Out of the pen of the outstanding Soviet and Russian writer Viktor Astafyev, many famous works were published. He preferred to lead novels – full-fledged hefty books he wrote only three, but many of his stories contain far more emotions than the many-page books of other writers.
A few years after the birth of the little Victor, his father was convicted of “sabotage.” When the next writer was seven years old, he lost his mother – she went to visit her husband, and the boat, in which the native prisoners swam, overturned. The woman’s hair caught on the wooden structure that stood nearby, and she drowned.
The father of Astafiev, who had returned from imprisonment, soon found himself in the hospital, the new wife of the father did not deal with them, and the child, who lived in a barbershop for a few months, got into the orphanage.
After training in the factory school Astafyev got a job at the station as a train compiler, and then left for the front, although he could not do it as a railway worker. At the end of the war, he was severely wounded and bruised, and for his valor he was awarded three medals and the Order of the Red Star.
Despite military achievements, Astafyev did not make a career in the army and remained in the ranks of an ordinary soldier.
After the war, Astafyev managed to try himself as a mechanic, a station attendant at the station, a meat carcass washer, a teacher, a meat factory worker, an auxiliary worker and a storekeeper.
In 1951 Astafyev managed to print his story for the first time, and seven years later he became a member of the USSR Writers’ Union.
Since 1989, the writer for several years was a deputy, but did not go further into politics.
Astafiev’s signature is under the famous letter about the forced dispersal of parliamentarians and the Supreme Council of Russia. The writer himself, however, argued that his name was placed under the document without his consent.
For his literary achievements, Astafyev twice became a laureate of the State Prizes of the USSR and the Russian Federation, was recognized Hero of Socialist Labor and became the owner of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland II degree.
In Russia there are several monuments to Viktor Astafyev, but the most unusual of them is located near the route between Krasnoyarsk and Divnogorsk. The composition is a giant sturgeon, tearing the fishing net – so the sculptor immortalized one of the most famous stories of Astafiev “Tsar-fish”. Near the monument there is a small playground with a beautiful view of the Yenisei and the native village of the prose writer Ovsyanka.
In honor of Astafiev, an oil tanker was named.
Victor Astafiev and his wife Maria lived together for 57 years. The couple had three children, but the first daughter died six months after birth from dyspepsia.
For his literary career, Astafyev wrote more than a hundred books that were published in almost 30 countries around the world.
In 2001, the writer suffered 2 severe strokes and needed complicated treatment, which could be obtained only in foreign clinics. Astafyev’s friends asked the deputies for help, but they refused to take part in the fate of the writer, citing his chauvinism. Unable to pay for the treatment on his own, the writer went from hospital to home and soon died.
