Roy Medvedev is a popular Russian historian, educator and publicist. He is primarily known as the author of numerous political biographies. The hero of our article worked mainly on journalistic investigations. He represented the left wing in the dissident movement in the Soviet Union; in the late 80s and early 90s, he was a deputy of the Supreme Council. He is a doctor of pedagogical sciences, his twin brother is a talented gerontologist.
early years
Roy Medvedev was born in 1925. He was born in Tiflis, on the territory of modern Georgia. Roy Medvedev got his unusual name in honor of Manabendra Roy, a popular Communist from India in the 1920s, who was one of the founders of the Indian Communist Party, a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern.
The father of the hero of our article was a regimental commissar of the Red Army, and after the Civil War he led the department of historical and dialectical materialism at the Military-Political Academy.
The Roy Medvedev family experienced a real tragedy when in 1938 their father was arrested, sentenced to eight years in prison with the right to correspondence. In 1941, he died at the age of 40. As the historian later recalled, farewell to his father engraved forever in his memory, affecting his whole future life.
Education
In 1943, he graduated from high school with an external student, and immediately after that he was called up for non-military service in the army. Until 1946, he remained on the territory of the Transcaucasian Military District, where he worked in the auxiliary units of rear support. In particular, I had to deal with the protection of air and railway communications, and repair of equipment.
After the war, he enters Leningrad State University. Roy Alexandrovich Medvedev was awarded the diploma of a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy in 1951. All this time he was the secretary of the Komsomol committee at his faculty.
In 1958 he defended a thesis on the production work of high school students in the fields of industry. He receives the degree of candidate of pedagogical sciences within the walls of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute.
Labor activity
From 1951 to 1954 he taught history in schools in the Sverdlovsk region. Then, until 1957, he worked as the director of the "seven-year plan" in the Leningrad Region. Since 1958, he began to work as deputy chief editor of the Uchpedgiz publishing house.
Since the 60s, historian Roy Medvedev is a senior research fellow at the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. He remains in this position until 1970, and after that is considered a free scientist.
Joining the CPSU
After the significant XX Congress of the CPSU, which followed the rehabilitation of Father Medvedev, the hero of our article joins the Communist Party. Moreover, since the beginning of the 60s, it has been most actively involved in the dissident movement.
In particular, he edits several self-published publications. Among them are the almanac "XX Century" and the journal "Political Diary". In 1969, he was expelled from the party after writing the book “To the Judgment of History,” which was dedicated to the period of the Great Terror in the USSR.
In the spring of 1970, together with academician Sakharov and Soviet cybernetics and physicist Valentin Turchin, he took part in the publication of an open letter to the leadership of the Soviet Union. In it, scientists call for the need to immediately begin to democratize the entire system in the country.
In opposition
According to the recollections of Medvedev himself, in 1971, after all these events, he had to leave work. Law enforcement officials are beginning to show increased interest in him. A search is conducted at the scientist’s house, during which the entire archive is seized. He was summoned to the prosecutor by an agenda.
He decides not to go there, but instead leave Moscow until his books are published in the United States of America. After that, for some time in an illegal situation he has been in the Baltic states. The hero of our article himself admits that when he returned to Moscow after some time, no one called him for interrogation. The authorities forgot about him almost until the very moment of Brezhnev’s death.
Fate of brother
The fate of the family members of the scientist was not easy. If Roy was not actually touched, then his brother Jaures was subjected to full-scale repression.
He was fired from work in 1969 after the publication of the book "The Rise and Fall of Lysenko" in the West. In it, he tried to trace the chronicle of the development of biological teachings in the country over the past few decades. He sharply criticized the destruction of genetics, the reprisals against great scientists, among whom was Vavilov.
In his next books, “The Secret of Correspondence is Protected by Law” and “International Cooperation of Scientists and National Borders”, he criticizes the restrictions in the Soviet scientific community related to traveling abroad, as well as the censorship of books, magazines, and the mail he receives from from abroad.
In 1970, he was forcibly placed in a psychiatric hospital in the Kaluga region, but was soon released after a wave of public outrage. These events were described by him in the book “Who is Crazy,” co-authored by his brother.
The popularity of Medvedev
The books of Roy Medvedev will soon become popular in the Soviet Union in samizdat and abroad. The real bestsellers are the works "They Surrounded Stalin" and "Towards the Judgment of History."
In 1989, he was reinstated in the Communist Party while retaining his seniority since 1959. It is believed that this initiative at that time came from the head of the propaganda department, Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev, who was considered the ideologist of perestroika.
Until 1992, Medvedev was a member of the Supreme Council. In particular, he advocated the decision to publish the so-called "Secret Protocols". This is an additional protocol concluded by the USSR and Germany to the nonaggression pact on the eve of World War II.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, Medvedev was widely regarded as one of the potential leaders of the movement for democratic socialism. Since 1991, he was one of the chairmen of the Socialist Workers Party of the Russian Federation. He was among those who sharply criticized the GKChP and the policies of Boris Yeltsin.
Now Medvedev is 92 years old, he lives in Moscow. His brother Jaures also still works. For example, in 2007 and 2008 he published a series of articles about the death of Alexander Litvinenko.
Publications
The most sought after were journalistic investigations of Medvedev. In total, he published about 35 books on pedagogy, history, sociology, philosophy, and literary criticism.
A striking example of his investigations is one of the latest works - "The Soviet Union. The last years of his life." Roy Medvedev wrote it in 2010. This is a detailed study, which was started by the author in 1991.
It is based on numerous memoirs of participants in those events and documents, his own impressions, interviews and conversations that Medvedev conducted with the main figures of those years. This book seemed to some to be Gorbachev’s political biography. One of her main ideas is the provision that the decrepit political system of the USSR placed in the forefront a politician who was unable to take the lead. As a result, this led to a full-blown economic and political crisis.
His last work at the moment is the book "Putin's Time" in 2014. In it, he carefully examines almost a decade and a half of the work of the new Russian president, who became the head of state in difficult times.