About Valentin Rasputin
Valentin Grigoryevich Rasputin was a Soviet and Russian writer. He was born and lived much of his life in the Irkutsk Oblast in Eastern Siberia. Rasputin's works depict rootless urban characters and the fight for survival of centuries-old traditional rural ways of life, addressing complex questions of ethics and spiritual revival. In Siberia, Siberia (first published in 1991), Rasputin compares what he considers modern moral relativism with the traditional beliefs of the people of Russkoye Ustye, who believed in reincarnation. He published his first short-story in 1961. The journal Voprosy literatury published an ongoing debate on the question, "Is the Village Prose of Valentin Rasputin Anti-Modern?" By the end of perestroika Rasputin became publicly active.
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