Alexander Feinberg

Alexander Feinberg was born on 2 November 1939 in Tashkent. His parents had moved there from Novosibirsk two years earlier: his father, Arkady Lvovich, worked as chief engineer at a distillery, and his mother, Anastasia Alexandrovna, as a typist.

After a seven-year school he entered the Tashkent Topographic Technical College and afterwards served in the army in Tajikistan. He then studied journalism by correspondence at the philology faculty of Tashkent University and worked on the student newspaper. In 1961 he married Inna Koval.

Feinberg wrote in Russian. His first collection, “Velotreki” (Cycle Tracks), came out in 1965; it was followed by “Etyud” (1967), “Mgnovenie” (1969), “Stikhi” (1977), “Dalyokie mosty” (1978), “Pechat nebosklona” (1982), “Nevod” (1986), “Volnye sonety” (1990), “Ne plach, doroga” (1997), “Prisk” (2000) and “List” (2008). In all he wrote fifteen books of poetry, published in Tashkent, Moscow and St Petersburg; his poems appeared in the journals Smena, Yunost, Novy Mir and Zvezda Vostoka and in periodicals in the United States, Canada and Israel.

He translated into Russian the poems of Alisher Navoi and of contemporary Uzbek poets, among them Erkin Vohidov, Abdulla Oripov and Omon Matjon. He also wrote for the cinema: four feature films and about twenty animated films were made from his scripts, including “The House Under the Hot Sun” (1977) and “Their Stadium in the Sky” (1999), about the 1979 air crash that killed the Pakhtakor football team.

Feinberg was a member of the Writers' Union of Uzbekistan, served as its consultant in 1965–1969, and for several years led a seminar for young writers. In 1999 he received the title Honoured Culture Worker of the Republic of Uzbekistan and in 2004 the title People's Poet of Uzbekistan; in 2008 he was awarded the Pushkin Medal by decree of the President of Russia.

Alexander Feinberg died in Tashkent on 14 October 2009 and was buried at the Botkin cemetery. A two-volume collected works, which he had compiled himself, appeared after his death.