Want fewer ads?

Vladimir Soloukhin (Russian: ????????? ??????????? ?????????) (June 14, 1924- April 4, 1997) was a Russian poet and writer. Born in Alepino, a village in the Vladimir Oblast of Russia, he was raised in a peasant family.

Soloukhin was educated in a mechanical technicum, where he studied to be a mechanic.

His first poems were published in the Vladimir newspaper "Prizyv" (The Call).

After his military service from 1942-1945 in the Kremlin guard, he began his serious literary career, and in 1951 graduated from the Gorky Moscow Literary Institute.

From 1958 - 1981 he worked in the editorial offices of the prominent newspaper "Molodaya Gvardiya" (Youth Guard) and in the literary journal "Nash Sovremennik" (Our Contemporary).

In his articles he published in the second half of the 1950s and the beginning of 1960s, he manifseted himself as a Russian patriot, and stressed the need to preserve national traditions, and pondered the ways of the development of the Russian arts.

His journalistic expressions of opinion during the later years of Perestroika reflected already monarchist positions and idealized the pre-revolutionary (Czarist) Russia. In his article “Reading Lenin”, Soloukhin was one of the first in Russia to publicly ask for revising the role of Lenin in the history of Russia. At that time, a thesis was popular (and, indeed, was furthered by the authorities), claiming that the crimes of the Stalinist era were a result of «violating Leninist principles», whereas Soloukhin interpreted Stalinism as the logical consequence of Lenin's policies.

The main theme of Soloukhin's work is the Russian countryside, its present and future. His works strives to demonstrate the necessity of preserving the national traditions, and ponders the ways to further develop ethnic Russian art. Vladimir Soloukhin is considered to be a leading figure of the "village prose" group of writers.

In 1975, the journal “Moskva” published his autobiographical story “Verdict” («????????»), where the protagonist is diagnosed with cancer and undergoes surgical operation; in essence the author is describing thoughts of a person who has received death sentence. The whole edition was bought in two days. Within his works, autobiographical prose takes a distinct position, where the author reflects on the history of Russia during the 20th century. Soloukhin represents Orthodox Christian - nationalist positions, criticizing atheist, internationalist, liberal and communist views.

He was known for his campaign to preserve prerevolutionary Russian art and architecture. He died on 04 April 1997 in Moscow. Ilya Glazunov painted a portrait of him.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Vladimir Soloukhin", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0