Alexander Sergeyevich Esenin-Volpin (also written Ésénine-Volpine and Yessenin-Volpin in his French and English publications; rus, Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Есе́нин-Во́льпин, p=ɐlʲɪˈksandr sʲɪrˈɡʲejɪvʲɪtɕ jɪˈsʲenʲɪn ˈvolʲpʲɪn, a=Alyeksandr Syergyeyevich Yesyenin-Vol'pin.ru.vorb.oga; May 12, 1924March 16, 2016) was a Russian-American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. A

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 2 ...

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although ...

and a leader of the Soviet

human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...

movement, he spent a total of six years incarcerated and repressed by the Soviet authorities in psikhushkas and exile. In mathematics, he is known for his foundational role in ultrafinitism.

Life

Alexander Volpin was born on May 12, 1924, in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. His mother, Nadezhda Volpin, was a poet and translator from French and English. His father was Sergei Yesenin, a celebrated Russian poet, who never knew his son. Alexander and his mother moved from Leningrad to Moscow in 1933. His first psychiatric imprisonments took place in 1949 for "anti-Soviet poetry", in 1959 for smuggling abroad

samizdat Samizdat (, , ) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual rep ...

, including his ''Свободный философский трактат'' (''Free Philosophical Tractate''), and again in 1968. Esenin-Volpin graduated from

Moscow State University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public university, public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, a ...

with a "candidate" dissertation in mathematics in the spring of 1949. After graduation, Volpin was sent to the Ukrainian city of Chernovtsy to teach mathematics at the local state university. Less than a month after his arrival in Chernovtsy he was arrested by the MGB, sent on a plane back to Moscow, and incarcerated in the Lubyanka prison. He was charged with "systematically conducting anti-Soviet agitation, writing anti-Soviet poems, and reading them to acquaintances." Apprehensive about the prospect of prison and labor camp, Volpin faked a suicide attempt in order to initiate a psychiatric evaluation.Irina Kirk, ''Profiles in Russian Resistance'' (New York, 1975) Psychiatrists at Moscow's Serbsky Institute declared Volpin mentally incompetent, and in October 1949 he was transferred to the Leningrad Psychiatric Prison Hospital for an indefinite stay. A year later he was abruptly released from the prison hospital, and sentenced to five years exile in the Kazakh town of Karaganda as a "socially dangerous element." In Karagada, he found employment as a teacher of evening and correspondence courses in mathematics. In 1953, after the death of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

, Volpin was released due to a general amnesty. Soon he became a known mathematician. In particular, he adhered to the philosophical theories of ultrafinitism and

intuitionism In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism (opposed to preintuitionism), is an approach where mathematics is considered to be purely the result of the constructive mental activity of humans rather than the discovery of fu ...

and worked on development of these.

The Glasnost demonstration

In 1965, Esenin-Volpin organized a legendary " glasnost meeting" ("митинг гласности"), a demonstration at Pushkin Square in the center of

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

demanding an open and fair trial for the arrested writers

Andrei Sinyavsky Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (; 8 October 1925 – 25 February 1997) was a Russian writer and Soviet dissident known as a defendant in the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial of 1965. Sinyavsky was a literary critic for ''Novy Mir'' and wrote works critic ...

and

Yuli Daniel Yuli Markovich Daniel ( rus, Ю́лий Ма́ркович Даниэ́ль, p=ˈjʉlʲɪj ˈmarkəvʲɪtɕ dənʲɪˈelʲ, a=Yuliy Markovich Daniel'.ru.vorb.oga; 15 November 1925 – 30 December 1988) was a Russian writer and Soviet disside ...

