Petr Lukich Proskurin

Born Jan. 22, 1928, in the settlement of Kositsy, Sevsk Raion, Briansk Oblast. Soviet Russian writer. Member of the CPSU from 1971.

The son of a peasant, Proskurin worked as a driver and a lumberjack. He began publishing in 1958 and graduated from the Higher Literature Courses at the M. Gorky Institute of Literature in 1964. Proskurin has written the collections of novellas and short stories The Price of Bread (1961) and Human Love (1965). His novels include Deep Wounds (1960), Bitter Herbs (1964), and The Outcome (1966). The novel Fate (1972; State Prize of the RSFSR, 1974), an outstanding literary work of the 1970’s, reveals by means of its characters’ fates the nation’s destiny and the dynamics of historical events during the era of socialist construction and the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. Proskurin’s works, noted for their poignant and dramatic situations, attempt to reveal the moral life of the people, especially in times of hardship, and to penetrate the inner world of contemporary man.