Boris Pilnyak

Pilnyak, Boris, pseud. of Boris Andreyevich Vogau, 1894-1937?, Russian novelist and short-story writer. Pilnyak first attracted wide attention with his novel The Naked Year (1921, tr. 1928), a loosely constructed work concerning the social chaos following the Revolution of 1917. He accepted the revolution itself, but did not embrace orthodox Communism. His short novel Mahogany, denied publication in the USSR, was first published in Berlin in 1929. Later Pilnyak utilized some of its material in his novel about the Five-Year Plan, The Volga Falls to the Caspian Sea (1930, tr. 1931). Both were severely criticized by the Soviet regime as bourgeois. In 1931, Pilnyak visited the United States and attacked American industrialization in O'Kei (1932). Some of his short stories have been translated in Tales of the Wilderness (1925) and Mother Earth and Other Stories (1968). He disappeared in 1937, and is thought to have been arrested and executed.

Boris Pilnyak (Бори́с Пильня́к) (October 11, 1894–April 21, 1938) was a Russian author. Born Boris Andreyevich Vogau (Бори́с Андре́евич Вога́у) in Mozhaisk, he was a major supporter of anti-urbanism and a critic of mechanized society. These views often brought him into disfavor with Communist critics. His most famous works are The Naked Year, Mahogany, and The Volga Falls into the Caspian Sea, all novels concerning revolutionary and post-revolutionary Russia. Another of his well-known works is OK, an unflattering travelogue of his 1931 visit to the United States.

External links

• Works by Boris Pilnyak at Project Gutenberg
• Encyclopedia of Soviet Writers