Nekrasov, Viktor

Nekrasov, Viktor [Некрасов, Віктор], b 17 June 1911 in Kyiv, d 3 September 1987 in Paris. Writer. After graduating from the Kyiv Construction Institute (1936) and the actors' studio at the Kyiv Russian Drama Theater (1937) he worked as an actor and set designer in Kyiv. He wrote one of the best Russian-language novels about the war, V okopakh Stalingrada (In the Trenches of Stalingrad, 1946), for which he was awarded the 1947 Stalin Prize and was elected a member of the Presidium of the Writers' Union of Ukraine. His novel V rodnom gorode (In the Home Town, 1954) and various stories about the war and its social consequences were some of the earliest works of the post-Stalin thaw. His anti-Stalinist novel Kira Georgievna (1961) and collection of essays about his visit to Western Europe and the United States, Po obe storony okeana (On Both Sides of the Ocean, 1962), were condemned by the Soviet authorities, including Nikita Khrushchev. In the late 1960s and 1970s he spoke out against the persecution of Russian and Ukrainian dissidents (eg, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Viacheslav Chornovil). In 1973 he was expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He was granted permission to emigrate to France in 1974, where he worked as associate editor of the émigré-dissident journal Kontinent. In 1993–4 Nekrasov’s personal archives were transferred from Paris to Kyiv.

[This article was updated in 2004.]