):
Mikhail Gorbachev
's perestroika
and glasnost
package in the 1980s, but in a 1989 interview with David Remnick
of the Washington Post characterized the idea of the liberal politician Boris Yeltsin
taking the place of Gorbachev was "a bit ridiculous". Supporting Gorbachev's new course against its critics, Gelman opined that "If the processes of democratization are halted, if perestroika is thrown out, a moral death awaits our party, the party of Lenin."
In 1990, Gorbachev personally recommended Gelman to become a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
, but left the party months afterward without stepping down from the Committee, prompting his fellow members to take the step of expelling him from the Central Committee afterward. An October 1991 Washington Times article described him as a "vocal anti-communist".
Gelman was a signer of the 1993 Letter of Forty-Two
, an Izvestiya-published open letter
containing a collective appeal by forty-two prominent literati
calling on Russian President
Boris Yeltsin to ban the Communist Party of the Russian Federation
and nationalist
organizations in the wake of the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, a political stand-off between the communist- and nationalist-dominated legislature and the Russian president.
Since 2001 he is a member of public council of the Russian Jewish Congress
.
On October 25, 2008, he received a birthday greeting from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
.
Donduseni
Donduşeni is a city in the north of Moldova. It is the administrative, economic, and cultural center of Donduşeni District. Its postal code is MD-5100. The population at the 2004 census was 9,801.-Demographics:...
), original given name Shunya , is a Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
n-born Soviet and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
.
A survivor of the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
during childhood, Gelman became a playwright and screenwriter after working as a newspaper journalist in Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
in the 1960s, winning the USSR State Prize
USSR State Prize
The USSR State Prize was the Soviet Union's state honour. It was established on September 9, 1966. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the prize was followed up by the State Prize of the Russian Federation....
in 1976. He has resided in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
since 1978.
A supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
's reforms, Gelman was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1989 and to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
upon Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
's recommendation in 1990, before leaving the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
less than a year later.
Early years
Shunya (later renamed Alexander) Gelman was born in DonduşeniDonduseni
Donduşeni is a city in the north of Moldova. It is the administrative, economic, and cultural center of Donduşeni District. Its postal code is MD-5100. The population at the 2004 census was 9,801.-Demographics:...
(now in Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
), a Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
n village that had been part of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
before its Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n annexation during the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
and Soviet annexation in 1940. His parents were Isaak Davydovich Gelman (1904—1981) and Manya Shayevna Gelman (1910—1942). After the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, the occupying German forces deported the Gelman family to the Bershad
Bershad
Bershad , is a small city in the Vinnytsia Oblast of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Bershadsky Raion .The population is around 13,300 ....
ghetto in Transnistria
Transnistria
Transnistria is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine...
, where his mother died. Only Alexander Gelman and his father (from 14 deported members) survived a death march upon leaving the camp near the end of the war.
Gelman graduated from a vocational school
Vocational school
A vocational school , providing vocational education, is a school in which students are taught the skills needed to perform a particular job...
in Chernovtsy, Ukrainian SSR
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...
in 1951 and attended a naval school in Lvov (Lviv) in 1952-1954 and became an officer in the Soviet Navy
Soviet Navy
The Soviet Navy was the naval arm of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy would have played an instrumental role in a Warsaw Pact war with NATO, where it would have attempted to prevent naval convoys from bringing reinforcements across the Atlantic Ocean...
, serving between 1954 and 1960 in the Black Sea Fleet
Black Sea Fleet
The Black Sea Fleet is a large operational-strategic sub-unit of the Russian Navy, operating in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea since the late 18th century. It is based in various harbors of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov....
's coastal defense and on the Kamchatka Peninsula
Kamchatka Peninsula
The Kamchatka Peninsula is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of . It lies between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west...
in the Soviet Far East. He also worked in factories and in construction.
In 1966 he moved to Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
, where he worked as a journalist for the municipal newspapers Smena (The Work Shift) and Stroitelny Rabochy (Construction Worker). During this period he started learning and working on screenwriting
Screenwriting
Screenwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is a freelance profession....
.
