Alexander Prokhanov

Alexander Andreyevich Prokhanov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Андре́евич Проха́нов; born 26 February 1938) is a Russian writer, a member of the secretariat of the Writers Union of the Russian Federation, and the author of more than 30 novels and short story collections. He is the editor-in-chief of Russia's extreme-right (or radical-reactionary) newspaper Zavtra (Завтра, Tomorrow), that combines ultranationalist and anti-capitalist views.

Alexander Prokhanov was born in Tbilisi, Soviet Georgia, to which his ancestors, members of the Russian Christian "Molokan" sect, had been deported by Catherine the Great. His grand-uncle Ivan Prokhanov was a leader of the All-Russian Union of Evangelican Christians (1908–1928) and the one-time vice-President of the Baptist World Alliance who left the USSR in 1928 and died as an emigré.

In 1955, Prokhanov enrolled into the Moscow Aviation Institute where for the first time he started to write poetry and prose. After the graduation he worked as an engineer at a Ministry of Defense factory, then, in 1962–1964, as a forester in Karelia and the Moscow Oblast. In the late 1960s he started writing essays and reports for numerous magazines (Krugozor, Smena, Selskaya Molodyozh), later citing Andrei Platonov and Vladimir Nabokov as major influences.

Prokhanov's short story "The Wedding" (1967) garnered some critical praise and is considered his breakthrough. Two years later, he was working for the Soviet newspapers, Pravda and Literaturnaya Gazeta. As a foreign correspondent, Prokhanov visited Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Cambodia, Angola, and Ethiopia, these assignments providing him with material for future literary work. Prokhanov was the first to report on the March 1969 events on Damansky Island during the Sino-Soviet border conflict.

In 1971, his first book I Am Going My Way was published. His literary mentor Yury Trifonov provided a foreword for it. Prokhanov later remembered: "He liked the expressiveness, experiments with language, the flow of metaphors, my naive youthful pantheism. ... But my first social-oriented novellas made him skeptical, his tone became tougher and he entrusted me with another patron, Vladimir Makanin, who was my good friend at the time."

In 1972, Prokhanov became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers. In the mid-1980s, he was an active contributor to Molodaya Gvardiya, Nash Sovremennik, and the newspaper Literaturnaya Rossiya. In 1990, Prokhanov emerged as a candidate for the post of Literaturnaya Gazeta's editor-in-chief, but the staff ignored him, preferring Fyodor Burlatsky, Mikhail Gorbachev's protégé. In 1989–1991, Prokhanov worked as the editor-in-chief of Sovetskaya Literatura, a magazine published in nine languages in more than one hundred countries. Enjoying his reputation of a hard-line communist, he never joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

In December 1990 (while still head of Sovetskaya Literatura), Prokhanov founded Den (День, Day), and became its editor-in-chief. Initially an organ of the Union of Soviet Writers, in the summer of 1991, Den moved under the patronage of the Union of Writers of Russia. Sporting the subheading "Organ of the spiritual opposition", it became arguably the most radical Russian newspaper continually challenging Boris Yeltsin and his team of liberal reformers. Regarded by Prokhanov as the "patriotic alternative" to pro-liberal, nomenclature-led Literaturnaya Gazeta, Den managed to attract authors from the conflicting flanks of the Russian opposition movement, united by their hatred of the liberal reforms but divided in their attitude towards Communism. Among them were ultra-nationalists, whose publications caused outrage, several Jewish organizations condemning Den as antisemitic.

It was Prokhanov who, in July 1991, wrote the text of "A Word to the People", a political open letter subsequently signed by Gennady Zyuganov, Vasily Starodubtsev, Igor Shafarevich, Valentin Rasputin, Valentin Varennikov, and Eduard Volodin among others. The document calling for the formation of a united "patriotic front" was seen, in retrospect, as an ideological platform for the failed August coup d'etat attempt. The publication of the manifest brought about the rift between Prokhanov and General Alexander Rutskoy (whom he once helped to be rescued from captivity in Afghanistan and later backed his election campaign). The latter, speaking on Russian TV, promised his former friend "ten years in jail."