Russian dissident poet Rubinstein dead at 76

MOSCOW

Poet Lev Rubinstein, a key figure of the Soviet underground literary scene who later protested against Russian President Vladimir Putin, has died days after being hit by a car, his daughter said on Jan. 14.

Rubinstein is considered as one of the founders of the Russian conceptualist movement, a literary "avant-garde" that mocked the official doctrine of socialist realism in the 1970s-1980s.

"My dad, Lev Rubinstein, died today," his daughter Maria wrote on a "LiveJournal" blog picked up by Russian media.

The 76-year-old had been hit by a car in Moscow on Jan. 8, and hospitalized in a serious condition. The department of transports of Moscow said "the driver did not slow down" as Rubinstein was crossing the street.

The poet had created his own genre, between poetry and theater, by writing short sentences on perforated cards and reading the "note-card poems" on stage.

After the USSR collapsed, he shot to prominence and saw his work widely published by mainstream publishing companies.

Rubinstein was openly hostile to Putin's government and regularly protested against the Kremlin's intensifying repression and human rights violations.

After Putin launched his full-scale assault on Ukraine, Rubinstein signed with other renowned writers an open-letter denouncing a "criminal war" and the "lies" from the Kremlin.