Venedikt Yerofeyev
Venedikt Vasilyevich Yerofeyev, also Benedict Erofeev or Erofeyev (24 October 1938 in Niva-3 settlement, suburb of Kandalaksha – 11 May 1990 in Moscow) was a Russian writer and Soviet dissident.
Venedikt Yerofeyev
Сергей Семёнов (User:Stauffenberg) · CC BY 3.0
- Name
- Venedikt Yerofeyev
- Birth Name
- Venedikt Vasilyevich Yerofeyev
- Born
- 24 October 1938
- Birthplace
- Niva-3 settlement, suburb of Kandalaksha, Murmansk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
- Died
- 11 May 1990
- Place of death
- Moscow, Soviet Union
- Occupation
- Writer
- Movement
- * Soviet nonconformism
- Spouse
- Valentina Vasilevna Zimakova, Galina Pavlovna Nosova
- Nationality
- Soviet Union
- Fields
- prose · literature
- Movements
- modernism
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Venedikt Vasilyevich Yerofeyev, also Benedict Erofeev or Erofeyev (24 October 1938 in Niva-3 settlement, suburb of Kandalaksha – 11 May 1990 in Moscow) was a Russian writer and Soviet dissident.
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Authority files
wikidata · Q366503 · wikipedia · Venedikt Yerofeyev
In this article
Biography
Biography
Venedikt Yerofeyev studied at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The recorded working language is Russian. The field of work recorded is prose and literature. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are satire. Works named in the authority record are Moscow-Petushki. Work by Venedikt Yerofeyev is recorded in the collections of Khibiny Literary Museum of Venedikt Yerofeev.

Book. Venedict Yerofeyev
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license · Private collection institution QS:P195,somevalue,P3831
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Venedikt Yerofeyev • Native Name — Венедикт Ерофеев • Birth Name — Venedikt Vasilyevich Yerofeyev • Born — 24 October 1938 • Birthplace — Niva-3 settlement, suburb of Kandalaksha, Murmansk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union • Died — 11 May 1990 • Place of death — Moscow, Soviet Union • Resting Place — Kuntsevo Cemetery • Occupation — Writer • Period — Contemporary • Genres — * Novel • prose poetry • satire • play • fictional diary • diary • Movement — * Soviet nonconformism • Surrealism • Russian postmodernism • Notable Works — Moscow-Petushki • Spouse — Valentina Vasilevna Zimakova, Galina Pavlovna Nosova • Children — Venedikt Venediktovich Yerofeyev
Biography
Biography
Yerofeyev was born in the maternity hospital of Niva-3 by Kandalaksha, Murmansk Oblast, a settlement of "special settlers" employed in the construction of a hydroelectric power station Niva GES-3 on the Niva River (now Niva-3 is a microdistrict of Kandalaksha). The record made in his birth certificate declares his birthplace to be his parents' place of residence: Chupa railway station, Loukhsky District, Karelian ASSR. His father was imprisoned during Great Purge but survived 6 years in the gulags. Most of Yerofeyev's childhood was spent in Kirovsk, Murmansk Oblast. He managed to enter the philology department of the Moscow State University but was expelled from the university after a year and a half because he did not attend compulsory military training. Later he studied in several more institutes in different towns, including Kolomna and Vladimir, but he never managed to graduate from any, usually being expelled due to his "amoral behaviour". Between 1958 and 1975, Yerofeyev lived without propiska in various towns in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, also spending some time in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, doing different low-level and underpaid jobs; for a time he lived and worked in the Muromtsev Dacha in Moscow. He started writing at the age of 17; in the 1960s he unsuccessfully submitted several articles on Ibsen and Hamsun to literary magazines.
Personal life and death
Personal life and death
Venedikt Yerofeyev was married twice: firstly to Valentina Vasilevna Zimakova and then Galina Pavlovna Nosova. In 1966 Yerofeyev's wife, Valentina Zimakova gave birth to a son - Venedikt Venediktovich Yerofeyev. Galina Nosova died three years after Yerofeyev - having thrown herself off the balcony of her 13th floor apartment in Moscow. In 1985 Yerofeyev was diagnosed with throat cancer. Doctors operated on him, after which he could only speak using an Electrolarynx. A film was made about Moskva-Petushki in the last years of Yerofeyev's life and he can be seen speaking with the help of this apparatus. In his last years he divided his time between Moscow and Abramtsevo in Moscow Oblast. Yerofeyev died five years after he was first diagnosed with the disease, on 11 May 1990, at the Russian Oncological Centre in Moscow. He is buried in Kuntsevo Cemetery.
Works
Works
• Moscow-Petushki (1969) • My Little Leniniana (1988) • Walpurgisnacht (1990)
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
Explore 1938–1990
The full dated record · 3 entries
1938
Venedikt Yerofeyev born at Kandalaksha.
1969
Moscow-Petushki is dated 1969.
1990
Venedikt Yerofeyev died at Moscow.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Kandalaksha.
Birth place
Moscow.
Death place
Literary legacy
Yerofeyev is best known for his 1969 "poem in prose" (ironical assignment of the genre) Moscow-Petushki (several English translations exist, including Moscow to the End of the Line, Moscow Circles, and Moscow Stations). It is an account of a journey from Moscow to Petushki (Vladimir Oblast) by electric train, one of many futile attempts to visit his small son: each time such a journey becomes soaked in alcohol and fails. During the trip, the hero becomes involved in philosophical discussions about drinking, recounts some of the fantastic escapades he participated in, including declaring war on Norway, charting the drinking statistics of his colleagues when leader of a cable-laying crew, and obsessing about the woman he loves. Referred to by David Remnick as "the comic high-water mark of the Brezhnev era", the poem was published for the first time in 1973 in a Russian-language magazine in Jerusalem. It was not published in the Soviet Union until 1989. Of note is his smaller 1988 work My Little Leniniana (Моя маленькая лениниана, Moya malenkaya Leniniana), which is a collection of quotations from Lenin's works and letters, which shows the unpleasant parts of the character of the "leader of the proletariat". Alexander Bondarev tells the story of its origin. Yerofeyev also claimed to have written in 1972 a novel Shostakovich about the famous Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, but the manuscript was allegedly stolen in a train. The novel has never been found. Before his death of throat cancer Yerofeyev finished a play called Walpurgisnacht, or the Steps of the Commander ("Вальпургиева ночь или Шаги командора") and was working on another play about Fanny Kaplan.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Писатели-диссиденты: биобиблиографические статьи (начало). Новое литературное обозрение [New Literary Review]. 66. 2004.
- 2."Khibiny-Moscow-Petushki. Vevedikt Terofeyev (1938-1990)", a special issue of Live Arctics ("Живая Арктика") No.1, 2005
- 3.Village Voice. Susan Orlean, David Remnick, Ethan Hawke, and Others Pick Their Favorite Obscure Books. 2008-12-02.
- 4.Alexander Bondarev,"И немедленно выпил", Booknik, 24 октября 2013
- 5.ЖИВАЯ АРКТИКА №1 2005г. arctic.org.ru.
- 6.(eg. at 7:00)
- 7.dzen.ru. Места Венедикта Ерофеева в Подмосковье: Абрамцево.
- 8.Хибины — Москва — Петушки.
- 9.Ерофеев Венедикт Театр на Юго-Западе. teatr-uz.ru.
References
Citations
References
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reference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q366503: Venedikt YerofeyevWikimedia Foundation
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Venedikt Yerofeyev is recorded as writer.
Moscow-Petushki
1969
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 15 August 2026.
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