Theatrical and movie career
In 1970 he co-authored a screenplayScreenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
(with his future wife Tatyana Pavlovna Kaletskaya). It was later filmed as Night Shift. The next screenplay, also together with Tatiana, led to the movie Xenia, Wife of Fyodor (Lenfilm
Lenfilm
Kinostudiya "Lenfilm" is a production unit of the Russian film industry, with its own film studio, located in Saint Petersburg, Russia, formerly Leningrad, R.S.F.S.R. Today OAO "Kinostudiya Lenfilm" is a corporation with its stakes shared between private owners, and several private film studios,...
, 1974), which won an award in a USSR-wide competition.
His career reached an early peak with the 1974 play Protokol odnogo zasedaniya (Minutes of a Meeting, also translated as A Party Committee Meeting) and staged in Leningrad at the Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theater
Tovstonogov Theater
Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater , formerly known as Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theater , often referred to as the Bolshoi Drama Theater and by the acronym BDT , is a theater in Saint Petersburg, that is considered one of the best Russian theaters...
by Georgy Tovstonogov
Georgy Tovstonogov
Georgy Alexandrovich Tovstonogov was a Russian theatre director, the leader of Saint Petersburg Bolshoi Academic Theatre of Drama , which now bears his name.-Biography:...
and a year later at the Moscow Art Theatre
Moscow Art Theatre
The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow that the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded in 1898. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas...
by Oleg Yefremov
Oleg Yefremov
Oleg Nikolayevich Yefremov was a Soviet/Russian actor and Moscow Art Theatre producer. People's Artist of the USSR , Hero of Socialist Labour ....
; it was filmed in 1975 as Premiya (Salary Bonus). It depicted a construction crew's rejection of a salary bonus on the grounds that they felt cheated by bad management and poor workplace organization. Acclaimed as a sociological drama, the film won director Sergey Mikaelyan and screenwriter Gelman the USSR State Prize
USSR State Prize
The USSR State Prize was the Soviet Union's state honour. It was established on September 9, 1966. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the prize was followed up by the State Prize of the Russian Federation....
in 1976. Many people called Protokol odnogo zasedaniya prophetic, "presaging the strikes of summer 1980 and the workers' movement in Poland."
Other plays are Obratnaya svyaz [Feedback] (1976), My, nizhepodpisavshiesya [We, the undersigned] (1979), Skameika [The bench] (1983), Zinulya (1984), and Poslednee budushchee [The most recent future] (2010). Boris Kagarlitsky writes of his plays (through the late 1980s):
Gel'man is free from naïve technocratic illusions; he knows economic reality other than by hearsay.... Real people appear on the stage. Instead of Shatrov's faceless technocrats we see live production-workers who turn out to be very different, unlike each other, complex, unexpected.... Gel'man's most recent plays ... localize the conflict, so to speak - confine it to a small group of people. More and more attention is paid to the conduct of particular individuals. ... There are no workers here. This is the world of lower and middle-ranking 'chiefs'. Bureaucracy. A milieu in which honesty is impossible, unattainable, having been eradicated. Love for one's job and confidence in one's rightness are also unattainable.... We behold the anatomy of the bureaucratic world, its mechanisms, the Mafia-like bonds among the bureaucratic cliques, the formation of a 'clientage', and all the relationships that result.
Political career
Elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1989, Gelman was an outspoken supporter of liberal changes and of General SecretaryGeneral Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title given to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With some exceptions, the office was synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union...
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
's perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
and glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
package in the 1980s, but in a 1989 interview with David Remnick
David Remnick
David Remnick is an American journalist, writer, and magazine editor. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker magazine since 1998. He was named "Editor of the Year" by Advertising Age in 2000...
of the Washington Post characterized the idea of the liberal politician Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
taking the place of Gorbachev was "a bit ridiculous". Supporting Gorbachev's new course against its critics, Gelman opined that "If the processes of democratization are halted, if perestroika is thrown out, a moral death awaits our party, the party of Lenin."
In 1990, Gorbachev personally recommended Gelman to become a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
, but left the party months afterward without stepping down from the Committee, prompting his fellow members to take the step of expelling him from the Central Committee afterward. An October 1991 Washington Times article described him as a "vocal anti-communist".
Gelman was a signer of the 1993 Letter of Forty-Two
Letter of Forty-Two
The Letter of Forty-Two was an open letter signed by forty-two well-known Russian literati, aimed at Russian society, the president and government, in reaction to the events of September – October 1993...
