Library news

Dear students!

Section PRO BOOKS to introduce you into the world of Russian literature.

July 13th is the birthday of Valentin Savvich Pikul (1928-1990), Russian and Soviet writer, author of numerous works of fiction on historical and naval subjects. Already during the writer's lifetime the total circulation of his books, excluding magazines and foreign publications, amounted to about 20 million copies.

Valentin's father was from the Kiev province. After serving in the Baltic Fleet he stayed to work in Leningrad at the famous Skorokhod shoe factory. Here he met and married with Maria Karenina, the future mother of the writer. She was a native of Pskov province.

In 1940 Pikul and his family moved from Leningrad to Molotovsk (today this city is called Severodvinsk). In 1941 Valentin went on vacation to his grandmother in Leningrad, but soon the Great Patriotic War began.

 Pikul's father became a battalion commissar of the White Sea Flotilla in December 1941 and moved to Arkhangelsk. In the spring of 1942 Valentin, sick with scurvy and dystrophy, left Leningrad with his mother along the "Road of Life" and evacuated to Arkhangelsk.

In 1943 Pikul graduated from the Jung School on the Solovetsky Islands. He was a cabin boy of the first set, specializing in "helmsman-signaller" and was sent to the destroyer "Grozny" of the Northern Fleet, where he served until the end of the war.

After the victory over Germany he was sent to the Leningrad Preparatory Naval School. Further Valentin Savvich had to change a number of professions.

 He was the head of the "secret" department in the diving squad, then he was on duty as a dispatcher in the fire department. Some of his books about the sea and sailors are devoted to the Northern Fleet. The novel "Requiem for Convoy PQ-17", for example, tells about the northern convoys that delivered food, medicines and ammunition to Arkhangelsk during the Great Patriotic War. The book "Boys with bows" is a tribute to the memory of the boys of the Solovetsky school.

Valentin Pikul is the author of novels on the history of Russia: "The Demonic Forces,", "Out of the deadlock", "The Favorite" and others. He fascinatingly describes the era of the reign of the Russian empresses Elizabeth the 1st, Catherine the 2nd, etc.

 


Valentin Savvich Pikul is remembered and loved in the North. Pikul's house in Severodvinsk has been preserved to this day. Pikul's books are read by future and former sailors, lovers of marine subjects and history.

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