Владимир Глоцер

Russian literary critic, scholar, screenwriter, and essayist (27 July 1931, Moscow, USSR — 19 April 2009, Moscow, Russia). Vladimir Glotzer is best known for his extensive research and publications of the early-Soviet era avantgardists and neo-futurists, most notably, OBeRIu group (the "Union of Real Art;" ОБэРИу, Объединение Реального Искусства in Russian), including Daniil Charms, Alexander Vvedensky and Nikolay Oleynikov. In the 1990 and 2000s, he was heavily criticized as an official representative of Alexander Vvedensky's estate, effectively blocking any writer's publications and aggressively prosecuting several publishers. Vladimir Glotser began his career as a secretary for Korney Chukovsky and Samuil Marshak. Between the 1950s and 1970s, he was a head of a literary studio at the Lomonosov Children's Library. Glotser also directed numerous radio plays, with over 50 children's LPs and 10" records released by Melodiya. In modern Russia, Vladimir Glotser focused on early-Soviet experimental literature, primarily Daniil Charms and Alexander Vvedensky. In the 1980s, he assembled and published memoirs of renowned painter Alisa Poret (1902—1984), which served as one of the primary biographical sources on Kharms. In 1996, he tracked down the writer's second wife, Marina Durnovo (née Malich; 1909—2002), who escaped the Soviet Union after Daniil Charms passed away in 1942 and lived in Venezuela at the time. Glotser taped a series of interviews with Marina, subsequently published as a critically acclaimed My husband Daniil Kharms memoir in 2000. Since the early 1990s, Vladimir Glotser had officially represented Alexander Vvedensky's estate. His approach was heavily criticized, as Glotser effectively made the writer's texts unavailable by demanding non-negotiable and unreasonable royalties and threatening legal action for unauthorized publications. Moreso, Glotser sued several companies for pre-existing material. According to renowned philologist Mikhail Meilakh (who co-published a four-volume "samizdat" edition by Daniil Charms in Bremen, Germany, in 1978–88), Glotser's lawsuit against "Sovetsky Pisatel" printing house for '94 OBeRIu Poets book drove the publisher out of business.