Yuz Aleshkovsky
Soviet and Russian writer, poet, and playwright (1929—2022)
Iosif Efimovich Aleshkovsky (Russian: Ио́сиф Ефи́мович Алешко́вский), known as Yuz Aleshkovsky (Russian: Юз Алешко́вский) (September 21, 1929 – March 21, 2022) was a modern Russian writer, poet, screenwriter, and bard, namely performer of his own songs.
Biography
Yuz Aleshkovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia in 1929, when his Russian Jewish family resided there briefly for his father's business. Three months later his family returned to Moscow. His high school studies were interrupted due to his family's evacuation during the Second World War.
In 1949 Aleshkovsky was drafted into the Soviet Navy, but because of breaking the disciplinary code, he had to serve four years in jail (1950–1953). After serving the term, Aleshkovsky moved back to Moscow and began writing books for children.
Aleshkovsky also wrote songs and performed them. Some, especially "Товарищ Сталин, вы большой ученый" (Comrade Stalin, you are a great scholar) and "Окурочек" (Little cigarette butt), became extremely popular in the Soviet Union and are considered folk classics.
Aleshkovsky also wrote screenplays for movies and television and was accepted into the Union of Soviet Writers.
From the very beginning of his career, Aleshkovsky did not compromise his writing to conform to official Soviet doctrine, and for this reason his novellas and novels were available only in samizdat.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Yuz Aleshkovsky” is soviet and Russian writer, poet, and playwright (1929—2022). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Aleshkovsky, Soviet and Russian, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4062196. VIAF identifies the subject as 22293812. The Library of Congress control number is n81027911. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929, 2022, 1949 and 1950.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yuz Aleshkovsky” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.