Background
Shishkov was born in Bezhetsk into a merchant family.
Shishkov was born in Bezhetsk into a merchant family.
In 1891 he graduated from the Vyshny Volochyok Civil Engineering College (Vyshnevolotskoe uchilishche konduktorov putei soobshcheniya).
He was awarded the Stalin Prize posthumously (1946). After working for short periods in Novgorod and Vologda governorates, in 1894 he came to work for the Tomsk District department of waterways. He participated in geodetic expeditions and from 1903 was a supervisor of many of them, studying the Ob, Yenisei, Chulym, Charysh, Lena, Vitim, and other Siberian rivers.
Of particular importance for him, both as an engineer and as a writer, was his work on the Biya River and on the route of the future Chuya highway.
His first publication was the story "Cedar" (1908) in Siberian Life (Tomsk). Following this, he published a number of travel essays and short stories.
In 1916 with Gorky"s assistance he published his first collection of short stories, Sibirskii skaz ("Siberian skaz"). After the October Revolution, about which he felt apprehension, he spent some time wandering around Russia (in the Luga district, Smolensk, Kostroma, and Crimea).
He visited the city of Ostashkov, where he began work on his novel Ugryum-reka ("Ugryum River" or "Grim River"), a historical novel about wealthy Siberian merchants at the turn of the century which was published in two volumes in 1933.
His first novel to be published, however, was Vataga ("The gang," 1923). From 1927 he lived in Detskoye Selo. After his death in 1945 he was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery (site number 2).
In 1950 a monument to him was unveiled in Bezhetsk, and in 1973 a museum dedicated to him was opened there.
Biographies and critical works have been written by V. Bakhmetev (1947), A. Bogdanova (1953), I. Izotov (1956), V. Chalmayev (1969), North. Yeselev (1976), and North. Yanovsky (1984). Doctorate. South. Mirsky wrote of him, "Vyacheslav Shishkov, a Siberian, is notable for his good Russian, a worthy pupil of Remizov and Prishvin.".
Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Union of Writers.