Kozlov Alexander Vladimirovich Biography

The language, the culture of his small homeland, the village of Olshany and the cities of Debaltseve, and the birthplace of his wife, the beautiful city near the sea of ​​Mariupol, were once part of the “great”, as it seemed to them, the USSR. Gorbachev, against lies about the consequences of the atomic disaster in Chernobyl led to interrogations and beatings in the KGB, and Kozlov escaped the iron curtain.

Later, with independent Ukraine, he maintained a connection - parents remained there. But life there was critically perceived there. He believes that Donbass lacks culture, and only it brings true freedom of personality. He does not believe in freedom granted from above, and does not confuse it with economic benefits. Concluding more than a thirty -year path of a successful career in Prague, he still dreamed of buying a house in Mariupol and living on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov and his wife in retirement when the children will be adults.

In the year, with the beginning of full -scale aggression, the parents of his wife died in Mariupol, his mother turned out to be a refugee, and the cities were erased from the face of the earth. Mother, Kozlova Anna Vasilievna, nee Kazhan, is a catering worker. She was from the village of Olshana Ukr. Vilshani, Sumy region, Ukraine. Her father Vasily Akimovich was a bus driver, her mother worked on a collective farm.

Twice the family was dispossessed: first they took cattle, then a corn mill. Anna, the only of the three sisters, left to study in Lugansk. In her family, her father spoke Ukrainian, and mother and sisters in Russian. Dad, Kozlov Vladimir Alexandrovich,-teacher of the music school, composer-songwriter. Comes from the city of Debaltseve Donetsk region of Ukraine. His father, Alexander Nikolaevich Kozlov, war disabled person, blinded as a result of concussion; Mother, Kozlova Maria Andreevna, nee Shepel, worked as a dishwasher in a dispensary.

Vladimir Alexandrovich graduated from the Lugansk Musical School, worked in music schools in Pokrovsky and Debaltsev. Parents quarreled - his father at the "hack" drank: he played at weddings and banquets. As a child, Alexander lived with his grandparents from his father for a long time. His younger brother, who was born on April 12, was named after Gagarin - Yuri.

Warm memories remained of his father: as he took to the river, brought oil paints and brushes, talked about the Spartans and taught auto -training. I saw little mother - she was at work all the time. When he went to school, he taught his grandmother Mary to read. Nobody thought the socialist Donbass - the dead end of the abilities of the child: for the boy his social status was one road - underground development of coal deposits.

At the age of 15, his mother sent him to study at the Donetsk technical school of industrial automation. The annual practice from the 1st year Alexander took place in the Socialist Donbass mine. Mostly working in the dark to the touch. At a depth of meters, the warmth of the core of the earth is already felt, it is hot there. The mask immediately sticks out later.

After the mine, the snot was black for six months. ” You are chosen. You are part of the great people. To build a Baikal-Amur highway, to conquer the taiga, the cosmos pioneer ... In order to resist capitalism, we had to make all our forces. And I put them! I was a proud citizen ... ”Now he sees it differently and even equates the work at the mine to rape the child: without experience and horizons, you do not understand what is normal and what is not.

Donbass calls the “dead end” edge: the miners received a lot of money, but there was nothing to spend on, they degraded and lost their health - professional knees and lung diseases. Lenin, played the guitar. He lived in a hostel, seven people were located in the room. He was secluded in the library - there he was allowed to draw during non -working hours. In the room of Sasha, the paintings were spoiled by his comrades.

From the miners to Bohemia, having graduated from the 3rd year, he learned that the Donetsk State Art School was opened in the city. Respect felt for people of a creative profession: “I thought, artists on Olympus, and this is not available to mortals. To draw is the destiny of the gods. ” I immediately decided to act. But they did not let go of the technical school, his father stood up and helped to pick up the documents.

