Vadim Delaunay (born on December, 22nd, 1947, in Moscow, USSR-June, 13th, 1983, Paris, France) is well-known as a Russian poet, writer, pedagogue, human rights activist and participant of dissident movement in the USSR: he took part in demonstration of the seven in 1968.

Vadim Delaunay was born in the family of Moscow intellectuals. His father Nikolay Borisovich Delaunay was Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, his grandfather Boris Nikolaevich Delaunay was well known mathematician and associable of the Academy of Sciences. Vadim's great-grandfather was a mathematician as well.

His early years have begun happy and towardly: he learned at school N 586 in Kadashy, then at Moscow Math Special School N 2. After school Vadim was accepted to Philology Department of Lenin Moscow State Teaching Institute. Vadim Delaunay began working as string correspondent of Literaturnaya Gazeta weekly magazine.

The troubles began after he wrote a letter to Ideological Committee of the CPSU Central Committee in 1966, where he asked to legalize the literary institution of SMOG. Vadim Delaunay was excluded from institute and Komsomol.

On September, 1, 1967 he was sentenced to 1 year probation as participant of demonstration on Pushkinskaya square in support of dissidents Galanskov, Dobrovolskaya and Lashkova. After release Delaunay moves to Akademgorodok by Novosobirsk and lived in a place of his grandfather's friend. He was even accepted to the University of Novosibirsk, but in 1968 he left the university and returned to Moscow, where he took part in the Demonstration of the Seven on August, 25 against deployment of Soviet troops to Czechoslovakia. Seven people were arrested, and in court, Delaunay stated that the five minutes of freedom on the square were worth the years in prison that were probably awaiting him

On October, 1 Vadim Delaunau was sentenced for this on articles 190-1 and 190-3 of Penal Code of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic to 2 years and 10 months of camps, taking into account his former conviction and unexpired penalty. Vadim served his sentence in Tyumen Region. In June, 1971 he was released.

In 1973 his wife Irina Belogorodskaya was arrested under case of Chronicle of Current Events information bulletin, one of the longest-running and best-known samizdat periodicals in the USSR dedicated to the defense of human rights . Irina was however remitted before the trial. In 1975 the couple emigrated from USSR.

Then Vadim Delaunay lived in Paris till his death from heart disease on June, 13, 1983.

What about literature, Vadim used to write since 13. His early poems were issued in samizdat and one of them (Ballad of Unbelief) were mentioned during the trial as politically destructive. Camp experience was incorporated in the short novel "Portraits in barbed frame", published first partly in 1979 and then full, with poems of 1965-1983 in 1984.


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