Lev Navrozov
Encyclopedia
Lev Navrozov is a Russia
n author, historian and polemicist and father of poet Andrei Navrozov
. A leading translator of Russian texts into English under the Soviet regime
, Navrozov emigrated to the United States
in 1972, where he published a best-selling memoir, The Education of Lev Navrozov
, and became a prominent Russian dissident.
Andrei Navrozov (after whom his son was named), a founding member of the Soviet Writers’ Union
, who volunteered in World War II
and was killed in action in 1941. After completing the course at Moscow Power Engineering Institute
, did not take the degree, switching to the exclusive Referent Faculty of the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages, a faculty created by Joseph Stalin
's personal order to produce a new generation of experts with a superior knowledge of Western languages and cultures. On graduation in 1953 was offered a "promising position" at the Soviet Embassy in London, with the attendant obligation to join the Communist Party
. Declined both offers, and thenceforth refused all government posts or academic affiliations as a matter of principle. Regarded as a unique expert on the English-speaking countries, but only ever worked as a freelance.
, Hertzen
and Prishvin
, as well as philosophy
and fundamental science in 72 fields. In 1965, still freelance but now exploiting what amounted to his virtual monopoly over English translations for publication, acquired a country house in Vnukovo, sixteen miles from Moscow, in a privileged settlement where such Soviet nabobs as Andrei Gromyko
, then Foreign Minister, and former Politburo
member Panteleimon Ponomarenko
had their country houses.
with wife and son, after receiving a special invitation from the U.S. State Department arranged through the intercession of several politically influential American friends. During 1972-1980 he contributed articles to Commentary
, including the scandalous 1978 publication of the articles "What the CIA Knows About Russia," which Admiral Stansfield Turner
publicly admitted he was unable to rebut, and "Notes on American Innocence," which resulted in an unsuccessful $3 million action for defamation brought against the author by the former Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir
.
. The book recounts the contemporary effects of Joseph Stalin
's public relations
campaign in the aftermath of the assassination of rival Sergei Kirov. "It bids fair to take its place beside the works of Laurence Sterne
and Henry Adams," wrote the American philosopher Sidney Hook
, "… but it is far richer in scope and more gripping in content." Eugene Lyons
, author of the pioneering 1937 work Assignment in Utopia, described the book as "uniquely revealing," while Robert Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra
, wrote of the author’s "individual genius." Saul Bellow
, the Nobel-prize winning novelist, responded to The Education by using Navrozov as the model for a modern Russian dissident thinker in two of his books, thereby beginning a lively correspondence that continued until the American novelist's death. In particular, the narrator of More Die of Heartbreak describes Navrozov, along with Sinyavsky
, Vladimir Maximov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
, as one of his epoch's "commanding figures" and "men of genius."
. He was the founder, in 1979, of the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, a non-profit educational organisation whose original Advisory Board brought together Saul Bellow
, Malcolm Muggeridge
, Dr. Edward Teller
, Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham
, the Hon. Clare Boothe Luce
, Mihajlo Mihajlov, Sen. Jesse Helms
, and Eugene Ionesco
.
; and the need for the United States to counter this threat with its own nanoweapon research.http://www.newsmax.com/navrozov/npr_china_obama/2009/01/09/169552.html He often cites Eric Drexler as the inspiration for this interest.http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/lev1_04.asp
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 author, historian and polemicist and father of poet Andrei Navrozov
Andrei Navrozov
Andrei Navrozov, poet and writer, was born in Moscow in 1956, grandson of the playwright Andrei Navrozov , son of the essayist and translator Lev Navrozov .- Early life :...
. A leading translator of Russian texts into English under the Soviet regime
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, Navrozov emigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1972, where he published a best-selling memoir, The Education of Lev Navrozov
The Education of Lev Navrozov
The Education of Lev Navrozov: A Life in the Closed World Once Called Russia is a memoir of life in the Soviet Union by Lev Navrozov, the first of seven volumes...
, and became a prominent Russian dissident.
Early life
Navrozov was born to playwrightPlaywright
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...
Andrei Navrozov (after whom his son was named), a founding member of the Soviet Writers’ Union
USSR Union of Writers
The USSR Union of Writers, or Union of Soviet Writers was a creative union of professional writers in the USSR. It was founded in 1932 on the initiative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party after disbanding a number of other writers' organizations: RAPP, Proletkult, and VOAPP.The aim of...
, who volunteered in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and was killed in action in 1941. After completing the course at Moscow Power Engineering Institute
Moscow Power Engineering Institute
Moscow Power Engineering Institute is one of the largest and leading technical universities in the world in the area of power engineering, electronics and IT...
, did not take the degree, switching to the exclusive Referent Faculty of the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages, a faculty created by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's personal order to produce a new generation of experts with a superior knowledge of Western languages and cultures. On graduation in 1953 was offered a "promising position" at the Soviet Embassy in London, with the attendant obligation to join the Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
. Declined both offers, and thenceforth refused all government posts or academic affiliations as a matter of principle. Regarded as a unique expert on the English-speaking countries, but only ever worked as a freelance.
Position as translator
Navrozov was the first, and to date the last, inhabitant of Russia to translate for publication works of literature from his native tongue into a foreign language, including those by DostoevskyFyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....
