Anatoly Panteleyevich Sobolev

Anatoly Panteleyevich Sobolev was a Soviet writer, prose author, and a participant in the Great Patriotic War. He was a laureate of the first and second prizes of a competition on a military-patriotic theme. He also published under the pseudonym Anatoly Sibiryak. He was born on May 6, 1926, in the village of Kytmanovo, Altai Krai, into the family of a party worker and a peasant. In 1943 he volunteered for the front of the Great Patriotic War. He served as a military diver in the Northern and Baltic Fleets until 1951.

In 1956 Sobolev graduated from the Siberian Metallurgical Institute and for a time worked as a mechanical engineer in the Urals. In 1962 he published his first novella, 'Bezumstvu khrabrykh…' (literally 'To the Madness of the Brave…'), in the magazine Sibirskie Ogni (Siberian Lights), dedicated to military divers. Subsequently Sobolev wrote a number of well-known works: the novels 'Bushlat na vyrost' ('A Pea Coat to Grow Into'), 'Nagrade ne podlezhit' ('Not Eligible for a Reward'), 'Yakorey ne brosat'' ('Don't Drop the Anchors'); the novellas 'Tikhiy post' ('The Quiet Post'), 'Kakaya-to stantsiya' ('Some Station'); as well as the short-story collections 'Pyatsot vesyolyy' ('Five Hundred Merry') and 'A potom byl mir' ('And Then There Was Peace'). In 1964 Sobolev joined the Union of Soviet Writers. From 1968 he lived in Kaliningrad. Anatoly Panteleyevich Sobolev died on June 28, 1986, and was buried in the village of Smolenskoye, Altai Krai.