. The leaflets written by Volpin and distributed through

asserted that the accusations and their closed-door trial were in violation of the 1936 Soviet Constitution and the more recent RSFSR Criminal Procedural Code. The meeting was attended by about 200 people, many of whom turned out to be

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

operatives. The slogans read: "Требуем гласности суда над Синявским и Даниэлем" (We demand an open trial for Sinyavski and Daniel) and "Уважайте советскую конституцию" (Respect the Soviet constitution). The demonstrators were promptly arrested. In the following years, Esenin-Volpin became an important voice in the human rights movement in the Soviet Union. He was one of the first

Soviet dissidents Soviet dissidents were people who disagreed with certain features of Soviet ideology or with its entirety and who were willing to speak out against them. The term ''dissident'' was used in the Soviet Union (USSR) in the period from the mid-1960 ...

who took on a "legalist" strategy of dissent. He proclaimed that it is possible and necessary to defend human rights by strictly observing the law, and in turn demand that the authorities observe the formally guaranteed rights. Esenin-Volpin was again hospitalized in February 1968 as one of those protesting most strongly against the trial of

Alexander Ginzburg Alexander "Alik" Ilyich Ginzburg ( rus, Алекса́ндр Ильи́ч Ги́нзбург, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr ɨˈlʲjidʑ ˈɡʲinzbʊrk, a=Alyeksandr Il'yich Ginzburg.ru.vorb.oga; 21 November 1936 – 19 July 2002), was a Russian journalist ...

and Yury Galanskov ( Galanskov-Ginzburg trial). After his 1968 psychiatric confinement, to the Soviet authorities asking for his release.Text of the letter
. math.ru. Retrieved 21 February 2014. This fact became public and the

Voice of America Voice of America (VOA or VoA) is an international broadcasting network funded by the federal government of the United States that by law has editorial independence from the government. It is the largest and oldest of the American internation ...

conducted a broadcast on the topic; Esenin-Volpin was released almost immediately thereafter.

Vladimir Bukovsky Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky (; 30 December 1942 – 27 October 2019) was a Soviet and Russian Human rights activists, human rights activist and writer. From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, he was a prominent figure in the Soviet dissid ...

was quoted as saying that Volpin's diagnosis was "pathological honesty". In 1968, Esenin-Volpin circulated his famous "Памятка для тех, кому предстоят допросы" (Memo for those who expect to be interrogated) widely used by fellow dissidents. In 1969, he signed the first ''Appeal to The UN Committee for Human Rights'', drafted by the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR. In 1970, Volpin joined the Committee on Human Rights in the USSR and worked with Yuri Orlov,

Andrei Sakharov Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet Physics, physicist and a List of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing human rights around the world. Alt ...

and other activists.

Emigration

In May 1972, he emigrated to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, but his Soviet citizenship was not revoked as was customary at the time. He worked at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

. In 1973 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. Abroad he again alarmed the Soviet authorities in 1977 by threatening to sue them for spreading rumours that he was mentally ill. In 2005, Esenin-Volpin participated in " They Chose Freedom", a four-part television documentary on the history of the Soviet dissident movement. He died on March 16, 2016, aged 91.

Mathematical work

His early work was in general topology, where he introduced Esenin-Volpin's theorem. Most of his later work was on the foundations of mathematics, where he introduced ultrafinitism, an extreme form of constructive mathematics that casts doubt on the existence of not only infinite sets, but even of large integers such as 10¹². He sketched a program for proving the consistency of

Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory In set theory, Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, named after mathematicians Ernst Zermelo and Abraham Fraenkel, is an axiomatic system that was proposed in the early twentieth century in order to formulate a theory of sets free of paradoxes suc ...

using ultrafinitistic techniques in , and .

Mathematical publications

* Reviewed by * Reviewed by *

References

External links

Great Russian Poet's Son Comes Home
at MN * * Robert Horvath
The Legacy of Soviet Dissent: Dissidents, Democratisation and Radical Nationalism in Russia

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group is an international company originating in the United Kingdom that publishes books and academic journals. Its parts include Taylor & Francis, CRC Press, Routledge, F1000 (publisher), F1000 Research and Dovepress. It i ...

, 2005, ; pp. 55, 85, 155 ;Russian language links
Bio & Bibliography

Bio & writings
at Anthology of Samizdat

* * * *

Audio-visual material

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Esenin-Volpin, Alexander 1924 births 2016 deaths 20th-century Russian mathematicians Moscow State University alumni 20th-century American mathematicians Soviet logicians Writers from Saint Petersburg Writers from Moscow American people of Russian descent Soviet emigrants to the United States Russian male poets Boston University faculty Soviet dissidents Soviet human rights activists 21st-century American mathematicians