, Hertzen
Alexander Herzen
Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen was a Russian pro-Western writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism", and one of the main fathers of agrarian populism...
and Prishvin
Mikhail Prishvin
Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin was a Russian/Soviet writer.Mikhail Prishvin was born in the family mansion of Krutschevo, near the city of Yelets in what is now Lipetsk Oblast into the family of a merchant. In 1893-1897, he studied at a polytechnic school in Riga and was once arrested for his...
, as well as philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and fundamental science in 72 fields. In 1965, still freelance but now exploiting what amounted to his virtual monopoly over English translations for publication, acquired a country house in Vnukovo, sixteen miles from Moscow, in a privileged settlement where such Soviet nabobs as Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet . Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1987. In the West he was given the...
, then Foreign Minister, and former Politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
member Panteleimon Ponomarenko
Panteleimon Ponomarenko
Panteleimon Kondrat'evich Ponomarenko ; 9 August 1902 18 January 1984) was a general in the Red Army before becoming a Soviet administrator in Belarus and then Kazakhstan. He was born in Krasnodar Krai, Russia....
had their country houses.
Dissident historian
In 1953 he began his clandestine documented study of the history of the Soviet regime, working on a cycle of books in the hope of smuggling the manuscript abroad. During this period he published translations only, publishing no original work in view of the unacceptable limits imposed by censorship. In 1972 he emigrated to the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
with wife and son, after receiving a special invitation from the U.S. State Department arranged through the intercession of several politically influential American friends. During 1972-1980 he contributed articles to Commentary
Commentary (magazine)
Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
, including the scandalous 1978 publication of the articles "What the CIA Knows About Russia," which Admiral Stansfield Turner
Stansfield Turner
Stansfield M. Turner is a retired Admiral and former Director of Central Intelligence. He is currently a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Policy....
publicly admitted he was unable to rebut, and "Notes on American Innocence," which resulted in an unsuccessful $3 million action for defamation brought against the author by the former Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir
Golda Meir
Golda Meir ; May 3, 1898 – December 8, 1978) was a teacher, kibbutznik and politician who became the fourth Prime Minister of the State of Israel....
.
The Education of Lev Navrozov
In 1975, Harper & Row published the first volume of his study of the Soviet regime from within, The Education of Lev NavrozovThe Education of Lev Navrozov
The Education of Lev Navrozov: A Life in the Closed World Once Called Russia is a memoir of life in the Soviet Union by Lev Navrozov, the first of seven volumes...
. The book recounts the contemporary effects of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
campaign in the aftermath of the assassination of rival Sergei Kirov. "It bids fair to take its place beside the works of Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
and Henry Adams," wrote the American philosopher Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was known for his criticisms of...
, "… but it is far richer in scope and more gripping in content." Eugene Lyons
Eugene Lyons
Eugene Lyons was an American journalist and writer. A fellow traveler of the Communist Party in his younger years, Lyons became highly critical of the Soviet Union after having lived there for several years as a correspondent of United Press International...
, author of the pioneering 1937 work Assignment in Utopia, described the book as "uniquely revealing," while Robert Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra
Nicholas and Alexandra
Nicholas and Alexandra is a 1971 biographical film which tells the story of the last Russian monarch, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra....
, wrote of the author’s "individual genius." Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
, the Nobel-prize winning novelist, responded to The Education by using Navrozov as the model for a modern Russian dissident thinker in two of his books, thereby beginning a lively correspondence that continued until the American novelist's death. In particular, the narrator of More Die of Heartbreak describes Navrozov, along with Sinyavsky
Andrei Sinyavsky
Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky was a Russian writer, dissident, political prisoner, emigrant, Professor of Sorbonne University, magazine founder and publisher...
, Vladimir Maximov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
, as one of his epoch's "commanding figures" and "men of genius."
Later life
After 1975, Navrozov published several thousand magazine articles and newspaper columns, which, however diverse the subjects drawing his attention and commentary, have a common theme, namely the incapacity of the West to survive in the present era of increasingly sophisticated totalitarianismTotalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
. He was the founder, in 1979, of the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, a non-profit educational organisation whose original Advisory Board brought together Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
, Malcolm Muggeridge
Malcolm Muggeridge
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy...
, Dr. Edward Teller
Edward Teller
Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb," even though he did not care for the title. Teller made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy , and surface physics...
, Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham
Daniel O. Graham
Daniel O. Graham was a U.S. Army officer. Graham was born in Portland, Oregon and grew up in Medford. He attended college at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Army's Command and General Staff College, and graduated in 1946. He also attended the U.S...
, the Hon. Clare Boothe Luce
Clare Boothe Luce
Clare Boothe Luce was an American playwright, editor, journalist, ambassador, socialite and U.S. Congresswoman, representing the state of Connecticut.-Early life:...
, Mihajlo Mihajlov, Sen. Jesse Helms
Jesse Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...
, and Eugene Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
.
Current work
Navrozov is concerned with the possibility that China is developing deadly weapons based on nanotechnologyNanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
; and the need for the United States to counter this threat with its own nanoweapon research.http://www.newsmax.com/navrozov/npr_china_obama/2009/01/09/169552.html He often cites Eric Drexler as the inspiration for this interest.http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/lev1_04.asp