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Dmitry Bykov | |
|---|---|
 Bykov in 2021 | |
| Born | Dmitry Lvovich Zilbertrud 20 December 1967 Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Occupation | Writer, poet, journalist |
| Language | Russian |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Citizenship | Russia |
| Alma mater | Moscow State University |
| Period | 1985–present |
| Genre | Belles-lettres, documentary prose, biography |
| Notable awards | Big Book (2006, 2011, 2018), National Bestseller 2011 |
Dmitry Lvovich Bykov (Russian: Дмитрий Львович Быков, IPA: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ˈlʲvovʲɪdʑ ˈbɨkəf] ; born 20 December 1967) is a Russian writer, poet, literary critic and journalist.[1] He is also known as biographer of Boris Pasternak, Bulat Okudzhava and Maxim Gorky.
Born into a Jewish family, his father was a prominent medical scholar, Lev Zilbertrud.[2][3][4][5]
Bykov graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of the elite Moscow State University. Dmitry Bykov taught literature and the history of Soviet literature in Moscow's secondary schools. He was a professor at the Department of World Literature and Culture of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), often considered the most elite university of the USSR. As a journalist and critic, Bykov has been writing for the magazine Ogoniok since 1993.[1] He has also periodically hosted a show on the radio station Echo of Moscow, which ran until 2008.[6] Earlier, he was one of the hosts of an influential TV show Vremechko.
Being one of the most prolific modern Russian writers, he gained additional recognition for his biography of Boris Pasternak published in 2005. The biography earned Bykov the 2006 National Bestseller (Национальный бестселлер) and Big Book (Большая Книга) awards. He later wrote influential biographies of Maxim Gorky and Bulat Okudzhava.
In 2008 a documentary called Virginity (Девственность) was released in which Bykov was a co-writer.
In 2009, Bykov was named assistant editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Profile.[7] He is also the editor-in-chief of the monthly literature-focused magazine What to Read (Что читать).
Together with actor Mikhail Yefremov, he created project "Citizen Poet" (a pun on Nikolay Nekrasov's poem "Poet and Citizen"). Yefremov reads poems, written by Bykov, which are usually satirical comments on contemporary Russian society, politics and culture. Each poem parodies the style of a famous poet of the past, e.g. Pushkin, Nekrasov, Kipling, among others. It was originally broadcast on Dozhd TV channel, but the project was closed because the poems were too critical of the Russian government. For years, the show had been hosted in audio format by Echo of Moscow radio station.
In mid-April 2019, while aboard a domestic flight en route to Ufa, Bykov fainted and was hospitalized upon arrival. Initially, Russian media covered the story regarding Bykov's health status in different ways. Echo of Moscow reported that a chronic illness was responsible for Bykov's condition, which was specified by online portal Otkrytyye media as being diabetes, and that Bykov suffering from a hyperglycemic crisis. In addition, a source told RIA Novosti that Bykov had experienced severe circulatory failures in his brain.[8]
However, the next week, on 25 April, Bykov denied having diabetes. After the doctors at the hospital in Ufa told him that they could not find the cause of his illness, he concluded that it was poisoning.[9] In early September 2020, Aric Toler, director of research and training at Bellingcat, suspected that a nerve poison was used.[10][11] The possible poisoning of Bykov by Russian government agents was reportedly investigated, along with other similar cases, by Christo Grozev of Bellingcat.[12][13][14] Bellingcat describes a "striking resemblance" between the poisoning of Bykov and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny.[15]
In 2022 Bykov, who has criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was declared by Russian government to be a "foreign agent". Subsequently, many booksellers started withdrawing sales of his books in Russia.[16] Since being declared a "foreign agent", Bykov has been fined for not declaring his status as such, and is subject to a criminal case.[17]
Since 2022, Bykov was a visiting critic in the Institute for European Studies in Cornell University.[18]
On the domestic front, the poisoning of Pyotr Verzilov, an avant garde performance artist-turned-investigative reporter, is instructive. Two years ago, while working on an investigation into the activities of Russian billionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin and his GRU-linked mercenary group in the Central African Republic, Verzilov was poisoned with an unidentified substance in Moscow and was later treated at the same Berlin hospital as Navalny. Fortunately, Verzilov recovered, but unfortunately, the poison was never identified, making direct attribution difficult even as the culprit seems obvious. A similar story can be found in the cases of other poisoned domestic opposition figures, including Vladimir Kara-Murza and Dmitry Bykov.
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