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Venedikt Erofeev

1938-1990 RU

A.k.a. Венедикт Васильевич Ерофеев

Venedikt Yerofeyev (1938 – 1990), also commonly spelled as Erofeev or Erofeyev, was a Soviet writer and dissident. Born in a little settlement in suburbs of Kandalaksha, Venedikt spent most of his childhood in Kirovsk. Yerofeyev entered the philological department of the Moscow State University but he didn't attend a compulsory military course and got expelled after 1.5-years. He studied at several other institutes, but never graduated usually being dismissed due to his "immoral behaviour". Until 1975, Venedikt stayed at various towns in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan and Lithuania doing low-qualified jobs. Yerofeyev started writing at the age of 17, and his dark comedy/tragedy semi-autobiographical prose is characterized by a distinct style, great erudition, elements of surrealism and buffoonery. In the 1960s, Venedikt unsuccessfully submitted several articles on Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun to literary magazines. Yerofeyev wrote his "poem in prose" Moscow-Petushki in 1969, and originally it was published in Jerusalem (edition of 300 copies). His other books include an essay Vasily Rozanov through the Eyes of Eccentric (1973), a play Walpurgisnacht, or the Steps of the Commander (1985) and a collection of Lenin's quotations My Little Leniniana (1988). The writer claimed to have finished a novel about Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich in 1972, but the manuscript was allegedly stolen on a train (many researchers consider this story a hoax). One of Yerofeyev's earliest pieces, Memoirs of a Psychopath (1956-1958) was lost for many years, only recovered and published posthumously, as well as writer's notebooks and letters. In 1985, Yerofeyev was diagnosed with throat cancer. After the surgery, he could only speak using an electrolarynx and died five years later at the Russian Oncological Centre in Moscow.

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