Felix Svetov

Felix Grigoryevich Svetov (; 28 November 1927 – 2 September 2002) was a Russian writer, journalist, human rights activist and dissident. He received wide recognition for his novels and short stories, published exclusively in samizdat and tamizdat. He was also included in the Literary Collection of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Svetov was persecuted for his human rights activities in the USSR.

Biography

Felix Grigoryevich Fridlyand was born on 28 November 1927 in Moscow, USSR to Soviet historian and his wife, Nekhama (Nadezhda) Lvovna Fridlyand . In 1937, when Felix was nine years old, his father was murdered by the Soviet authorities during the Great Purge. His mother was sentenced to eight years in a work camp in Potma, Zubovo-Polyansky District, Republic of Mordovia. In 1951, having changed his surname to Svetov, he graduated from the . Svetov was married to writer Zoya Krakhmalnikova.

After a year in the Matrosskaya Tishina prison, he was sentenced to 5 years of exile and sent to Altai to his wife. While being exiled they were asked to write a "statement requesting a pardon", but they refused to do so.

In 1987, Svetov and Krakhmalnikova were released and returned to Moscow as part of Gorbachev's democratic campaign to free political prisoners. In 1990, Svetov was reinstated in Union of Soviet Writers. Many of his works have been published in the West. In Russia, he was published in the magazines Frontiers, Syntax, and Nadezhda. Svetov said that "Putin is a typical KGB type. If the snow is falling, they will calmly tell you, the sun is shining." and was buried in Moscow at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery. Sergei Chuprinin, the editor-in-chief of Znamya, said Svetov "thought first of all about making people freer".

On 7 January 2002, Svetov received gratitude from the president of Russia for his active participation in the work of the pardon commission under the president of Russia.

In 2002, Svetov's novel Chizhik-Pyzhik (reference to the original Chizhik-Pyzhik) was nominated for the . Russian journalist Zoya Svetova is a daughter of Svetov.