Vladimir Vasilyevich Karpov

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1922–2010 ○ Died

Scout and Hero of the Soviet Union who became a war novelist and led the Writers' Union under perestroika

Born in Orenburg in 1922, he grew up in Tashkent. In 1941, as a cadet of the Tashkent infantry school, he was sentenced to five years for anti-Soviet agitation, and in 1942 he went to the front in a penal company. In 1943 his conviction was lifted for distinction in battle and he joined the VKP(b); as a reconnaissance platoon commander he took 79 prisoners and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1944. After the war he graduated from the Frunze Military Academy and the Gorky Literary Institute and served in the GRU of the General Staff and the Turkestan Military District. He was editor-in-chief of Novy Mir in 1981–1986 and First Secretary of the Board of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1986–1991, a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee in 1986–1988 and a full member in 1988–1991. He died in Moscow in 2010.