Vladimir Nikolayevich Voinovich (, 26 September 1932 – 27 July 2018), was a Russian writer and former Soviet dissident, and the "first genuine comic writer" produced by the Soviet system. Among his most well-known works are the satirical epic The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin and the dystopian Moscow 2042. He was forced into exile and stripped of his citizenship by Soviet authorities in 1980 but later rehabilitated and moved back to Moscow in 1990. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he continued to be an outspoken critic of Russian politics under the rule of Vladimir Putin. Biography Early life Voinovich was born in Stalinabad, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union. According to himself, his father was of Serbian descent and a translator of Serbian literature, and his mother was of Jewish descent. Vladimir Voinovich claimed that his father belonged to the Serbian Vojnović noble family, although this is solely based on his surname and the book by the Yugoslavian writer Vidak Vujnovic Vojinovici i Vujinovici od srednjeg veka do danas (1985) which he received as a gift from the author during his stay in Germany. In 1936 Voinovich's father was arrested on the allegation of anti-Soviet agitation and spent five years in labor camps. Voinovich began his studies in Moscow and tried to enter the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. After a failed attempt he entered the Moscow Krupskaya Pedagogical Institute, the faculty of history. According to his autobiography, he spent some time in Kazakhstan, "seeking inspiration", and on his return to Moscow started working on his first novel. Literary debut and dissidence His earliest published books were We Live Here and I Want To Be Honest. In 1969 he published the first part of The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, a satirical novel about a Russian soldier during World War II. A second part was published in 1971. At the outset of the Brezhnev stagnation period, Voinovich's writings stopped being published in the USSR, but continued publishing in samizdat, hand-written copies. and in the West. In 1974, the authorities began a systematic harassment of Voinovich due to his writing and his political attitude. Voinovich was excluded from the Soviet Writers' Union the same year. His telephone line was cut off in 1976. He and his family were forced to emigrate in 1980, being stripped of his citizenship. He settled in Munich, West Germany after