Venedikt Erofeev

Venedikt Vasilyevich Yerofeyev

Native name	Венедикт Васильевич Ерофеев
Born	(1938-10-24)October 24, 1938 Niva-3 settlement, suburb of Kandalaksha, Murmansk Oblast, Russian SFSR
Died	May 11, 1990(1990-05-11) (aged 51) Moscow, Russian SFSR
Occupation	prose writer, novelist
Subject	Satire
Literary movement	Postmodernism
Notable works	Moscow-Petushki
Spouse	Valentina Vasilevna Zimakova, Galina Palovna Novosa
Children	Venedikt Venediktovich Yerofeyev

Venedikt Vasilyevich Yerofeyev or Erofeev or Erofeyev (Russian: Венеди́кт Васи́льевич Ерофе́ев, 24 October 1938, Niva-3 settlement, suburb of Kandalaksha – 11 May 1990, Moscow) was a Russian writer and Soviet dissident.

Yerofeyev was born in the maternity hospital of Niva-3 by Kandalaksha, Murmansk Oblast, a settlement of "special settlers" employed in the construction of a hydroelectric power station Niva GES-3 () on the Niva River. The record made in his birth certificate declares his birthplace to be his parents' place of residence: Chupa railway station, Loukhsky District, Karelian ASSR. His father was imprisoned during Stalin's purges but survived 16 years in the gulags. Most of Yerofeyev's childhood was spent in Kirovsk, Murmansk Oblast. He managed to enter the philology department of the Moscow State University but was expelled from the university after a year and a half because he did not attend compulsory military training. Later he studied in several more institutes in different towns, including Kolomna and Vladimir, but he never managed to graduate from any, usually being expelled due to his "amoral behaviour". Between 1958 and 1975, Yerofeyev lived without propiska in various towns in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, also spending some time in Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan, doing different low-level and underpaid jobs; for a time he lived and worked in the Muromtsev Dacha in Moscow. He started writing at the age of 17; in the 1960s he unsuccessfully submitted several articles on Ibsen and Hamsun to literary magazines.