Alexander Sokolov

Postmodernism and Soviet literature are two incompatible things. It is not surprising that Sasha Sokolov's debut novel in the 1970s had no place in his homeland. However, the talent and originality of the author could not be denied, it was not for nothing that his manuscripts were distributed through samizdat and readily published abroad with enthusiastic reviews of such masters as Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Brodsky.

The mysterious and closed writer can boast of not the most banal biography, which in itself attracts a novel. It is worth starting with the fact that Sasha was born in Canada into a family of real spies. Parents lived in Ottawa at the Soviet embassy. Father Vsevolod Sergeevich, a former front-line soldier, commander of a tank battalion, held the official position of military attaché, but carried out a secret mission to obtain blueprints for an atomic bomb. Mother Lydia Vasilievna served as a liaison officer.

When the child was 3 years old, the Sokolovs, having fulfilled the assignment entrusted to them, fled to the Soviet Union. By that time, Sasha had not yet spoken, and everyone thought that the boy was dumb. He explained this by the fact that he constantly heard around the speech in 3 languages ​​- Russian, English and French and simply chose which of them to speak. The first interlocutor was my sister Lyudmila, who was 5 years older than her brother.

During his school years, Sokolov flourished, taking advantage of the success with his peers. He was free and fearless, allowing himself funny and even daring antics, which the teachers who loved him put on the brakes. And classmates read his poems and admired the funny things that he did. Although they did not always look harmless: he could pretend to be dead, for example, hang himself as a joke.

In 1962, the young man became a student at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, which he dropped out after 3 years. The need for military service loomed, which the future writer avoided in an original way: he pretended to be crazy and spent 3 months in a psychiatric clinic. By that time, he already had an attempt to escape abroad, for which he served in prison and got out only thanks to his father's connections.

In the late 1960s, Sasha began to collaborate with Soviet periodicals, publishing essays, articles and stories there. In 1969 he officially got a job at Literary Russia as a correspondent, while continuing his studies at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, where he entered in 1967.

Having passed to the correspondence department, the young man left for Mari El, where he worked in the village newspaper “Kolkhoznaya Pravda”. The guy was sure that he would sooner come to real prose. However, Sasha's list of professions is not limited to journalism. The man managed to work as a gamekeeper and stoker before leaving the country in 1975.

When the writer arrived at the Austrian embassy before leaving, he was informed that his parents and sister had come to the KGB to officially abandon him. After that, he did not maintain any ties with his family. He himself explains this by the fact that he did not want to cause trouble for his family. Sokolov does not even know the details of the death of his father and mother, who died in 2000, presumably committing suicide.

First, the prose writer immigrated to Austria, from where in 1976 he moved to the United States, and then to Canada, whose citizenship he received in 1977. In Vienna, Sokolov managed to work as a lumberjack, and overseas has already taken up creativity, while giving lectures at universities in North America.

Sasha Sokolov's first novel, A School for Fools, was written in Russia, but was first published in the USA in 1976. Progressive Russian readers were familiar with the manuscript through samizdat. There was no point in hoping that the stream of consciousness of the hero suffering from a split personality could be published in the USSR. However, this happened in 1990, when the writer had already lived overseas for many years, and his homeland went through the path of perestroika and was ready to hear a new word in literature.

By that time, Sokolov had written two more works, which eventually became cult, - "Between a Dog and a Wolf" (1980) and "Palisandria" (1985). The author's novels are characterized by a disregard for the traditional course of time and plot, however, loyalty to the Russian literary classics is clearly traced. They combine surrealism and the Christian worldview, phantasmagoria and understanding of the problems of society.

For many years, the writer's bibliography was replenished only with rare articles and essays, but in the 2000s he wrote a number of poems: "Reasoning", "Gazibo" and "Filornit". For 2019, the author's last work was the story "Illumination", published in 2014.

The writer met his first wife Taisia ​​Suvorova at the journalism faculty of Moscow State University. A talented girl moved from Moscow to a village where her beloved worked as a gamekeeper, and there she gave birth to a daughter, Alexandra, in quite extreme conditions in 1974. The young people did not live together for long, already in 1975 Sasha decided to leave the USSR, in which he was helped by his second wife - Austrian Johanna Steindl.

They all met at the same Moscow State University, where a woman taught German. In protest against the fact that Sokolov was not allowed out of the country, Johanna staged a demonstrative dry hunger strike in Vienna, as a result of which the writer's demands were met. This marriage did not last long, because, in fact, it was fictitious, or “sports”, as Sasha himself calls it. After moving to the United States, the writer had two children - a son and a daughter. Here, in 1988, he married for the third time an American woman, Marlene Royle, with whom he still lives.

The writer has lived in Canada for many years, and the last time he came to Russia was in 1996. Nevertheless, he is open to compatriots and gives them interviews, showing photos and talking about creativity, biography and personal life.

A big film about the author was released in 2017 on the First Channel and was called “Sasha Sokolov. The last Russian writer ”. Ilya Belov's hourly tape is an attempt to tell about a significant and mysterious writer who became a classic of postmodernism during his lifetime.

The man says that “his head is completely Russian”, while he does not think to move from Canada, considering it an ideal country for life. And for death, because he wants to die right here. In the era of “Instagram”, he does not strive for publicity, living in his own rhythm.

1976 - "School for Fools" 1980 - "Between a Dog and a Wolf" 1985 - "Rosewood" 2007 - "Reasoning" 2009 - "Gazibo" 2010 - "Filornit" 2014 - "Illumination"

Alexander Sokolov 's estimated Net Worth, Salary, Income, Cars, Lifestyles & many more details have been updated below.

Let's check, How Rich is Alexander Sokolov in 2021 ?

Alexander Sokolov Net Worth 2022

Alexander Sokolov 's revenue is $ 1.8M in 2022. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Alexander Sokolov and could vary in the range between $ 986.8K - $ 1.8M.

Alexander Sokolov Net Worth 2021

Alexander Sokolov 's revenue is $1.6M in 2021. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Alexander Sokolov and could vary in the range between $913K - $1.5M.

Alexander Sokolov Net Worth 2020

Alexander Sokolov 's revenue is $1.5M in 2020. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Alexander Sokolov and could vary in the range between $979.7K - $1.5M.

Alexander Sokolov Net Worth 2019

Alexander Sokolov 's revenue is $1.3M in 2019. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Alexander Sokolov and could vary in the range between $572.1K - $1.5M.

Alexander Sokolov Net Worth 2018

Alexander Sokolov 's revenue is $1.8M in 2018. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Alexander Sokolov and could vary in the range between $884.7K - $1.4M.

Alexander Sokolov Net Worth 2017

Alexander Sokolov 's revenue is $1.2M in 2017. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Alexander Sokolov and could vary in the range between $519.2K - $1.9M.

Alexander Sokolov Net Worth 2016

Alexander Sokolov 's revenue is $1.1M in 2016. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Alexander Sokolov and could vary in the range between $824K - $1.5M.

It is an overall forecast for the net worth of Alexander Sokolov. The evaluation covers the latest 5 years and an approximation for next year. See above to learn how much money does Alexander Sokolov makes a year.

The range above shows an estimation based on evaluation generated by public information about sponsorships or other sources found on the internet. It's summarized data from Alexander Sokolov's projects existing in AidWiki's repository. It's an approximation of the revenue compiled by AidWiki and may not correspond with the real amount.