The art school gave a lot due to the fact that the personnel were non -named: teachers from Kyiv, Kharkov, Leningrad. The Leningrad teachers were burning, they drove the guys by train to Leningrad to the opening of world exhibitions and just meet white nights. At school, Alexander was older than the others, stood out with energy, was a Komsomol of the group - rather, a tribute to its leadership qualities than ideology.

On the first day at the school, he met the future wife Natalia. The army is cruelty, hatred and soullessness without graduating even the 1st year, in April, was drafted into the army. Then the mess began in Poland - we were handed over to Poland cards. The political officer warned that they would not write about it in letters home. ” But they did not send it to the war.

I painfully perceived the lack of freedom, the violence of society over a person: I saw how they mocked young soldiers - a corridor was forced to wash with a toothbrush, drunken commanders raised at night alarm. Cruelty, hatred, soullessness. I was ready to take the machine gun and go to the headquarters. ” He could have broken, but, according to his admission, the Natashins were saved by letters.

And she has letters from me.Letters were stored in Mariupol by her mother. ” Student wedding in Donetsk after the army, he and Natasha got married in Donetsk. Natalya Kozlova in the girlishness of Gah, G. Childhood she spent in India, where her father, Nikolai Leontyevich Gakh G. Mom Elena Ivanovna Gakh G. In her family, everyone spoke Russian, and Natasha does not know the Ukrainian language.

At Natasha’s wedding, parents came from Mariupol in their Volga car. Mariupol loved, traveled during summer holidays with friends on an inflatable raft along the wild shores of the Azov and Black Seas. Leningrad is a cultural world, and culture is the beginning of freedom in - gg. Alexander and Natalya studied at the Leningrad Higher Art and Industrial School.

He was struck by a comfortable life in the northern capital: “Everything was here in stores, and in the village they brought bread to the store once a week. It was not to buy meat there. If you don’t have a smoked half of the pig in your cellar - you are without meat, if there is no cabbage in the garden - you are without borsch. ” In everyday life, of course, it was not easy: a limit residence permit, part -time jobs - from unloading wagons to exchange rate work to order.

Natasha was financially supported by parents.

They and Natasha in the hostel was a place of companies. They listened to the rock operas "Juno and Avos", "The star and death of Joaquin Murita", helped fellow students with ideas in sculpture and painting. Natasha baked pies. They felt the city as a cultural environment: "The wide world of art has opened in Leningrad." Alexander spent a lot of time in the Hermitage, where the entrance for students of art universities was free.

Self -identification went through the world of childhood, and he established his counterpoints: the art of Maya - these were for him the pillows embroidered with his grandmother, the art of ancient Egypt - this is a grinding of the roof of his grandfather. The Mukhinsk School turned out to be very liberal. Comparing with the Academy of Arts in Moscow, where fellow students studied in the Donetsk school, he saw how they were strangled by propaganda: compositions from a sickle and a hammer, stars and a flag, and in figurative art - sailors, soldiers, pilots.

We were allowed by formal and abstract compositions. Everything you want. " At the same time, Jewish friends went abroad. Sasha bought books from them and perceived the departure with pain: “After all, then leaving abroad is like in the grave: neither they are to us, nor we for them. Then a friend from the Academy of Arts flew abroad on an inflatable boat on the Black Sea, he sent them a postcard from Turkey.

Sasha did not notice perestroika. For us, these were not signs of freedom. The only difference was that it was possible to buy jeans and Camel cigarettes. ” He calls true freedom real relationships, openness of the heart, love and readiness for self-sacrifice for the sake of love, as in the rock-Opera of "Juno and Avos." And the main freedom was the freedom of creativity.

But without culture, freedom is impossible. We were in St. Petersburg “Khokhly” ethnophilism recalls an arrogant attitude towards them in Leningrad by ethnicity - for the southern dialect they and Natasha were called crests. It was a little insulting. But we understood that we were crests. ” But by strangers they did not feel: “We did not move from Ukraine to Russia - it was the Soviet Union, our homeland, endless, unified, without borders.

Donetsk was not very much Ukraine at all.