Boris Lvovich Vasilyev was a Soviet writer. He is regarded to the group of representatives of the so-called "lieutenant prose", a group of former Soviet officers who dramatised their World War II experience.
He has been published as a playwright since 1954, as a prose writer - since 1969. He is the author of many novels, short novels, short stories, plays. Works dedicated to the Great Patriotic War brought him fame.
Background
He grew up among the multinational population of Smolensk. This is what helped the future writer to understand the relations between people, different languages and traditions. The desire to have normal human life was one common thing.
Since childhood, Boris Vasilyev dreamed to be a historian. As the son of an officer, he and his family moved frequently from place to place, and he studied at different schools and everywhere he was interested in local history.
Education
He graduated from the incomplete (seven-year) secondary school №54 (1939)
As a schoolboy he volunteered for the front (July 1941) as a member of the fighter Komsomol regiment (Vasilyev's autobiographical story "My horses are flying ...", 1982).
Career
In 1952 he entered in the Communist Party. In 1954 he retired from the Army and decided to devote himself to literature.
The Dawns Here Are Quiet was the first of Vasiliev's sentimental patriotic tales of female heroism in the Second World War which brought him renown in the Soviet Union, China, and other communist countries. Many of his books give a harsh picture of life in Stalin's Russia.
Vasiliev's short novel Don't Shoot the White Swans, a milestone of Russian-language environmental fiction, is sharply critical of "the senseless destruction of beautiful creatures and the exploitation of nature for personal gain".
Views
He was interested in the fates of those who were in the war, who needed support, medical care, who defended the homeland till the last drop of blood, till the last breath, who had to rely on their own strength.
Boris Vasilyev does not spare the reader: the ending of his works are mainly tragic, because he is convinced that art should not console, its function is to bare dangers in their manifestations in front of people, to awake their conscience and to teach compassion and kindness.
Membership
member of the Union of Cinematographers (1960), member of the Union of Writers of the USSR (1972)