AGI – Russian poet Lev Rubinstein, a dissident intellectual during the Soviet era and highly critical of the current president, died Sunday at age 76, just days after he was run over in Moscow. His daughter announced it.
“My father, Lev Rubinstein, died“, wrote Maria Rubinstein in her blog Live Journal, quoted by Russian media. On January 8, the poet was hit by a car while crossing a street in the capital and was hospitalized in very serious conditions. According to the Ministry of Transport of Moscow, the owner of the car, has been involved in 19 traffic offenses in the last 12 months.
Painting “Poet Lev Rubinstein” by Semyon Faybisovich from the series “Moscow Metro named after Lenin”, USSR, 1987 pic.twitter.com/6qSUYGE2Sm
— Soviet Visuals (@sovietvisuals) January 14, 2024
Rubinstein, born in Moscow in 1947, studied to be a librarian and was one of the figures in the Soviet underground literary scene of the 1970s and 1980s. He is considered one of the founders of the “conceptualist” movement, which ridiculed the official doctrine of science Socialist Realism.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, his fame grew, he published with several renowned publishers and worked as a journalist without hiding his criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In March 2022, he, along with other Russian writers, signed an open letter calling for them to call the Russian army's offensive in Ukraine a “criminal war” and criticize the Kremlin's “lies.”
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