Demographer

Memory of Anatoly Vishnevsky. The film "Man from the Third Billion"

Knowledge and understanding of the issues of fertility and mortality does not give preferences in matters of life and death. On January 15, 2021, at the age of 85, Anatoly Grigoryevich Vishnevsky, an outstanding Russian demographer, died.

On the 85th anniversary of Anatoly Vishnevsky at the School of Design, the Higher School of Economics was shot & documentary & “Man from the Third billion”. This tape is Anatoly Grigoryevich’s personal story about events & life: about participation in the underground circle in the most gloomy Stalinist years, about verses that helped cope with hunger, about secret statistics and amazing meetings. We devote this film to the memory of an outstanding scientist and man.

Pavel Polyan

Demographer, publicist

At the breadth and depth of professional interests, by the bibliographic list and personal performance Anatoly Vishnevsky is, of course, a person-institute. But science is a collective matter, which is why it is also a person-prostitute! How many times he founded, raised and brought to fruitful a variety of seedlings, whether it is the publication (the annual “population of Russia”, the ballot “Population and Society” and “Demoscope-Weekly”, the magazine “Demographic Review”) or united groups of entire centers and institutions ... Starting from the 1990s, Vishnevsky combined research and teaching activities in Russia with Russia with Russia Similar in France - in the homeland of her wife Marina.

In demography, numerous studies made Vishnevsky a convinced theoretician of “demographic modernization”, a convincing critic of the pronalist measures of the Russian government and an adherent of the appropriateness of labor immigration.

But no less than the present or future of demography, the scientist was occupied by its history - starting from the demographic transition and the repressed census of 1937 and the statistics executed for it to his own direct teachers, such as Urlanis, Kurman or Volkov. I remember (from my student time) on the pages of the magazine “Knowledge - Strength” of his magnificent articles on historical demography: you read and involuntarily try on your own case - individual or family.

A. G. Vishnevsky himself is a child of a later stage in the development of Russian demography, which gained strength after 1985, when this science became universally recognized and in demand, including the authorities. However, this demand, as the latest census show, is often specific: the authorities need a mirror, but only the mirror is servile and, if necessary, manipulated!

The names of the main books of Vishnevsky are always bright, associative, provoking: “Russian or Prussian?”, “A sickle and ruble” (monumental historiosophical canvas, conceptual portrait of the USSR against the backdrop of Russia, Germany and other countries).

Vishnevsky always moved the scientific, and not some other interest. The produced scientific truth and freedom of thought were most expensive for him.

This made him stubborn and unbending in the dialogue with the authorities and with colleagues. Mosenna, fir -trees, "What do you deign?" - This is not about him. And Tolya Vishnevsky is a very faithful friend, a thin, understanding and wise, ironic and smiling from under his Mephistophelian hair, writing you a cheerful rhyme on the occasion of the next anniversary.

This is the time to recall that the creative interests and talents of Anatoly Vishnevsky in the framework of demography were always crowded. He was often brought into historiosophy and in elegant literature. So, he is the author of an amazing documentary collage novel “Interpreted Letters” (2000; 2nd ed.-2008), folded from documents of several family archives. And his second novel, "The biography of Peter Stepanovich K." (2013), this is no longer a collage, but a novel-zond, which passed through the entire thickness of the Russian-Soviet-Russian twentieth century.

The editors of "New" expresses condolences to the relatives and friends of Anatoly Vishnevsky, as well as us all.