Semyon Lipkin

Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin (6 September 1911 – 31 March 2003) was a Russian writer, poet, and literary translator.

Lipkin's work gained wider recognition after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was supported by his wife, poet Inna Lisnyanskaya. Lipkin was a close friend of Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Lipkin's poetry explores themes of history and philosophy.

His poems reference his Jewish heritage and the Bible, and draw on his experiences in World War II and the Great Purge. Lipkin's opposition to the Soviet regime became public in 1979-1980 when he contributed to the uncensored almanac "Metropol." Subsequently, he and Lisnyanskaya left the Union of Soviet Writers.

Early years Lipkin was born in Odessa to Israel and Rosalia Lipkin on September 6, 1911. He was of Jewish ethnicity. His father, a tailor, was active in the Menshevik movement. Lipkin's early education included Hebrew and Torah instruction. He also immersed himself in the cultures of the languages he translated, including Abkhaz, Akkadian, Buryat, Dagestani, Karbardinian, Kalmyk, Kirghiz, Tatar, Tadjik-Farsi and Uzbek. He famously hid a typescript of Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate from the KGB, initiating its journey to the West. Lipkin's translations and literary work earned him numerous accolades, including the title of Kalmykia National Poet (1967) and Hero of Kalmykia (2001).

Poetry

Prose

Translations by Semyon Lipkin

English translations of Semyon Lipkin’s work

After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin, translation by Yvonne Green. London: Smith/Doorstop, 2011. Testimony from the Literary Memoirs of Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin translation by Yvonne Green. (Hendon Press, 2023) A Close Reading of Fifty-three poems by Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin translation by Yvonne Green.(Hendon Press, 2023)

French translations of Semyon Lipkin’s work Le Destin de Vassili Grossman (L'Age d'Homme 1990) tr Alexis Berelowitch L'histoire d'Alim Safarov, écrivain russe du Caucase (Dekada [Decade]). La Tour-d'Aigues: Editions de l'Aube, 2008.

Friendship with Vasily Grossman

In 1961, the manuscript for Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate was confiscated by the KGB. Semyon Lipkin hid a copy at his dacha and later gave it to Elena Makarova and Sergei Makarov for safekeeping. (Elena Makarova was Lipkin's stepdaughter, and Sergei Makarov her husband.) In 1975, Lipkin enlisted Vladimir Voinovich and Andrey Sakharov to smuggle the manuscript to the West, leading to its publication in 1980. In 2013, Grossman's manuscript was released from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art.

Chronology of historical events impacting Lipkin and his writing