Summary
Frida Vigdorova: Trial of Josif Brodsky
In this book, which irresistibly resembles the one entitled Apologia Sokratis, we present to the reader the literary pasquila that started the avalanche and the hunt for Brodsky, his letter to the editor of the Večernji Leningrad newspaper, the minutes of the trial made by Frida Vigdorova, some of the reactions of contemporaries, his letter to Brezhnev on the day when had to emigrate and poetry, which, in fact, has always been his main stronghold and spiritual bond with the Russian language. The record of Frida Vigdorova became one of the first samizdata that were just appearing in Russia at the time and were spreading enormously. The trial was read by thousands of people in the country, and the transcript somehow spilled over the borders and swept the West. It was this shorthand that changed Josif Brodski's fate. Brodski, as he often underlines, was lucky in his accident. He was banished to a spiritual paradise – to his native Russian language! He joined the poets of the silver century of Russian poetry and helped Anatoly Streljan to conclude: "If anything before God can justify the twentieth century - then it is Russian poetry."
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