Boris Vladimirovich Dubin ' onMouseout='HidePop("52060")' href="/topics/Moscow">Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

) is a Russian

Russians

The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

 sociologist, and a translator

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

 for English, French, Spanish, Latin American and Polish literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

. Dubin is the head of department of sociopolitical researches at the Levada Center

Levada Center

Levada Center is a Russian independent, non-governmental polling and sociological research organisation. It is named after its founder, the first Russian professor of sociology Yuri Levada . Levada Center traces back its history to 1987 when VCIOM was founded, originally headed by Academician...

 and the assistant to Lev Gudkov

Lev Gudkov

Lev Dmitrievich Gudkov is a Russian sociologist, director of the analytical Levada Center and editor-in-chief of the journal The Russian Public Opinion Herald.-Scientific activity:...

, editor-in-chief of the sociological journal Russian Public Opinion Herald

Russian Public Opinion Herald

The Russian Public Opinion Herald is a Russian sociological journal which is published by the Levada Center four times a year. It was first published in 2003, in combination with the foundation of the Levada Center...

 published by the Center. Additionally he is a lecturer of sociology of culture

Sociology of culture

The sociology of culture concerns culture—usually understood as sets of cognitive meanings—as it is manifested in society. For Georg Simmel, culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history".Cultural...

 at the Russian State University for the Humanities

Russian State University for the Humanities

The Russian State University for the Humanities , is a university in Moscow, Russia with over 5500 students. It was created in 1991 as the result of the merger of the Moscow Public University and the Moscow State Institute for History and Archives The Russian State University for the Humanities...

 and the Moscow higher school of social and economic sciences.

Professional activities

Dubin was born into a family of physicians. He was closely connected with the poets of SMOG (Russian: СМОГ), whose poems were printed as a Samizdat

Samizdat

Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...

. In the second half of the 1960s he visited the seminars of famous poets and translators such as Arseny Tarkovsky

Arseny Tarkovsky

Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky was a prominent Soviet and Russian poet and translator. He is considered one of the great 20th century Russian poets. He was also the father of influential film director Andrei Tarkovsky.-Origin:...

, David Samoylov

David Samoylov

David Samoylov , pseudonym of David Samuilovich Kaufman . He is a notable poet of War generation of Russian poets, and considered one of the most important Russian poets of the post-World War II era.-External links:* * *...

 and Boris Slutsky

Boris Slutsky

Boris Slutsky was a Soviet poet of Russian language.Lived his childhood and youth in Harkov. In the year 1937 entered the law institute of Moscow, and since1939 studied also at the Institute of literature "Maxim Gorky" till 1941....

.
He graduated from the philological faculty of the Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1970 with a speciality “Russian language and literature; French language”. His reviews were published in the public press for the first time in 1970. From 1970 to 1985 Dubin worked for the Russian State Library

Russian State Library

The Russian State Library is the national library of Russia, located in Moscow. It is the largest in the country and the third largest in the world for its collection of books . It was named the V. I...

 and in the following three years until 1988 at the All-Union Book Chamber. In 1988—2004 he worked as an employee of the Russian Public Opinion Research Center VCIOM

VCIOM

All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, VTsIOM, [established in 1987; till 1992 – All-Union Center for the Study of Public Opinion] is the oldest polling institution in the post-Soviet space and is one of the leading sociological and market research companies in Russia.-General...

. In 2004 the core of VCIOM employees including Dubin, left the organization and helped to set up the Levada Center

Levada Center

Levada Center is a Russian independent, non-governmental polling and sociological research organisation. It is named after its founder, the first Russian professor of sociology Yuri Levada . Levada Center traces back its history to 1987 when VCIOM was founded, originally headed by Academician...

 under the direction of Yuri Levada

Yuri Levada

Yuri Alexandrovich Levada was a well known Russian sociologist, political scientist and the founder of the Levada Center.-Scientific activity to 1988:In 1952 Levada graduated from the Philosophical faculty of the Moscow State University....

.

Translations

In 1970 Dubin co-operated with the publishing house “Fiction” (Russian: Художественная литература), later with “Progress and Rainbow (Russian: Прогресс и Радуга). The first publicized translation was some poems of Théophile Gautier

Théophile Gautier

Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....

 (1972). The largest translation (into Russian) works were the Spanish song lyrics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance such as John of the Cross

John of the Cross

John of the Cross , born Juan de Yepes Álvarez, was a major figure of the Counter-Reformation, a Spanish mystic, Catholic saint, Carmelite friar and priest, born at Fontiveros, Old Castile....

, Luis Ponce de León

Luis Ponce de León

Fray Luis Ponce de León was a Spanish lyric poet, Augustinian friar and theologian and academic, active during the Spanish Golden Age.-Early life:...

, Juan Boscán Almogáver

Juan Boscán Almogáver

Joan Boscà i Almogàver , was a Catalan poet born about the end of the 15th century.The exact date of birth for Boscà is unclear, but there is a consensus that he was born anywhere between 1487 and 1492. Boscà was born in Barcelona and was one of three children...

, Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño usually referred as Pedro Calderón de la Barca , was a dramatist, poet and writer of the Spanish Golden Age. During certain periods of his life he was also a soldier and a Roman Catholic priest...

