Register of the A. S. Esenin-Vol'pin papers
Finding aid prepared by Hoover Institution Library and Archives Staff
Hoover Institution Library and Archives
© 2016
434 Galvez Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6003
hoover-library-archives@stanford.edu
Title: A. S. Esenin-Vol'pin papers
Date (inclusive): 1903-2010
Collection Number: 2016C44
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material:
Russian
Physical Description:
3 manuscript boxes, 1 oversize box
(3 Linear Feet)
Abstract: Includes memoirs, other writings, correspondence, a police file, pamphlets, other printed matter, and photographs relating
to civil liberties and dissent in the Soviet Union.
Creator:
Esenin-Vol'pin, A. S. (Aleksandr Sergeevich), 1924-
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Access
The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual
or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
Use
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Acquisition Information
Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2016.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], A. S. Esenin-Vol'pin papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Biographical Note
Aleksandr Sergeevich Esenin-Vol'pin was a prominent Russian poet and mathematician, a notable dissident, political prisoner,
and a leader of the Soviet human rights movement.
Esenin-Vol'pin was born on May 12, 1924 in the Soviet Union. His mother, Nadezhda Vol'pin, was a poet and translator from
French and English. His father was Sergei Yesenin, a celebrated Russian poet, who never met his son. In 1933, Esenin-Vol'pin
and his mother moved from Leningrad to Moscow.
Esenin-Vol'pin graduated from Moscow State University with a candidate dissertation in the spring of 1949. After graduation,
he was sent to the Ukrainian city of Chernovtsy to teach mathematics at the local state university. Less than a month after
his arrival, he was arrested by the KGB, sent on a plane back to Moscow, and incarcerated in the Lubyanka prison. Esenin-Vol'pin
was charged with "systematically conducting anti-Soviet agitation, writing anti-Soviet poems, and reading them to acquaintances."
His first psychiatric imprisonments took place the same year for anti-Soviet poetry. In 1950, Esenin-Vol'pin was released
from the prison hospital and sentenced to five years exile in the Kazakh town of Karaganda as a socially dangerous element.
In 1953, after the death of Joseph Stalin, Esenin-Vol'pin was released due to a general amnesty. Soon he became a known mathematician
specializing in the fields of ultrafinitism and intuitionism.
Esenin-Volpin was institutionalized again in 1959 for secretly sending samizdat abroad. In 1965, he organized a legendary
glasnost meeting, a demonstration at Pushkin Square in the center of Moscow demanding an open and fair trial for the arrested
writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel. In the following years, Esenin-Vol'pin became an important voice in the human rights
movement in the Soviet Union. He was one of the first Soviet dissidents who took on a legalist strategy of dissent. He proclaimed
that it is possible and necessary to defend human rights by strictly observing the law. Esenin-Volpin was again put in a psikhushka
(psychiatric institute) in February 1968 as one of those protesting most strongly against the trial of Alexander Ginzburg
and Yury Galanskov (the Galanskov-Ginzburg trial). After he had been confined, 99 Soviet mathematicians sent a letter to the
Soviet authorities asking for his release. This fact became public, and the Voice of America conducted a broadcast on the
topic; Esenin-Vol'pin was released almost immediately thereafter in 1968.
Esenin-Vol'pin spent a total of fourteen years incarcerated and repressed by the Soviet authorities in prisons, psikhushkas,
and exile. In May 1972, he immigrated to the United States, where he worked at Boston University. In 2005, Esenin-Vol'pin
participated in
They Chose Freedom, a four-part television documentary on the history of the Soviet dissident movement. He died on March 16, 2016.
Scope and Content of Collection
Includes memoirs, other writings, correspondence, a police file, pamphlets, other printed matter, and photographs relating
to civil liberties and dissent in the Soviet Union.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Dissenters -- Soviet Union
Civil rights -- Soviet Union
Biographical File,
1909-2010
Scope and Contents note
Includes biographical writings, photographs, and other materials compiled by friends and family to celebrate the 80th birthday
of Esenin-Vol'pin.
box 1, folder 1
Materials compiled to celebrate the 80th and 86th birthdays of Esenin-Vol'pin,
2004-2010
Scope and Contents note
Includes illustrated biographical digital printouts.
box 1, folder 2
Photographs,
1909-2010
Scope and Contents note
Includes photographs of Esenin-Vol'pin and his family.
box 1, folder 3
Travel documents,
2002
Scope and Contents note
Includes Esenin-Vol'pin's visa application to the Consulate-General of Russia in San Francisco, itineraries, and photographs
taken during his visit to the Moscow State Esenin Museum.
Correspondence,
1998-2010
box 1, folder 6
Kuzichev, Aleksandr Sergeevich,
1998
box 1, folder 7
Vishnevskaia, Iulia,
2010
Speeches and Writings,
1948-2005
box 1, folder 9
Articles and poems,
circa 1948-2003
box 1, folder 10
Interviews,
1987-2005
Scope and Contents note
Includes an interview with Esenin-Vol'pin by L. Korsun on the 40th anniversary of the human rights movement in the Soviet
Union.
box 1, folder 13
"Po povodu donosa i begstva A. Anatolia,"
1969
box 1, folder 14
"On the Logic of the Moral Science,"
1970
box 1, folder 15
"In Defense of Individual Freedoms in the USSR, "
1974
box 1, folder 16
"On the Struggle for Civil Rights in the USSR, "
1974
box 1, folder 17
"On Freedom, Power, Law, and Dissidents in the USSR,"
1987
box 1, folder 18-20
"5 dekabria 1965 g. i t.d.," memoirs,
circa 2000
Scope and Contents note
Includes drafts and copyright agreement with Lowry Wyman of Wyman & Johnson.
box 2, folder 1-3
Untitled manuscripts and drafts,
1959-2001
Scope and Contents note
Includes draft appeal for permission to immigrate addressed to the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev.
box 2, folder 4
Writings by Others,
1978-2002
Scope and Contents note
Includes articles, newsletters, and fragments on civil rights violations in the USSR.
Printed Matter,
1903-2006
box 2, folder 7
Tekhnologiia vlasti, A. Avtorkhanov,
circa 1960
box 2, folder 8
S. Esenin, postcard kit,
1976
box 2, folder 9
Sergei Esenin: Selected Poetry, translated by Peter Tempest,
1982
box 2, folder 10
Chernaia noch' nad Belym Domom,
1991 August
box 2, folder 11
Pervaia Konferentsiia Bostonskogo Obshchestva "Memorial", basic reports, Boston University,
2006
box 3
Oversize Material
2009
Scope and Contents note
Portrait of Esenin-Volpin by Peter Elkin.
box 4, folder 1-2
Pamphlets and notes
1960s-2005
box MC40
"They Choose Freedom" optical disk
2005
Conditions Governing Access
Digital materials are not available until processed. If interested in accessing this material, please contact us for more
information.