Yuri Nagibin

Who was Yuri Nagibin?

Yuri Markovich Nagibin was a Soviet writer, screenwriter and novelist.

He is best known for his screenplays, but he also has written several novels and novellas, and many short stories. He is known for his novel The Red Tent that he later adapted for the screenplay for the film of the same name. The novel was based on the history of Umberto Nobile's expedition to the North Pole.

The themes he explores range from war to ritual, history and music.

Nagibin's mother was pregnant with him when his father was executed as a counter-revolutionary before he was born. He was raised by a Jewish stepfather from infancy, and was unaware of that he had a different father, so he always assumed he was Jewish himself. Mark Leventhal, his stepfather was arrested himself and exiled to Northern Russia in 1927. Nagibin found out late in life that he was not in fact Jewish, but he consciously retained ethnic Jewish identity, having suffered many anti-Semitic incidents in the course of his life.

In October 1993, he signed the Letter of Forty-Two.

He was born, and died, in Moscow, and was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery.