Boris Vasilyev
Born into a family of Russian nobility. His father Lev Alexandrovich Vasilyev (1892—1968) came from a dynasty of military officers; he served in the Imperial Russian Army and took part in the First World War in the rank of Poruchik before joining the Red Army. Vasilyev's mother Elena Nikolaevna Alexeeva (1892—1978) belonged to a noble Alexeev family tree that traces its history back to the 15th century; her father was among the founders of the Circle of Tchaikovsky.
In 1941 Boris Vasilyev volunteered for the front line and joined a destruction battalion. He fought as part of the 3rd Guards Airborne Division up until 1943 when he was wounded in action and demobilized. After his World War II service, Vasiliev enrolled at the Malinovsky Tank Academy.
His short novel The Dawns Here Are Quiet was a Soviet bestseller, selling 1.8 million copies within a year after its publication in 1969. It was adapted for the stage and the screen; there is also an opera by Kirill Molchanov, and a Chinese TV series based on the story.
The Dawns Here Are Quiet was the first of Vasiliev's sentimental patriotic tales of female heroism in the Second World War ("Not on the Active List", 1974; "Tomorrow There Came War", 1984) which brought him renown in the Soviet Union, China, and other communist countries. Some of his books give a harsh picture of life in Stalin's Russia.
Vasiliev's short novel Don't Shoot the White Swans (1973), a milestone of Russian-language environmental fiction, is sharply critical of "the senseless destruction of beautiful creatures and the exploitation of nature for personal gain". It was made into a 1980 Soviet film.
Vasiliev was awarded the USSR State Prize for 1975 and was a member of the jury at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1989, he quit the USSR Communist Party but grew disillusioned with the Perestroika rather quickly. In October 1993, he signed the Letter of Forty-Two. Late in life, Vasiliev turned to historical fiction based on incidents from medieval Russian chronicles.
