Gennady Shpalikov

Who was Gennady Shpalikov?

Gennady Fyodorovich Shpalikov was a Soviet Russian poet and a screenwriter.

Born in the town of Segezha, Karelian ASSR, he moved to Moscow with his parents in 1939. In the fall of 1941, he was evacuated to the Kirghiz SSR, together with the Academy of Military Engineers, where his father, Fyodor Grigorievich Shpalikov, served. He returned to Moscow in 1943. His father was declared missing in action in Western Poland in 1945 during World War II.

In 1947 the poet was sent to study in Kiev's military cadet school. His first work was published in 1955. In 1956, after receiving a wound during training, he was discharged and successfully applied to the screenwriting faculty of VGIK, a premier film school in the Soviet Union. In 1959 he married Natalya Ryazantzeva, another aspiring screenwriter. In 1960 his script was approved for filming, but the young director, V. Kitaysky, killed himself, putting the film on hold.

In 1964 he wrote his most famous film I Step Through Moscow for Soviet director Georgi Daneliya. In 1966, the only film he both wrote and directed, Long Happy Life received a prize at the Bergamo Film festival. Gennady died in 1974 after committing suicide by hanging. He is buried at Vagankovo Cemetery.