Sergey Vikulov

Biography

Sergey Vikulov was born in the village of Yemelyanovskaya in Cherepovets Governorate into a poor peasant family. In October 1942, he volunteered for the Soviet Army and as a flak and artillery battery commander fought at the Kalinin, then Stalingrad Fronts. Later he became the 247th Zenith and Artillery regiment's Chief of Stuff's deputy and demobilized in the rank of a Guard captain, a chevalier of several high-profile military awards, including two Orders of the Red Star.

In the late 1940s Sergey Vikulov started to write poetry. In 1951 he graduated the Vologda State pedagogical institute's literary faculty and became the member of the Union of Writers of the USSR. In 1972, for his poem Alone Forever (1970) as well as The Plough and the Furrow (1972) collection he was awarded the RSFSR Maxim Gorky State Prize.

In 1959-1989 Vikulov edited Nash Sovremennik, an influential conservative (neo-Slavophiliac) magazine set to propagate the traditional Russian values, as opposed to the Western-style liberal ideas. Among his best friends and allies were the authords who contributed to the magazine regularly: Viktor Astafyev, Valentin Rasputin, Fyodor Abramov, Vasily Belov, Yuri Bondarev, Vladimir Soloukhin. Several major Alexander Solzhenitsyn's works were published by Nash Sovremennik with Vikulov at the helm. In 1990 he joined the group of authors who signed the anti-reformist "Letter of the Seventy-Four" which led to the break up of the Union of Soviet Writers and the formation of the 'patriotic' Union of Writers of Russia and the 'democratic' Union of Russian Writers.

Sergey Vikulov died on July 1, 2006, in Moscow. He was buried at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery.