‘He subtly turned into a tyrant’

Daughter of ‘Cheburashka’ creator Eduard Uspensky accuses him of domestic violence in response to state literary prize in his name

The online publication Sobesednik has published an open letter from Tatyana Uspenskaya, the daughter of well-known Russian children’s author Eduard Uspensky. In the letter, she accuses her father of domestic violence and asks the leadership of the Russian State Children’s Library to remove his name from its newly established “Great Fairytale” prize for children’s literature (in Russian, “Bolshaya Skazka”).

The Soviet era author, best known for creating the famous characters “Cheburashka” and “Crocodile Gena,” died in 2018. The Russian State Children’s Library announced the establishment of the prize in Uspensky’s name at the beginning of May, and a logo design contest for the award is ongoing.

“I think that a person who has a state prize named after them should be, first and foremost, kind and ethical [...] My father was a very cruel person, who committed domestic violence all his life, this was his system of family relationships,” Uspenskaya writes. She also adds that “rudeness and offensive behavior, control and coercion, gradually became the norms of [her father’s] life.” According to Uspenskaya, she and her mother (Uspensky’s first wife), as well as the author’s third wife Eleonora Filina and her child from another marriage, all suffered because of his actions.

“Knowing his problems, including with alcohol, my father never sought out a professional psychologist, but was a supporter of [Vikor] Stolbun’s sect; he underwent treatment, supported the sect financially, advertised it on TV [and] in newspapers, which also cannot be of great merit. My father knew about the beating of children that went on in the sect, but it never stopped him. He admired Stolbun [and] his methods and brought his friends and acquaintances there,” Uspenskaya explains.

Who's Viktor Stolbun?

In the 1970s, Viktor Stolbun established a closed “medical and educational” commune in the Soviet Union, which drew in entire families. Stolbun used ethyl chloride (a chemical commonly used to produce a gasoline additive) and electric current as “treatment” methods, claiming he could cure a number of illnesses, including alcoholism and schizophrenia. Children living at the communes (often styled as boarding schools) were used for physical labor and suffered beatings. Previously, Stolbun had studied at both medical and pedagogical universities, but he was expelled from medical school. Criminal cases were later opened against him for illegal medical treatment and financial fraud, but they never went to court.

“Being an undoubtedly talented person,” her father “couldn’t overcome his human vices,” Uspenskaya says, in sum. In comments to Sobesednik, she called her father a “domestic tyrant” and expressed the opinion that a prize for children’s literature should not bear the name of such a person: “So it turns out that any person who has attained a high social status can do anything?”

Eduard Uspensky sent his daughter to Solbun’s “commune for troubled youth”

Tatyana Uspenskaya did not specify what type of domestic violence her father subjected her to, but in 2019 she gave a long interview to the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, in which she talked about her childhood and teenage years. According to Uspenskaya, until the age of 13 she thought she had an ideal father, but over time, the family’s relationships broke down, and she later understood that he was cheating on her mother. “There was an instance when I was hitchhiking on the road with a friend. A car stopped, [my] father was inside. But in the backseat there was a girl… he saw me and drove on,” Uspenskaya recalls.

After her parents divorced in 1980, her mother had financial problems, so Uspenskaya lived with her father and his second wife, Elena. According to Uspenskaya, her stepmother treated her badly. “She turned out to be a very stingy person. She counted how many cutlets I ate [...] She began to lock up candies and cookies under key, and if I asked for candy she would get such a grimace on her face that the next time it was scary to ask,” Uspenskaya said. “When my father went to Moscow for work, Lena didn’t speak to me.”

According to his daughter, Uspensky already had problems with alcohol during his first marriage. To get rid of them, the family turned to the aforementioned Viktor Stolbun, who had many influential clients. This did not help Uspensky quit drinking, but the writer continued to visit Stolbun; he publicly defended him and for several years even sent his daughter to his “commune for troubled youth.” Uspenskaya confirms that the children there faced physical punishment (in one interview she said that she was not beaten, but in another she said that she “was hit on par with everyone else”), forced to work, and were subjected to psychological pressure.

