Vladimir Volkoff
Vladimir Volkoff was a French writer and military officer born on November 7, 1932, in Paris to Russian émigré parents. He held a complex identity, embracing both his Russian heritage and his French upbringing, and was well-educated, earning a doctorate at the University of Liège. Volkoff served in the French army from 1957 to 1962, participating in the Algerian War, before moving to the United States, where he taught French and Russian literature. His literary career spanned various genres, including novels on espionage, history, and metaphysics, with notable works such as "L'Agent triple" and the award-winning science fiction novel "Metro pour l'enfer." Volkoff's writings often reflected the tensions of the Cold War and included themes of disinformation, drawing from his military background as a government disinformation specialist. He produced around thirty-five novels and was recognized for his defense of traditional values, leading to some controversy in his later years as he expressed support for Vladimir Putin's policies. Volkoff passed away on September 14, 2005, in Perigord, France.
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Vladimir Volkoff
Writer
- Born: November 7, 1932
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Died: September 14, 2005
- Place of death: Perigord, France
Biography
Vladimir Volkoff was born on November 7, 1932, in Paris, France. His parents were Russian émigrés. He once said of himself, “I recognize myself as a Russian and a French. I like to be useful myself of the French language whereas I can write in Russian or English.” Volkoff studied at the Sorbonne, taught for some time, and earned a doctorate at the University of Liège. Among his hobbies were fencing, shooting, and performing in amateur plays.
Volkoff was a French army officer, serving from 1957 to 1962, including service in the Algerian war. After completing his military service, Volkoff came to the United States, where he taught French and Russian literature. He worked as a translator from 1963 to 1965 and as a professor of Russian and French from 1966 to 1977. He stayed in the U.S. for a decade.
With his French army background including experience as a government disinformation specialist, Volkoff crafted books on this subject, including his first novel, L’Agent triple (the triple agent), and others such as The Turn- Around and The Set-Up: A Novel of Disinformation. He also wrote historical works, including one on Vladimir, a Russian king, and another on the famous Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who had also been a cousin of Volkoff’s great- grandmother. He also wrote plays and essays. Both his fiction and nonfiction often dealt with the Cold War then going on between the West and the Soviet Union, but his work also covered such areas as metaphysics and spirituality.
His science-fiction novel Metro pour l’enfer (subway to hell) won France’s Jules Verne Award in 1963. Volkoff also wrote spy novels for teenage readers about a young French secret service agent named Langelot, who worked for a fictitious organization and worked to thwart any number of plots against France and the peace of the world. His adult spy novel The Turn-Around was dedicated to Graham Greene, the English author of espionage tales whom Volkoff admired greatly, and was translated into a dozen languages. The book received an award from the French Academy. His Les Humeurs de la mer (moods of the sea) was a four-volume departure from his previous work.
In 1989, Volkoff published a historical novel of Russia titled Les Hommes du tsar (the men of the czar). He followed this in 1991 with Le Bouclage: Roman, about the danger faced by large cities in a world a step away from war. In all, he wrote some thirty-five novels.
Volkoff was known as a defender of traditional values, and was termed a reactionary by Socialist Democrats. By 2000, he began publishing still more books on Russian history and became somewhat of a supporter of the policies of Vladimir Putin. He died on September 14, 2005, at his home in Perigord, France.