Vladimov, Georgy

▪ 2004

Georgy Nikolayevich Volosevich 

      Russian writer, editor, and political dissident (b. Feb. 19, 1931, Kharkov, U.S.S.R. [now in Ukraine]—d. Oct. 19, 2003, Frankfurt, Ger.), was best known for his novel Verny Ruslan (“Faithful Ruslan”), a savage satire of the Stalinist Gulag culture from the viewpoint of a camp guard dog; it was written in the 1960s and circulated as samizdat in the U.S.S.R. until it was published in Germany in 1975 and in English in 1979. Vladimov worked as a critic for the literary journal Novy mir (“New World”) and was elected to membership in the Soviet Writers Union in 1961, but he soon fell afoul of the authorities, both for his writings—which were not properly flattering of Soviet reality—and for his activities on behalf of and in concert with fellow dissidents Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrey Sakharov. Vladimov quit the Writers Union in 1977 and moved to Germany after his citizenship was revoked in 1983. His novel General i yego armiya (“The General and His Army”) won the Russian Booker Prize in 1995. Vladimov's Russian citizenship was restored in 2000, and he was buried at the cemetery at Peredelkino, the writer's colony near Moscow.

* * *