Alexander Chakovsky; Russian Writer, Editor

Alexander Chakovsky, 80, a Russian writer and stalwart of the Soviet literary Establishment. From 1962 to 1988, Chakovsky was chief editor of the influential weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta. As an official in the Soviet Writers Union for many years, he was an enforcer of party doctrine that persecuted many other writers. Chakovsky, who graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute, once worked as a war correspondent. His literary reputation rested on a trilogy of World War II novels about the siege of what was then known as Leningrad. The Soviet Union rewarded him with the Stalin Prize in 1950 and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1963. He was one of the few Soviet writers allowed to travel abroad and his works were regularly published. He lost his job with Literaturnaya Gazeta under then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or openness. In Moscow on Thursday of undisclosed causes.