23 Facts About Valentin Rasputin

Valentin Grigoryevich Rasputin was a Soviet and Russian writer.

Valentin Rasputin was born and lived much of his life in the Irkutsk Oblast in Eastern Siberia.

Valentin Rasputin was born in the village of Ust-Uda in East Siberian Oblast.

Valentin Rasputin's father, Grigory Rasputin, worked for a village cooperative store, and his mother was a nurse.

Valentin Rasputin became the first child from his village to continue his education in this way.

Valentin Rasputin graduated from Irkutsk University in 1959 and started working for local Komsomol newspapers in Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk.

An important point in Valentin Rasputin's early literary career was a young writers' seminar in September 1965 in Chita led by Vladimir Chivilikhin, who encouraged the young writer's literary aspirations and recommended him for membership in the prestigious Union of Soviet Writers.

In 1967, after the publication of his Money for Maria, Valentin Rasputin was indeed admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers.

In 1980, after researching the Battle of Kulikovo for two years, Valentin Rasputin was baptised by an Orthodox priest in nearby Yelets.

Valentin Rasputin was a guest for many events in the city of Irkutsk, including the unveilings of the monuments to Tsar Alexander III, Alexander Vampilov and Alexander Kolchak.

Valentin Rasputin organized the readers' conference in Irkutsk Central Scientific Library named after Molchanov-Sibirsky.

Valentin Rasputin died in Moscow on 14 March 2015, a day short of his 78th birthday.

Valentin Rasputin is closely associated with a movement in post-war Soviet literature known as Village Prose.

The opening paragraph below is a good example of Valentin Rasputin's writing style, and the novel's theme of natural cycles disrupted by modernization:.

Valentin Rasputin directed particularly trenchant criticism at large-scale dam building, like the project that flooded his own hometown, and water management projects, like the diversion of the Siberian rivers to Central Asia.

Valentin Rasputin argued that these projects were destructive not simply in an ecological sense, but in a moral sense as well.

In Siberia, Siberia, Valentin Rasputin compares what he considers modern moral relativism with the traditional beliefs of the people of Russkoye Ustye, who believed in reincarnation.

Some critics accused Valentin Rasputin of idealizing village life and slipping into anti-modern polemics.

Valentin Rasputin criticized Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms from patriotic and nationalistic positions.

Valentin Rasputin signed several open letters, most notably the "Letter of Russian Writers" addressed to the President and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and published in the Literary Newspaper and Nash Sovremennik in 1990.

Valentin Rasputin himself argued that his alleged antisemitic statements have been exaggerated and taken out of context.

In 1992, Valentin Rasputin joined the National Salvation Front, nominally belonging to its leadership.

Valentin Rasputin later supported the CPRF and its leader, Gennady Zyuganov.