Iurii (or “Yury”) Valentinovich Trifonov was the most well-known and respected writer living and working in the Soviet Union during the so-called “stagnation” period of Leonid Brezhnev's tenure as Communist Party General Secretary (1964-82), and the one who most consistently caught the eye of Western critics. His writings are remarkable, but no more so than his own biography.
Trifonov was born in Moscow on 28 August 1925, the son of Valentin Trifonov, a militant Bolshevik of Don Cossack descent who had taken part in the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the Civil War, and who had helped organize the Red Army. Valentin Trifonov spent much of Iurii's childhood years abroad on diplomatic and trade missions, and sometimes he would take his young family with him (to Finland, for
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Citation: Gillespie, David. "Iurii Trifonov". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 July 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5404, accessed 23 November 2024.]