Emil Draitser (born 1937) is an author and professor of Russian at Hunter College in New York City. Besides seventeen books of artistic and scholarly prose, his essays and short stories have been published in the Los Angeles Times, Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and many other American and Canadian periodicals. His fiction has also appeared in Russian, Polish, and Israeli journals. A three-time recipient of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts fellowships in writing and the prestigious Mark Aldanov International Literary Award, he has also received numerous grants for writing both fiction and non-fiction from the City University of New York. Draitser has given numerous public lectures and book talks at universities and cultural centers in the United States, Canada, the UK, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and Russia.

Early life

Draitser grew up in a Jewish family in the Soviet Union in the post-World War II years, in the anti-Semitic atmosphere of late Stalinism, at a time when Jews were forced to be silent about their religion and often tried to change their Jewish names. It was an oppressive childhood filled with suspicion and mistrust. As a young student, Draitser excelled at literature and decided that he wanted to be a journalist, despite his mother's preference that he study engineering. At that time, Jews attempting to enter the humanities encountered resistance, as the Soviet system saw those areas as politically vulnerable and felt that Jews entering them would try to subvert the system. Despite this, Draitser earned degrees first in engineering, and later in journalism.

Career

Draitser has published both fiction and nonfiction since 1965. His work has appeared in leading Russian journals (including Youth, Literary Gazette, and Crocodile) under his pen name 'Emil Abramov'. He began his writing career as a freelancer contributing satirical articles to Soviet newspapers and magazines, though he had to be careful about what he wrote. For example, while he could criticize a particular factory for the poor workmanship of goods it produced, he could not criticize the economic system as a whole, although it became increasingly clear to him that the lack of competition that would inspire innovation combined with the Soviet mandate to guarantee work for all employees, regardless of their work ethic, made it impossible to produce quality products. Eventually, Draitser wrote an article critical of an important official which led to him being blacklisted, and prompted him to leave for the United States. In 1975, he settled in Los Angeles, where he earned a Ph.D. in Russian literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1986, he accepted a position at Hunter College in New York City, where he continued to teach. His first book published in the United States, Forbidden Laughter (1980) brought him national attention. Feature articles on him and his book appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on NBC News with Tom Brokaw, the Merv Griffin Show, and National Public Radio. Draitser's research and writing have been supported by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Social Science Foundation, and numerous grants from the City University of New York. He has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Arts Studios, Byrdcliffe Woodstock Art Colony, Renaissance House, and Banff Center for the Arts (Canada). Since spring 2009, he has been working on a sequel to his memoir Shush!, which covers his adulthood and move to the United States.

Books

(New York: Possev-USA, 1984) ISBN 0-911971-03-3 (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1993) Making War, Not Love : Gender and Sexuality in Russian Humor. Kto ty takoi : Odessa Memoir 1945-53 Stalin's Romeo Spy: The Remarkable Rise and Fall of the KGB's Most Daring Operative (London, UK: Duckworth Publishers, 2012) ISBN 978-0715643778 (Baltimore, MD: Seagull Press, 2012) ISBN 9780982911365 (Warsaw, Poland: AMF Plus Group, 2014) ISBN 978-8360532324 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020) ISBN 978-0810141087 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2021) ISBN 978-0299329006 Laughing All the Way to Freedom: Americanization of a Russian Emigre (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2024) ISBN 978-1476692982

Selected essays and short fiction