Alexander Prokhanov

Alexander Andreyevich Prokhanov (Russian: Александр Андреевич Проханов; born on February 26, 1938, in Tbilisi) is a Soviet and Russian writer, a member of the secretariat of the Writers Union of the Russian Federation and the author of more than 30 novels and short story collections. He is the editor-in-chief of Russia's extreme-right newspaper Zavtra ("Завтра", Tomorrow), that combines ultranationalist and communist views.

Biography

Alexander Prokhanov was born in Tbilisi, where his ancestors, members of the Russian Christian molokan sect, had been deported to by Catherine the Great. His granduncle Ivan Prokhanov was a leader of the All-Russian Union of Evangelican Christians (1908–1928) and the one-time vice-President of the Baptist World Alliance who left the USSR in 1928 and died in emigration.

In 1955 Prokhanov enrolled into the Moscow Aviation Institute where for the first time he started to write poetry and prose. After the graduation he worked as an engineer at a Ministry of Defense factory, then, in 1962–1964, as a forester in Karelia and the Moscow oblast. In the late 1960s he started writing essays and reports for numerous magazines (Krugozor, Smena, Selskaya Molodyozh), later citing Andrey Platonov and Vladimir Nabokov as major influences.