“My father, Lev Rubinstein, died today,” Maria Rubinstein, his daughter, wrote in her blog on the Live Journal website, an announcement that was echoed in Russian media. One line announces the death of the Russian poet, a figure of Soviet dissidence and critic of the Kremlin, at the age of 76 on Sunday, January 14th.
The official Interfax agency and the opposition news site Meduza report that Lev Rubinstein was hit by a driver while crossing a street in the capital on January 8 and was subsequently admitted to the Sklifosovsky Institute in an extremely serious condition, where he suffered from numerous fractures and head injuries suffered.
In a statement, the Moscow Department of Transport said that the driver did not slow down in front of a pedestrian crossing and hit the poet, noting that, according to preliminary data, the car owner was involved in nineteen traffic violations during the last twelve months.
From the Moscow “Conceptualist” to criticism of the Putin regime
Born in Moscow in 1947, the trained librarian Lev Rubinstein was one of the figures of the Soviet underground literary scene of the 1970s and 1980s, a “new avant-garde” that wanted to be inventive and outrageous. In the 1970s, he was considered one of the founders of the Moscow “Conceptualist” movement, which ridiculed the official doctrine of socialist realism and wanted to take action against it.
Committed to rhythm, Lev Rubinstein had created his own genre, the “text-on-card,” which refers to both poetry and theater: the poet reads aloud short sentences written on perforated cards on stage.
The practice, inspired by his daily life as a librarian and a nod to the grim bureaucracy of the Soviet era, mixes performance, absurdist comedy and improvisation. With the idea of shaking off the rigidity of Sovietism.
After the collapse of the USSR, his popularity grew in Russia. He publishes in renowned publishers and also works as a journalist. He is invited to international poetry festivals and his works are translated into many languages. In 1999 he won the Andreï Biély Prize, an independent literary prize established in 1978. In 2012 he received a Nos Prize from the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation, which rewards a prose work in Russian.
At the same time, the poet did not hide his hostile attitude towards the Putin regime, denouncing political repression, human rights violations and participation in opposition demonstrations. In March 2022, together with other Russian writers, he signed an open letter in which he called the Russian army's major attack on Ukraine a “criminal war” and castigated the Kremlin's “lies”.
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