Joseph Brodsky: Years in the USSR. Literary Biography

The departure from the USSR in 1972 divided the life and literary biography of Joseph Brodsky into two autonomous parts. Gleb Morev's book is dedicated to the Soviet period, which included the formation of the literary career, the shaping of the sociocultural position, and the ethical attitudes of the poet.

At the center of the book are several plots — from the idea of escaping from the USSR by plane or the famous trial for parasitism to exile in the Arkhangelsk region and departure abroad. The author focuses on analyzing key moments of the poet's creative path and subjects these crucial episodes to detailed reconstruction and new interpretation. Drawing on rich documentary material and placing it in the broad historical context of the era, Gleb Morev seeks to answer the main question: what is the uniqueness and radicality of Joseph Brodsky's literary and life project in the 1960s–1970s? 

 Gleb Morev is a philologist and historian of culture, author of works on the poetics of Russian modernism, and the books “Dissidents: Twenty Conversations” (2017), “The Poet and the Tsar: From the History of Russian Cultural Mythology” (2020), and “Osip Mandelstam: Fragments of a Literary Biography (1920s–1930s)” (2022).