Alexander Melentyevich Volkov
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| Born | Alexander Melentyevich Volkov June 14, 1891 Ust-Kamenogorsk, Russian Empire |
| Died | July 3, 1977 (aged 86) Moscow, Soviet Union |
Alexander Melentyevich Volkov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Меле́нтьевич Во́лков [ɐlʲɪˈksandr mʲɪˈlʲenʲtʲɪvʲɪtɕ ˈvolkəf]; June 14, 1891 – July 3, 1977) was a Soviet novelist and mathematician.
Volkov was born in Ust-Kamenogorsk. He wrote several historical novels, but is mostly remembered for a series of children's books based on L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
The first of these books, The Wizard of the Emerald City, is a loose translation of the first Oz book, with chapters added, altered, or omitted, some names changed (for example, Dorothy becomes "Ellie", Oz is renamed "Magic Land", and Toto can talk when in Magic Land), and several characters given personal names instead of generic ones. Baum's name is mentioned in the first of Volkov books but the Soviet Union paid no royalties to the Baum estate. First published in 1939 in the Soviet Union, the book became quite popular; and in the 1960s Volkov also wrote his own sequels to the story. He liberally borrowed from some of the originals, such as using the "Powder of Life" idea from The Marvelous Land of Oz, but mostly created a divergent universe. From 1963 to 1970, four more books in the series were published, with the sixth and final story published posthumously in 1982. Other authors such as Yuri Kuznetsov, Sergei Sukhinov, and Leonid Vladimirsky (Volkov's original illustrator) have recently written additional sequels in Russian, creating in effect an alternative series of Oz books.
The context and situations found in the Volkov version are notably different from the original Baum version in their political tones. The situations, while still maintaining a childlike clarity of good versus evil, often involve the characters encountering very mature political and ethical decisions. The heroes are repeatedly called upon to defend Magic Land against invasions or topple feudalistic or aristocratic governments to free the populace. Both themes are often found in Soviet sci-fi and adventure literature (see the Strugatsky brothers' novels Hard to be a God and Inhabited Island).
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