Collection contains biographical and bibliographical information, writings, interviews, speeches, lectures, photographs, and tapes relating to the writer Sasha Sokolov.

Aleksandr Vsevolodovich Sokolov, émigré novelist, poet, and essayist, was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1943. Both parents were, inter alia, intelligence agents at the war-time Soviet embassy there. Exposed after the war, they returned to Moscow where the father became a senior figure in military intelligence circles. Sasha spent a troubled youth. At one time his parents considered placing him in a special school for disturbed adolescents. Nonetheless, he succeeded in entering the Military Institute for Foreign Languages in 1962. Detesting military life, he and a friend attempted to cross the Turmen-Iranian border while AWOL. The authorities apparently failed to realize that he was defecting and merely sentenced him for being absent without leave. Feigning madness to gain a discharge, he spent three months in a mental hospital. Discharged from the hospital and the army in early 1965, Sokolov became a fringe member of Moscow's flourishing literary bohemia, particularly the avant-garde group SMOG (the acronymic Society of Youngest Geniuses). In 1966 the aspiring writer entered the Journalism School of Moscow State University and soon began to publish stories and articles. He also married a fellow student, Taisiia Suvorova. Bored with school, he took a job with a newspaper in the remote middle Volga area. Returning to Moscow in 1969 he worked for Literaturnaia Rossiia, the prestigious paper of the Russian branch of the Writer's Union.

3.6 linear feet (9 document boxes and 13 audiocassettes)

Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.

None.