Valentin Pikul
| Valentin Pikul | |
|---|---|
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| Born | July 13, 1928 Leningrad, Soviet Union |
| Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Riga, Latvia |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | fiction |
| Notable works | At the Last Frontier, Requiem for Convoy PQ-17 |
Valentin Savvich Pikul (Russian: Валенти́н Са́ввич Пи́куль) (July 13, 1928 - July 16, 1990) was a popular and prolific Soviet historical novelist of Ukrainian-Russian heritage. He lived and worked in Riga.
Pikul's novels were grounded in extensive research, blending historical and fictional characters and often focusing on Russian nationalistic themes. Pikul's best-selling 1978 novel At the Last Frontier was a dramatized telling of Rasputin's influence over the Russian imperial court. Richard Stites says he was "a name hardly known to literary scholars but the most widely read author in the Soviet Union from the seventies to today [i.e., 1991]... Pikul's works were wildly popular in the book market (in the years 1967–1979 over a million copies were printed), but politically controversial because of his ardent patriotism which was sometimes expressed in thinly veiled Russian nationalism."[1] According to Natalya Ivanova:
History in his interpretation acquired market value, and the circulation of his national-romantic “novels” left Bulat Okudzhava’s and Yury Davydov’s books far behind. Pikul owed his popularity not only to a method depending on adventure and simplification. His national-patriotic ideology, hostile to the official and liberal internationalism of the day, drew the readers indifferent to schematic representations of history by Soviet scholars like a magnet. Pikul developed and consistently used the propaganda mechanism successfully exploited by mass culture to captivate the minds of unprepared audiences.[2]
Little of Pikul's work has been translated into English. In May 2001 a seagoing minesweeper of the Black Sea Fleet was named in his honor.
Works
- Ocean patrol, (Океанский патруль), 1954
- Bajazet, (Баязет), 1961
- Tares, (Плевелы), 1962
- Paris for three hours, (Париж на три часа), 1962
- On the outskirts of a great empire, (На задворках великой империи), 1964–66
- Out of the deadlock, (Из тупика), 1968
- The Requiem for Convoy PQ-17, (Рекием каравану PQ-17), 1970
- Moonzund, (Моонзунд), 1970 (screen version - Moonzund, 1987)
- By plume and sword, (Пером и шпагой), 1972
- Stars over the marsh, (Звёзды над болотом), 1972
- Boys with bows, (Мальчики с бантиками), 1974
- Slovo and Delo, (Слово и дело), 1974–75
- The Battle of Iron Chancellors,(Битва железных канцлеров), 1977
- Riches, (Богатство), 1977
- The Demonic Forces, (Нечистая сила), 1979
- The Three Ages of Okini-San, (Три возраста Окини-сан), 1981
- To each his own, (Каждому своё), 1983
- The Favorite, (Фаворит), 1984
- Cruisers, (Крейсера), 1985
- I have the honour, (Честь имею), 1986
- Hard Labor, (Каторга), 1986
- Go and sin no more, (Ступай и не греши), 1990
- Operation Barbarossa, (Барбаросса. Площадь павших борцов), 1990
- Arakcheevshina, (Аракчеевщина)
- Psy Gospodni, (Псы господни)
- Janissary, (Янычары)
- Fat, dirty and corrupt, (Жирная, грязная и продажная)
