is his smaller 1988 work My Little Leniniana (Моя маленькая лениниана, Moya malenkaya Leniniana), which is a collection of quotations from Lenin's works and letters, which shows the unpleasant parts of the character of the "leader of the proletariat". Alexander Bondarev tells the story of its origin. Yerofeyev also claimed to have written in 1972 a novel Shostakovich about the famous Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, but the manuscript was allegedly stolen in a train. The novel has never been found. Before his death of throat cancer Yerofeyev finished a play called Walpurgisnacht, or the Steps of the Commander ("Вальпургиева ночь или Шаги командора") and was working on another play about Fanny Kaplan. Personal life and death Venedikt Yerofeyev was married twice. Firstly, to Valentina Vasilevna Zimakova and then Galina Pavlovna Nosova. In 1966 Yerofeyev's wife, Valentina Zimakova gave birth to a son - Venedikt Venediktovich Yerofeyev. Galina Nosova died three years after Yerofeyev - having thrown herself off the balcony of her 13th floor apartment in Moscow. In 1985 Yerofeyev was diagnosed with throat cancer. Doctors operated on him, after which he could only speak using an Electrolarynx. A film was made about Moskva-Petushki in the last years of Yerofeyev's life and he can be seen speaking with the help of this apparatus. Yerofeyev died five years after he was first diagnosed with the disease, on 11 May 1990, at the Russian Oncological Centre in Moscow. He is buried in Kuntsevsky cemetery. References External links Москва—Петушки, Russian website dedicated to the work of Venedikt Yerofeyev Documentary on Venedikt Yerofeyev by Pawel Pawlikowski Walpurgis Night, or "The Steps of the Commander" 1938 births 1990 deaths People from Murmansk Oblast Soviet novelists Soviet male writers 20th-century Russian male writers Russian male novelists 20th-century novelists Postmodern writers 20th-century Russian writers Soviet dissidents Deaths from oral cancer Deaths from cancer in the Soviet Union Burials at Kuntsevo Cemetery