Russian poet and Kremlin critic Rubinstein dies after accident

The 76-year-old died on Sunday, six days after he was hit by a car in Moscow and seriously injured, his daughter Maria Rubinstein said in her blog on the Live Journal website. Rubinstein was hit while crossing a street in the capital on January 8th and was taken to hospital in critical condition.

According to the Moscow Transport Authority, the driver, who had already been involved in several traffic violations, did not slow down in front of the zebra crossing. Born in Moscow in 1947, Rubinstein was a trained librarian and one of the big names in the Soviet underground literary scene of the 1970s and 1980s.

He was considered a co-founder of Moscow Conceptualism, which rejected and ridiculed Socialist Realism. With his “index card poetry,” Rubinstein created his own genre that combined theater and poetry: the poet read short sentences written on index cards on stage.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Rubinstein became increasingly well-known in Russia. His works have been published by renowned publishers and translated into several languages. Rubinstein also worked as a journalist.

Rubinstein never made a secret of his opposition to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He took part in opposition demonstrations and denounced oppression and human rights violations. In March 2022, he joined other Russian writers in signing an open letter calling the Russian army’s attack on Ukraine a “criminal war.”