Big heart of the best woman Frida Vigdorova

MOSCOW. The publishing house "AST" has published the book "The Right to Record" with journalism by Frida Vigdorova, the notes made by her during the trial of Joseph Brodsky, and notes from her journalistic notebooks.

Different roads lead to journalism. Someone driven by vanity, guided by the choice of the slogan "money does not smell." Someone converts literary ability and a tendency toward conformism into political dividends. The gift of Frida Vigdorova maximally sharpened her ability to empathy, a sense of justice, indifference to someone else’s misfortune, intolerance to humiliation and bullying. She did not avoid the disgraced, fighting for the good name of the slandered. For the “little man” sheathed by life, whose needs were never priority for the powerful, Vigdorova sometimes became the only hope. To solve urgent issues, to protect against lawlessness, to salvation.

The efforts of Frida Abramovna helped to get to the reader Dudintsev’s novel “Not with One Bread”, Anatoly Rybakov’s novel “The Dirk”, “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and the writing talent of Elena Ventzel (I. Grekova) took place. Her perseverance made it possible to publish Akhmatova’s “Courage” on March 8, 1942 in Pravda. An event that was of great importance to the poetess. The widow of Osip Mandelstam, Nadezhda Yakovlevna, despite the ban, was able to get a residence permit in the capital. Vigdorova refused to take part in the persecution of Boris Pasternak and rescued from prison his last love - Olga Ivinskaya. Fought for the review of cases and the release of other unjustly convicted.

The recordings made by Frida Abramovna during the trial of Joseph Brodsky and subsequently transferred to the West helped to attract the attention of the world community to the process and contributed to the release of the future Nobel Prize winner. An unprecedented act for that time. Like Danko, who took a heart out of her chest to light up the path to other people’s salvation, she did not hesitate to rush to the aid of the young poet. The stress experienced at that moment brought closer the sudden departure of the “best woman”, as Kigney Kukney Ivanovich Vigdorova called it.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru