ABSTRACT
What could be more romantic? A Russian genius, coming of age with the 1917 Revolution, is plucked from obscurity to overturn Soviet psychology. Suffering recurrent bouts of tuberculosis, he writes some of his major works in hospital. He gives stirring lectures and founds a dynamic new approach to the study of social life, attracting students and colleagues the closest of whom betray him under political pressure. He lives in one room with his wife and two daughters. Deferring treatment for what turns out to be his final illness, he dies in 1934 before his 38th birthday. With his last breath, perhaps, he echoes the inner speech of Prince Andrei of War and Peace – as he watches the spinning, smoking shell before his feet on the battlefield of Borodino – ‘I cannot, I do not wish to die. I love life – I love this grass, this earth, this air...’.
