[KALKI]

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zinovyev[1] (October 29, 1922 – May 10, 2006) was a prominent Russian logician and dissident writer of social critique.

Born to a poor provincial family, he distinguished himself in the Second World War and later in the scholarship of logic. In the 1970s he arose with criticum of the Soviet political system, sacrificing his high academical station in Moscow. Eventually Zinoviev faced exile in 1978, after his novels Yawning Heights and The Radiant Future were published in Europe. He continued to develop his socio-philosophical ideas in subsequent publications, at times employing his original genre of the sociological novel.

After the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Zinovyev wrote a book A Russian Tragedy (Русская Трагедия) about the USSR's collapse, calling it a catastrophe. In his later life, he championed the Soviet system and regarded post-Soviet Russia with disdain. He considered Stalin as one of the greatest personalities in history

Scientific work in Moscow

In 1946 Alexander Zinoviev entered Moscow State University; he since told that his ban from higher education was overlooked for a bribe – a box of sweets. He graduated in 1951 summa cum laude with a thesis[3] on the logical structure of Marx’ Das Kapital. During the following decades he became one of the most important logicians of the USSR.

As professor and head of Logic department at MSU, Zinoviev accumulated a subtly dissident reputation, having refused to expel politically discriminated staff, and, in a gesture of protest against Brezhnev’s cult of personality, resigned from the editorial board of “Problems of Philosophy”, the leading Soviet journal on philosophy at that time.