“From the sixth grade I went for lessons at the sect several times a week, during which it was customary to scream at people, to humiliate [and] insult [them] (this was a kind of psychotherapy). I spent three years in his commune, we worked in the field from morning until night, this was occupational therapy. Then Stolbun opened another location in Dushanbe, where papa sent me for seven or eight months. I finished the eighth grade there in Dushanbe. Father didn’t visit me, it was forbidden. During the summer I was transferred once again, to a branch of Stolbun’s sect in the Moscow region. There, psychological studies and everyday hard labor continued. The girls were sent to work as milkmaids, pig herders, [and] to clear the fields. Once, in the field, I simply ran away from them. I ran to papa. He didn’t force me to go back,” she recalls.

Uspenskaya claimed that over the years, her father “subtly turned into a tyrant.” “He did not keep a check on [his] emotions — he yelled, screamed,” she said. According to Uspenskaya, she was studying at the institute, he beat her several times. “He slapped my cheeks, in a rage, he would push me out onto the street in the cold in my housecoat,” she recalled. “And then I had to ask papa for forgiveness. [It was] humiliating and unpleasant. At the end of my stay in his house my father yelled at me nearly every day. For no reason, he was simply taking out anger.”

Regardless of the conflicts, after she married and moved out of her father’s house, Uspenskaya stayed in contact with him and even named her son Eduard. But in the end their relationship never got better. After Uspensky’s death, his daughter did not go to his funeral and refused to visit his grave. In interviews with various publications, she did not hide the fact that she was insulted by her father’s decision to name his last wife Elena (who was, incidentally, both his second and fourth wife) and their adoptive daughters his official heirs.

Uspensky’s ex-wife says that the writer didn’t even like children

Uspensky’s third wife, Eleonora Filina, also described his “complex character” — Uspensky accused her of cheating. In 2018, Filina told Komsomolskaya Pravda that while they were married, she tried to bring her husband closer to his daughter and his son from his first marriage. But he had a hard time with his daughter and his first wife tried to “remove” his son. “It would have been better if they were never in our lives,” Filina said. According to her, she left the writer because “couldn’t endure his tyranny any longer” and because her son was subject to “aggression from him.”

In a 2011 interview with the magazine Karavan Istory, Filina explained that Uspensky disliked her son, Vlad, from their first meeting: he screamed at the boy, called him a “moron,” and forbade him from coming into their bedroom at night. “When he got older, Vlad admitted that sometimes he would curl up outside of the door to our bedroom in the night, and would only go back to his [bed] shivering in the morning, when it was not so dark and scary. Will I ever be able to forgive myself for this?” Filina said. She also suggested that Uspensky “did not like children in general, neither other [children], nor his own.”

The children’s writer Valentin Postnikov, whose parents were friends with Uspensky (after the author’s death, he also called himself his illegitimate son), told Sobesednik that the writer himself admitted his dislike for children: “Once we were at the Pioneer’s Palace with Uspensky for Children’s Book Week. Children approached uncle Edik [Uspensky], asking for autographs and to take pictures with him. ‘Go to hell,’ he replied. I asked him: Uncle Edik, how can you talk to children that way? ‘Remember Valya,’ Uspensky told me, ‘In order to write good kids books, the author himself does not have to love children. [Hans Christian Andersen] also disliked children.”

The Russian State Children’s Library is leaving Uspensky's name on the literary prize

The Russian State Children’s Library has refused to remove Eduard Uspensky’s name from the “Great Fairytale” prize, despite his daughter’s request. “In the context of a literary prize, we are not considering personal qualities, but are proceeding from the contribution that Eduard Nikolaevich [Uspensky] made. For the past 50 years he has been a main storyteller, the heroes of these tales are still with us. If we start from the position of considering everyone who has a prize or something else named after them, we will bury ourselves in every human [twist of fate],” the library’s director, Maria Vedenyapina, told MBKh Media.

Text by Olga Korelina

Translation by Eilish Hart