Vic­tor
Ero­fe­yev

Born 43 years be­fore the col­lapse of the USSR, Vic­tor Ero­fe­yev be­came one of the most an­ti-so­vi­et wri­ters. A pub­li­cati­on of his es­say “Mar­qu­is de Sa­de: sa­dism and the XXth cen­tu­ry” bro­ught him fa­me. In 1979, he pro­duced a scan­da­lo­us li­tera­ry al­ma­nac, “Met­ro­pol”, in which ma­ny im­portant So­vi­et wri­ters par­ti­cipa­ted. The al­ma­nac was put in­to cir­cu­lati­on via sa­miz­dat, to avo­id the So­vi­et cen­sors­hip. As a re­sult, Ero­fe­yev was ex­pelled from the Uni­on of So­vi­et Wri­ters and was ban­ned from pub­li­shing un­til 1988; al­so, for the sa­me re­ason, his fat­her who was a high-rank dip­lo­mat lost his job.

Ero­fe­yev’s most po­pular no­vel is “Rus­si­an Be­auty”, but al­so among his most re­mar­kable works are the fol­lo­wing: the auto­bi­og­raphi­cal no­vel “The Go­od Sta­lin”, the no­vels “Li­fe with an Idi­ot” which was tur­ned in­to an ope­ra by a fa­mo­us com­po­ser Alf­red Shnit­ke and "The Go­od Sta­lin". Al­most each his bo­ok pro­vokes scan­dals and he­ated de­bates. This hap­pe­ned al­so with “En­cyclo­pa­edia of the Rus­si­an So­ul” re­le­ased in 1999, which rep­re­sents the most cri­tical opi­ni­on of the Rus­si­an pe­op­le sin­ce Cha­adayev.

Be­sides his li­tera­ture ac­ti­viti­es, Vic­tor Ero­fe­yev fre­qu­ent­ly ap­pe­ars on Rus­si­an te­levi­si­on and ra­dio, whe­re, un­til re­cent ti­me, he has had his own prog­rams.