Background
Pil’niak, Boris was born in 1894 in Moscow. Son of the writer Boris Pil’niak.
Pil’niak, Boris was born in 1894 in Moscow. Son of the writer Boris Pil’niak.
Of Volga German descent. One of the creators of Soviet modernist prose (stylistically under the influence of Remizov and Belyi). Together with Babel’, left some of the most memorable descriptions of the revolutionary period in his novels.
In a later novel, Povest Nepogashennoi Luny (Smeri Komandarma), described the death on the operating table of a famous revolutionary military leader by party order, widely understood as a veiled description of the death of Frunze on the orders of Stalin. Arrested, charged with spying for Japan, and shot.
Pil'niak, junior
1926?-. After his father’s arrest and execution also arrested with the other members of his family, and sent to the Gulag.
During World War II, sent to the convicts’ battalions at the front. In 1945, defected to the American zone in Germany, and lived in DP camps under an assumed name. Later told the story of his father’s death.