Mariia Rozanova

Mariia Rozanova and Andrei Siniavskii. Source: kulturologia.ru.

Vitsebsk, 1930 (1929)

Mariia Vasil’evna Rozanova, wife of the Russian writer, essayist and dissident Andreii Siniavskii, was born on 4th January 1930 in Vitsebsk, present-day Belarus. Most sources, however, give 27th December 1929 as her date of birth. The loss of her birth certificate during World War II prompted her mother to make Maria choose a new date to celebrate her birthday and she chose that of a school friend. Maria, registered with the double surnames Rozanova (her mother’s maiden name) and Kruglikova (her father’s), was brought up by her grandmother due to her parents’ prolonged absence for work. In 1941, due to the war, she and her family took refuge in Novosibirsk. During this period she helped as much as she could at home and showed her natural aptitude for art (cf. Carbone 2007: 236-237). In 1943, the family managed to return to Moscow and Maria resumed her studies. However, she immediately showed a strong aversion to school and often skipped classes to go the Lenin library to read. Maria was a forthright and direct child, strongly independent with an antipathy towards authority and narrow Soviet society. In 1948, she enrolled in the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University (MGU). After graduation, she participated in the restoration and conservation of some of the country’s most important monuments, such as the Church of St. Pantaleon in St. Petersburg and took part in numerous expeditions to the north of the country to work on Old Slavic art (cf. Klimova 2004a). Rozanova met Andreii Siniavskii for the first time in 1948 when they were both attending the Faculty of Philology at the MGU, but it was not until 1955 that their relationship began, at first in secret as Siniavskii was still married to his first wife. The writer often followed Rozanova on her work expeditions. They finally married in 1963, when Siniavskii obtained a divorce from his first wife and in 1964 the couple’s first and only child, Egor Andreevich was born. The relationship between Rozanova and Siniavskii was also a happy working partnership: Rozanova dealt with the practical matters of publishing, while Siniavskii devoted himself to writing and literary reflection (cf. Sergeeva 2017). This personal and working bond would prove fundamental during the years of their separation, during Siniavskii’s time in the GULag, from 1966 to 1971.
From the beginning of their relationship, Rozanova was aware of her husband’s double life; as an academic he was Siniavskii and as a dissident writer he was Abram Tertz (cf. Passeri 2018-2019: 45). Together with Hélène Peltier-Zamoiska (1924-2012), Rozanova helped her husband edit and send manuscripts abroad for publication in foreign journals such as the Polish “Kultura”,  until 1965 when Siniavskii’s was arrested and subsequently tried in 1966 with Iulii Daniėl’. During her husband’s imprisonment, Rozanova worked as a jeweller and collaborated with the magazine “Dekorativnoe iskusstvo” to survive (cf. Klimova 2004d), where she published a number of articles partly composed by Siniavskii himself which he had sent in the form of camouflaged fragments inside the letters he was allowed to send each month from the lager. Rozanova recalled the paradox of her husband finally being published in his home country: “Before he was imprisoned in Moscow and they published him in Paris, now he is imprisoned in Siberia and they publish him in Moscow” (cf. Klimova: 2004c). The correspondence between the couple was fairly regular and from the labour camp in Mordovia, Siniavskii managed to send his wife whole passages of works which would be published in the years following his release. Rozanova, for her part, arranged her husband’s writings and managed to send them abroad to be published under the pseudonym Abram Tertz. These texts included the lyrical prose Progulki s Pushkinym, published first in London in 1975 and then in 1989 in Paris by the Sintaksis publishing house. The period of her husband’s imprisonment had serious repercussions on Rozanova’s health.  Indeed, after the writer’s release, her ill health was the reason the couple, asked to be allowed to travel abroad, permission for which was eventually granted by the Soviet authorities. They left the USSR for France in August 1973, and settled in Fontenay-aux-Roses near Paris. Adjusting to a new life was not easy: Siniavskii taught Russian literature at the Sorbonne, Rozanova set up her own printing house at home, and founded the magazine and publishing house “Sintaksis”. The couple also initially collaborated on Maksimov’s magazine “Kontinent”. Relations with the community of Russian émigré intellectuals were not easy, as the liberal position of the Siniavskiis was attacked by those who continued to defend the national values of the country they still considered their motherland. The Siniavskiis’ comments on Soviet events were made with what the couple considered to be due detachment. Rozanova felt she had a deep understanding of the Soviet world, opinions about which were often defined exclusively by its own people who were also its worst enemy (cf. Carbone 2007: 235-236). The Siniavskiis never returned to live in the USSR so as not to lose their personal freedom and freedom of speech. They lived under surveillance until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and remained together until Siniavskii’s death. Maria Rozanova, with her son Egor (married Gran), also a writer, continues to keep Siniavskii’s memory alive.

Cheti Traini
[31^st December 2022]

Bibliography

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