Viktor Astafyev

Viktor Petrovich Astafyev also spelled Astafiev or Astaf'ev (Russian: Ви́ктор Петро́вич Аста́фьев; 1 May 1924 – 29 November 2001), was a Soviet and Russian writer, playwright and screenwriter. He was recognized with the title Hero of Socialist Labour in 1989. Viktor Astafyev was born in the village of Ovsyanka (then Krasnoyarsk Uyezd, Yeniseysk Governorate, Russian SFSR) on the bank of the Yenisey river. His father, Pyotr Pavlovich Astafyev, was a son of a relatively rich mill-owner (a part-time hunter who most of his time though spent at home), mother Lydia Ilyinichna Astafyeva (née Potylitsyna) came from a peasant family. In his 2000 autobiography Viktor Astafyev remembered his father's household as a place where men, led by grandfather Pavel Yakovlevich, were on continuous binge, while all the work was being organized and done by two women, Lydia and her mother-in-law, Maria Osipova, Pavel Yakovlevich's young second wife.In 1931 two tragedies struck. First Pyotr, Pavel and the latter's father (Astafyev grand-grandfather) Yakov Maximovich were arrested as part of the Dekulakization campaign and sent to a Siberian labour camp. In July 1931 Lydia Ilyinichna, Viktor's mother drowned in the Yenisey as the boat which she was rowing, carrying food to the Krasnoyarsk prison where her arrested husband was kept, got upturned. That year Pyotr Astafyev received 5 years of prison as an "Enemy of the people" and was sent to the infamous Belomorkanal building-site. Seven-year-old Viktor found himself in the house of Yekaterina Petrovna and Ilya Yevgrafovich Potylitsyns, his mother’s parents who gave the boy all their love and care. In 1932 he joined a local primary school. His life in the early 1930s Astafyev later described in his book of short stories The Last Respect (Posledny Poklon, 1968).

In 1934 Pyotr Astafyev returned from labour camp and married again. He took Viktor to his new place, a small forest village Sosnovka, then in 1935 moved the family to Igarka where they settled as spetspereselentsy. Ignored by both his stepmother Taisiya Tcherkasova (who had now given birth to her own son, Nikolai) and father, the boy rebelled and soon found himself homeless and on the streets. In 1937 he was taken to an orphanage and joined the 5th form of its special school which years later he remembered with great affection. Two of the teachers, Rozhdestvensky and Sokolov, noticed his artistic and literary abilities since the boy had started to write poetry, and did a lot to encourage him. Years later he remembered: Critics for some reason tend to feel sorry for me and for the difficult childhood that I had. This vexes me a lot. More than that... Given such a chance, I’d have chosen the very same life, full of things, happiness, victories and defeats. The latter only help to see the world better, to feel kindness deeper. There would have been just one thing I'd have changed – asked fate to keep mother with me. [Long pause] Orphanage, wandering, the boarding school – all this I had to live through in Igarka. But there were other things – books and songs, skiing trips, childhood happiness, first tears of epiphany... It was there that for the first time I've heard the radio, the gramophone, the brass orchestra... And it was in Igarka that I wrote my first ever short story which my teacher Rozhdestvensky published in our school's self-edited journal. And the newspaper Bolshevik Zapolyarya published my 4-line verse.

On 1 May 1941, Astafyev graduated from the school and joined a brickyard as a transport worker. As the Great Patriotic War broke out, he was working in the Kureika station, a manual worker at local village Soviet. In August he left Igarka and joined the newly formed Railway school in Krasnoyarsk which he left in June 1942.