, Luis de Góngora

Luis de Góngora

Luis de Góngora y Argote was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widely considered to be the most prominent Spanish poets of their age. His style is characterized by what was called culteranismo, also known as Gongorism...

 and many more.
Other famous writers whose verses and prose he translated were Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire

Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

, Endre Ady

Endre Ady

Endre Ady was a Hungarian poet.-Biography:Ady was born in Érmindszent, Szilágy county . He belonged to an impoverished Calvinist noble family...

, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

, Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

, César Vallejo

César Vallejo

César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza was a Peruvian poet. Although he published only three books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century in any language. Thomas Merton called him "the greatest universal poet since Dante"...

, José Lezama Lima

José Lezama Lima

José Lezama Lima was a Cuban writer and poet who is considered one of the most influential figures in Latin American literature....

, Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa, born Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa , was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic and translator described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language.-Early years in Durban:On 13 July...

. His translations also included essays of writers such as Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...

, Isaiah Berlin

Isaiah Berlin

Sir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...

, Maurice Blanchot

Maurice Blanchot

Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida.-Works:...

, Emil Cioran

Emil Cioran

-Early life:Emil M. Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran , was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.After studying humanities at the...

, Henri Michaux

Henri Michaux

Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism...

, Yves Bonnefoy

Yves Bonnefoy

Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....

, Philippe Jaccottet

Philippe Jaccottet

Philippe Jaccottet is a poet and translator who publishes in French.After completing his studies in Lausanne, he lived several years in Paris. In 1953, came to live in the town of Grignan in Provence...

, José Ortega y Gasset

José Ortega y Gasset

José Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. He was, along with Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism.-Biography:José Ortega y Gasset was...

, Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...

, Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben is an Italian political philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer....

. Dubin translated the works of several Polish authors like Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński

Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski

Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, was a Polish poet and Home Army soldier, one of the most renowned authors of the Generation of Columbuses, the young generation of Polish poets of whom many perished in the Warsaw Uprising.-Biography:...

, Czesław Miłosz, Janush Shuber and Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki

Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki

Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki is an award-winning Polish poet.Born in Wólka Krowicka near Lubaczów, he is an author of nine volumes of poems and some texts for the magazine Kresy. He is a past winner of the Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna Award, the Barbara Sadowska Award, Polish-German Days of Literature...

. He also wrote and translated the anthology "Space in other words: the French poets of the 20th century about an image in art". Besides his translations, Dubin published articles about the latest foreign literature and modern Russian poetry.

Dubin is the winner of different awards for his essays and translations, some of the biggest include the award for "Window" (Russian: Иллюминатор) in 1995, A.Leroy-Beaulieu and M.Vaksmaher for translations from French into Russian, the Andrei Bely Prize

Andrei Bely Prize

The Andrei Bely Prize is the oldest independent literary prize awarded in Russia. It was established in 1978 by the staff of Hours, the largest samizdat literary journal in Leningrad, to recognize excellence in three categories: prose, poetry, and theory...

 for humanitarian researches in 2005 and the International award of Efim Etkind in 2006. Chevalier of The Ordre national du Mérite

Ordre National du Mérite

The Ordre national du Mérite is an Order of State awarded by the President of the French Republic. It was founded on 3 December 1963 by President Charles de Gaulle...

 (France, 2008).

Books by Boris Dubin

• «Книга и чтение в жизни советского села» (1978, с коллективом авторов)
• «Книга, чтение, библиотека: Зарубежные исследования по социологии литературы» (1982, в соавторстве с Л. Д. Гудковым и А. И. Рейтблатом)
• «Проблемы социологии литературы за рубежом: Сб. обзоров и рефератов» (1983, с коллективом авторов)
• «Есть мнение!: Итоги социологического опроса» (1990, с коллективом авторов)
• «Советский простой человек: Опыт социального портрета на рубеже 90-х» (1993, с коллективом авторов; на нем. яз. - 1992, на франц.яз.- 1993)
• «Литература как социальный институт» (1994, в соавторстве с Л. Д. Гудковым).
• «Интеллигенция: заметки о литературно-политических иллюзиях» (1995, в соавторстве c Л. Гудковым; 2-е изд. - 2009)
• «Литература и общество» (1998, в соавторстве с Л. Гудковым и В. Страдой
• «Слово — письмо — литература: Очерки по социологии современной культуры» (2001)
• «Семантика, риторика и социальные функции „прошлого“: к социологии советского и постсоветского исторического романа» (2003)
• «Интеллектуальные группы и символические формы: Очерки социологии современной культуры» (2004)
• «На полях письма. Заметки о стратегиях мысли и слова в XX веке» (2005, включает избранные переводы)
• «Жить в России на рубеже столетий. Социологические очерки и разработки» (2007)
• «Проблема „элиты“ в сегодняшней России» (2007, в соавторстве с Л.Гудковым и Ю.Левадой,
• «Общественный разлом и рождение новой социологии: Двадцать лет мониторинга» (2008, с коллективом авторов)
• «Чтение в России - 2008. Тенденции и проблемы» (2008, в соавторстве с Н.А.Зоркой,
• «Постсоветский человек и гражданское общество» (2008, в соавторстве с Л.Д.Гудковым и Н.А.Зоркой)
• «Классика, после и рядом: Социологические очерки о литературе и культуре» (2010)
• «Россия нулевых: политическая культура — историческая память — повседневная жизнь» (2011)