Vitali Vitaliev

Vitali Vitaliev (Виталий Витальев) is a Ukrainian-born journalist and writer who has worked in Russia, England, Scotland, Australia and Ireland.

Vitaliev was born in 1954 in Kharkov, Ukraine. He graduated from Kharkov University in French and English, working as an interpreter and translator before becoming a journalist in 1981. He worked as a special correspondent for Krokodil magazine in Moscow when he appeared as Clive James' 'Moscow Correspondent' on Saturday Night Clive. On 31 January 1990 he and his family 'defected', moving first to London, then taking up residence (and citizenship) in Australia. After a few years there he moved back to the United Kingdom, living in London. He is now back in London again after spending some time in Edinburgh and Dublin. Vitaliev's books were translated from English into German, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Finnish, French and some other languages (see: Books).

Vitaliev's journalism work in the former Soviet Union included stories and investigative essays for Ogonyok, Literaturnaya Gazeta and Nedelya as well as Krokodil, earning him the Golden Calf Literary Award, five annual Krokodil Awards, the Journalist of the Year Honorary Diploma for 1987 and the 1989 Ilf and Petrov Prize for Satirical Journalism. Vitaliev was the first Soviet journalist to publicly expose organised crime, the so-called Soviet Mafia, as well as the existence of prostitution, political prisoners and Soviet neo-Nazis. It was largely due to all those ground-breaking investigations and the resuling threats from both the criminal underworld and the KGB that he was forced to defect.

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