Venedikt Yerofeyev

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.

• 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

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.

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.

• Moscow-Petushki (1969) • My Little Leniniana (1988) • Walpurgisnacht (1990)