Vladimir Voinovich
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vladimir Nikolayevich Voinovich (alternatively
spelled Voynovich, Russian: Владимир Войнович,
born September 26, 1932 in Stalinabad, Tajikstan,
Soviet Union) is a prominent Russian writer and
a dissident. He is a member of the Serbian
Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of
Language and Literature.
Life
Voinovich was born to father of Serbian descent, journalist,
and mother of Jewish descent, professor of mathematics. His
ancestor, Ivo Vojnović, was a prominent Serbian writer from
Dubrovnik.
Voinovich is famous for his
satiric fiction but also wrote some poetry. While working for
Moscow radio in the early 1960s, he produced the lyrics for the
cosmonauts' anthem, Fourteen Minutes Till the Start ("14 минут
до старта"). Between 1951 and 1955, Voinovich also served in the
Soviet Army during peace time.
At the outset of the Brezhnev
stagnation period, Voinovich's writings stopped being published
in the USSR, but became very popular samizdat and in the West.
For his writing and participation in the human rights movement,
Voinovich was excluded from the Soviet Writers' Union in 1974,
his telephone line was cut off in 1976 and he and his family
were forced to emigrate in 1980. He settled in Munich, West
Germany and worked for Radio Liberty.
Voinovich helped publish Vasily
Grossman's famous novel Life and Fate by smuggling photo films
secretly taken by Andrei Sakharov.
Gorbachev restored his Soviet
citizenship in 1990 and since then the writer spends most of his
time in the new Russia. Widowed in 2004, he now lives in Moscow.
Voinovich has a son by his first wife and a daughter, Olga, by
his second wife, the recently deceased, Irina. Voinovich has won
many international awards and honor titles, such as Sakharov
Award (2002), State Award of the Russian Federation (2000) and
more. Since 1995 he has ventured into graphic arts and sells his
paintings in Russian galleries and on the Web.
His work
His magnum opus The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of
Private Ivan Chonkin ("Жизнь и необычайные приключения солдата
Ивана Чонкина") is set in the Red Army during World War II,
satirically exposing the daily absurdities of the totalitarian
regime. "Chonkin" is now a widely known figure in Russian
popular culture and the book was also made into a film by the
famous Czech director Jiří Menzel. Chonkin is often referred to
as "the Russian Švejk".
In 1986 he wrote a satire novel
Moscow 2042. In this novel, Voinovich predicted that Russia will
be ruled by the "Communist Party of State Security" which
combines the KGB, Russian Orthodox Church and the Communist
party. This party is led by a KGB general Bukashin (name
literally meaning "the insect") who met main character of the
novel in Germany. An extreme Slavophile Sim Karnavalov
(apparently inspired by Solzhenitsyn) enters Moscow on a white
horse.
His other novels have also won
acclaim: Ivankiada, his novel about a writer trying to get an
apartment in the bureaucratic clog of the Soviet system. The Fur
Hat, is, in many ways, a satire of Gogol's Overcoat. His
Monumental Propaganda is a stinging critique of post-Communist
Russia, a story that shows the author's opinion that Russians
haven't changed much since the days of Stalin.