, an Izvestiya-published open letter
Open letter
An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally....
containing a collective appeal by forty-two prominent literati
Literati
Literati may refer to:*Intellectuals or those who read and comment on literature*The scholar-bureaucrats or literati of imperial China**Literati painting, also known as the Southern School of painting, developed by Chinese literati...
calling on Russian President
President of the Russian Federation
The President of the Russian Federation is the head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office within the Russian Federation...
Boris Yeltsin to ban the Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is a Russian political party. It is the second major political party in the Russian Federation.-History:...
and nationalist
Russian nationalism
Russian nationalism is a term referring to a Russian form of nationalism. Russian nationalism has a long history dating from the days of Muscovy to Russian Empire, and continued in some form in the Soviet Union. It is closely related to Pan-Slavism...
organizations in the wake of the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, a political stand-off between the communist- and nationalist-dominated legislature and the Russian president.
Since 2001 he is a member of public council of the Russian Jewish Congress
Russian Jewish Congress
The Russian Jewish Congress is a non-profit charitable fund and the largest secular organisation of Russian Jews. It was established in 1996 by the initiative group of the Jewish businessmen, active workers and religious figures for revival of the Jewish life in Russia...
.
On October 25, 2008, he received a birthday greeting from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is the third President of the Russian Federation.Born to a family of academics, Medvedev graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987. He defended his dissertation in 1990 and worked as a docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint...
.
List of literary works
- Что сначала, что потом // ЛГ. — 1986. — Sep 10
- Перестройка: обратные связи // ИК. — 1987. — № 9
- Время собирания сил // Сов. культура. — 1988. — Apr 9
- Вопросы и мысли // ИК. — 1988. — № 9
- У нас в запасе нет вечности // ИК. — 1989. — № 1
- Как быть с консерваторами? // ИК. — 1989. — № 4
- Не выверни свободу наизнанку // ИК. — 1989. — № 7
- После съезда — перед съездом // ИК. — 1989. — № 8
- Кино и будущее // СФ. — 1989. — № 8
- Демократия — это человечность // Сов. культура. — 1989. — Nov 4
- Принципы и компромиссы // ИК. — 1989. — № 11
- Грех упрощенчества // ИК. — 1990. — № 1
- Третий фронт // ИК. — 1990. — № 4
- Другие — это мы // ИК. — 1990. — № 5
- Тоска… // ИК. — 1990. — № 11
- Игра в бессмертие // ИК. — 1991. — № 1
- Они должны знать // ИК. — 1991. — № 3
- Нельзя без зимы // ИК. — 1991. — № 4
- Дожить бы до смерти // ИК. — 1991. — № 5
- Откровенно говоря // ИК. — 1991. — № 7
- Сверху вниз, снизу вверх // ИК. — 1991. — № 10
- Август // ИК. — 1991. — № 11
- Народ, начальство и мы // ИК. — 1992. — № 1
- Если выставить в музее шестидесятника // ИК. — 1992. — № 4
- Новые чувства, истины старые // ИК. — 1992. — № 5
- Жажда врага // ИК. — 1992. — № 9
- На зимнюю трезвую голову // ИК. — 1992. — № 12
- Демократия и мы // ЭиС. — 1993. — 28 окт. — 4 ноября
- Апостол Павел и мы // МН. — 1994. — 23 — 30 окт.
- Две с половиной культуры // ТЖ. — 1995. — № 10
- Не свободой единой // МН. — 1997. — 23 — 30 марта
- Моя революция // МН. — 1997. — 2 — 9 ноября
- Итоги без дороги // ЛГ. — 1999. — 21 окт
Filmography
- 1970 Ночная смена
- 1974 Ксения, любимая жена Федора
- 1974 Премия
- 1977 Обратная связь
- 1979 Неудобный человек (СССР) screenplay co-authored with Movchan
- 1980 Мы, нижеподписавшиеся
- 1986 Зина-зинуля
- 1990 Мы странно встретились
- 2001 Горбачев. После империи.
- 2004 ArieArie (film)Arie is a 2004 Russian film by Roman Kachanov, a story of Russian and Jewish life.- Plot :Izrael Arie, a Lithuanian Jew and a world-renowned Moscow heart surgeon, learns that he has only six months to live because of pancreatic cancer...
(Россия/Израиль/Литва), screenplay co-authored with Roman Kachanov
External links
- http://www.biograph.ru/bank/gelman.htm
- http://www.sem40.ru/famous2/m1359.shtml