Vladimir Voinovich

Vladimir Voinovich was born in Stalinabad into the family of journalist Nikolai Pavlovich Voinovich (1905–1987), the executive secretary of the republican newspaper Kommunist Tadzhikistana and editor of the provincial newspaper Rabochy Khodzhen-ta, who was partly of Serbian descent and came from the district town of Novozybkov in Chernigov Governorate (now in Bryansk Oblast), and Rozalia Kolmanovna (Klimentevna) Goikhman (1908–1978), an employee of the editorial offices of these newspapers and later a mathematics teacher, who came from the settlement of Khaschevatoye in Gayvoron Uyezd, Kherson Governorate (now in Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine).

In 1941, together with his father, who had recently been released, and his mother, he moved to Zaporozhye. After the war he changed places of residence frequently, working as a shepherd, carpenter, joiner, mechanic, and aircraft mechanic.

In 1950 he was drafted into the army for four years, and during his service in Poland he tried to master the art of versification.

In 1956 he came to Moscow, applied twice to the Gorky Literary Institute, but was not admitted. He studied for a year and a half at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute (1957–1959), went to the virgin lands in Kazakhstan, where his first prose works were written (1958).

In 1960 he got a job as an editor at radio. Soon he wrote the lyrics for a song about cosmonauts that became known throughout the Soviet Union. He was the author of lyrics for more than 40 songs.

The publication of the novella We Live Here («Novy Mir», 1961, No. 1) helped consolidate the writer’s fame.

Since 1962, Voinovich was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers. The novel The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, written since 1963, circulated in samizdat. The first part was published (without the author’s permission) in 1969 in Frankfurt am Main, and the entire book in 1975 in Paris.

In the late