Russian author, dissident and former exile Vladimir Voinovich died on July 27 at age 85. He is best known for The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, a sort of Soviet Catch-22 about the Red Army during World War II. Voinovich was born in what is now Tajikistan to a father who was sentenced to five years in labor camps for anti-Soviet agitation. Voinovich published Ivan Chonkin in two parts between 1969 and 1971 and, within a few years, his writing was banned in the Soviet Union, spreading instead through samizdat and Western outlets. By 1980, after a campaign of harassment, Voinovich was forced to emigrate and was stripped of his citizenship. He settled in Munich, West Germany, where he wrote the dystopian satire Moscow 2042. Voinovich was able to return to Russia when Mikhail Gorbachev restored his citizenship in 1990. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Voinovich was a vocal critic of reemerging totalitarianism under Vladimir Putin.
The first part of The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin finds lowly Private Chonkin (now a famous figure in Russian popular culture) assigned to guard a downed airplane. Through a series of satirical misunderstandings and authoritarian stupidity, Chonkin ends up at odds with the NKVD--and singlehandedly thwarts a regiment of them. Chonkin's misadventures continue in Pretender to the Throne: The Further Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin and a third entry published in 2007, A Displaced Person. The first and most famous of Voinovich's Chonkin books is available from Northwestern University Press ($21.95, 9780810112438). --Tobias Mutter
