Звезда Маир = Zvezda Mair

Créteil: Poiski, 1983. First Edition (presumed; no prior editions or printings cited). 207 pages; 16 cm. Near fine. Paperback.

In Russian. Tamizdat. Fiction. Romans. Uncommon. Anatoly Emmanuilovich Krasnov-Levitin (1915–1991) was born in Baku. His father, a pre-revolutionary justice of the peace from a wealthy Jewish family, had converted to Orthodoxy, and his mother came from a priestly line. He called himself a “church writer” and a Christian socialist, and took the pseudonym “Krasnov” (from krasnyi, “red”) to signal his socialist convictions. After Stalin-era imprisonment he became one of the most prolific samizdat (self-published, hand-circulated) voices defending persecuted believers and, more broadly, human rights. He was tried again in 1970–71, a case that drew attention in the dissident press. After emigrating in 1974 he became a regular presence on Radio Liberty. He settled in Switzerland and died in Lucerne. The present volume belongs to the long run of works he issued through the émigré Paris press Poiski in the 1980s, after his four-part memoir cycle (beginning with Likhie gody, Paris: YMCA-Press, 1977). Like the rest of his exile writing, it combines personal testimony with polemic on Soviet church and political life.