Georgi Nikolaevich Vladimov , real family name Volosevich (February 19, 1931 Kharkiv

Kharkiv

Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...

, Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 – October 19, 2003 Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

) was a Russian dissident

Dissident

A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....

 writer.

Biography

In 1977 he became the leader of the Moscow section of Amnesty International

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

, forbidden in the USSR. In 1983, he emigrated to West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

.

Vladimov's most famous novel was Faithful Ruslan (English translation: 1979, ISBN 067124633X), the tale of Ruslan, a guard dog in a Soviet Gulag

Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

 labor camp

Labor camp

A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...

, told by the dog. It circulated in the Soviet Union as a samizdat

Samizdat

Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...

 publication, before being published in West Germany in 1975.

His novel General i yego armiya (“The General and His Army”), on General Vlasov, was awarded the Russian Booker Prize

Russian Booker Prize

The Russian Booker Prize is a Russian literary award modeled after the Booker Prize and inaugurated in 1992 by English Chief Executive Sir Michael Caine...

 in 1995 and Sakharov Prize in 2000.

External links

• Encyclopædia Britannica article
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1082324,00.html#article_continue