A Russian writer who gained fame thanks to novels about the times of the birth of Russian statehood. Valentin Ivanov’s trilogy “Primordial Russia” is almost a reference book of representatives of neopaganism and supporters of anti-Norman theory who deny the multi-ethnic origin of Slavic culture that arose in the interaction of Slavic, Turkic, Finno-Ugric, Scandinavian and other peoples in ancient Russia.
early years
Valentin Dmitrievich Ivanov was born on July 18, 1902 in Samarkand, Turkestan Territory, the Russian Empire, in the family of a teacher. He began to study at the gymnasium, but Valentin failed to finish his studies, his father died very early. The son was raised by her mother, and it was necessary to go to work in order to earn money to support the family.
In the difficult post-revolutionary time, in the spring of 1918, young Valentine began his career biography. At the age of fifteen, he got a job at a brick factory. He began to work as a loader, due to the fact that the payment of employees was very small, the ration given was not enough. And workers engaged in hard labor, according to the terminology of those years, received food rations of the first category. At that time, his family lived on his salary and issued products.
Favorite books
Almost his whole life was not connected with writing, but the foundation for creativity was laid in early childhood, when little Valentin binge read classics of Russian and world literature: Pushkin, Gogol, Hugo, Dickens and many others. From about eleven, the boy began to read the Russian classics of Leo Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. In high school years, he began to study the works of ancient historians Plutarch, Tacitus. A strong influence on his work was made by his childhood adventure books by Main Reid, Emar, Haggard, Bussenar, Senkevich, Mordovtsev, Krashevsky.
As Valentin Dmitrievich Ivanov later recalled, a special impression on him was made by the book of engineer Ryumin, “Miracles of science and technology!”. He was generally fascinated by popular science literature, no less than the most exciting novels.
After the civil war
Valentin Dmitrievich Ivanov managed to take part in the civil war a little. In 1919, he volunteered for the Red Army. At the beginning of 1920 he returned home, from the army all the Red Army soldiers who had not reached the military age were demobilized.
While working, he received secondary education, then graduated from a railway technical school. In 1924, he began working as an inspector-controller of a textile syndicate, and traveled to many regions of the country with revisions. Until 1930, he worked as an economist and commercial correspondent in Tekstiltorg. During these years, he was engaged in self-education. Valentin Ivanov already lived in Moscow, often traveling on long business trips. From 1935 to 1937 He was sent on a business trip to build the first oil refinery in Ufa. After completing the first phase of the construction of the plant, he returned to Moscow, and already in the summer of 1938 he was again sent to Omsk. Where until 1941 he worked as the head of the department on the construction of a car tire factory .
The beginning of creativity
Valentin Dmitrievich Ivanov came to fiction very late when he was already about 45 years old. Having worked all his life on technical work, in his life he wrote a lot of explanatory and lecture notes, but not fiction at all.
In 1947, after negotiations with one of the employees of the popular technical magazine for young people, Knowledge-Power, Ivanov received an order to write a brief history of the development of construction equipment from ancient times to the present. The editor liked the article and was published under the heading "From the cave to the giant house." After the first successful experiment, he published several more essays in the journal.
The editors of the magazine advised him to try his hand at fiction and a larger format. In 1951, Ivanov wrote the science fiction novel Energy Is Subject to Us, which was published in the journal Knowledge is Power. The work describes the opposition to the attempt to use the "death rays" by the American imperialists and the surviving German fascists. In the same year, the novel was published separately. This was the first book of Valentin Dmitrievich Ivanov.
Main works
Then the books “Following the Trail”, “The Return of Ibadullah” were published, and in 1955, “Tales of Ancient Years” were published. Printed in 1956, the novel "Yellow Metal" on the illegal circulation of gold was withdrawn from sale. According to the official version - for denigrating Georgians and representatives of other nationalities, possibly due to an overly accurate description of the shadow economy.
He devotes further creativity to the study of previously undescribed historical periods in Russian history. In 1961, the book "Original Russia" was published, which will give the name of the trilogy. The story of the struggle of the Slavic tribes against nomads in the 6th century. The final book, "Great Russia," by Valentin Dmitrievich Ivanov, was published in 1967. The novel is dedicated to the formation of the Old Russian state in the 9th century. Based on his works about ancient Russia, a cartoon and two feature films were shot.