The Modern Novel

Biography

Vladimir Nikolaevich Voinovich was born in Dushanbe in 1932. His mother was a teacher and his father a journalist. His father was arrested in 1937 and spent some time in a gulag. Voinovich did various odd jobs before serving time in the Red Army from 1951 to 1955. he studied to be a teacher in Moscow and was then sent to Kazakhstan as a member of the Young Communist League. He returned to Moscow, where he worked in radio and gained fame by writing the lyrics for a song about the Russian astronauts. He started writing stories which more or less conformed to the Soviet orthodoxy but gradually drifted away as dissidents were suppressed. The first part of Жизнь и необычайные приключения солдата Ивана Чонкина (The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin) was published in Paris and Voinovich was expelled from the Writers’ Union and harassed by the KGB. He became seriously ill, possibly as a result of poisoning. Eventually he emigrated to West Germany with his wife and daughter, where he continued to produce fiction. He did not return to Russia till 1988 and now divides his time between Munich and Moscow. He is likely to be most remembered for his anti-militaristic (and incomplete) Жизнь и необычайные приключения солдата Ивана Чонкина (The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin). He died in 2018.

Other links

Vladimir Voinovich
The life and works of Vladimir Voinovich: the satirist as exile
Obituary
Vladimir Voinovich (in Russian)
Voinovich, Vladimir Nikolaveich (in Russian)
Voinovich, Vladimir Nikolaveich (in Russian)