Background
Igor Korchilov was born on March 3, 1941 in Murmansk, into the family of Dmitry and Anna (Besedina) Korchilov. He grew up in the southern city of Kislovodsk.
Igor Korchilov was born on March 3, 1941 in Murmansk, into the family of Dmitry and Anna (Besedina) Korchilov. He grew up in the southern city of Kislovodsk.
From 1961 to 1967, Korchilov attended the First Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages and earned a diploma majoring in English and Spanish. From 1967 to 1968, Korchilov attended the United Nations Interpretation and Translation School in Moscow which earned him a certificate majoring in simultaneous interpretation. Then from 1985 to 1986, Igor Korchilov attended the school for Advanced Studies at the Russian Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy in Moscow to earn a diploma on International Relations with a French language major.
After finishing his secondary education, Korchilov worked as a film projectionist and as a disc jockey. Later in the spring of 1968, Korchilov was sent to work as a junior conference interpreter at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. It was during this assignment that he interpreted during delicate summit meetings between the Heads of State and Government of the Soviet Union and the United States.
Korchilov was an interpreter for the Secretaries-General of the United Nations, and the Russian General-Secretary and other top officials of the Soviet Union for thirty years. Korchilov had 22 years of work experience as a conference interpreter. For 13 years he was a diplomatic interpreter, translator and counselor for the Russian Foreign Ministry for the former USSR Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Moscow. From 1973 to 1975, Korchilov functioned as an interpreter and translator for the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance in Moscow, Russia. Korchilov participated in numerous summits in Washington, Moscow, London, Bonn, and Ottawa. He also acted as a personal interpreter to two former Russian Foreign Ministers, namely Gromyko and Eduard Shevardnadze during numerous ministerial-level meetings and conferences held in Moscow, New York, Washington, D.C. and London.
During his 22-year career at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, Korchilov worked as a simultaneous interpreter for the UN Security Council's special summit meetings in 1992, 2000, 2001 and for the sensitive meetings on Iraq in 2003; and also for the United Nations General Assembly's plenary meetings, for various UN committees, and for other conferences and multilateral summits held under United Nations auspices.
Since 2003, four years after officially retiring from the United Nations and up to the present, Igor Korchilov, continued working as a freelance interpreter. Because of his profile as an author and a veteran interpreter, Korchilov had been interviewed on radio and television. He had also given lectures in many U.S. universities regarding the subjects of interpretation and the Cold War era.
In 1975 Igor married Inna Samokhina.