Valentin Pikul

Valentin Savvich Pikul was a Soviet historical novelist of Ukrainian-Russian heritage. He lived and worked in Riga.
Pikul's novels were grounded in extensive research, blending historical and fictional characters and often focusing on Russian nationalistic themes. Pikul's best-selling 1978 novel At the Last Frontier was a dramatized telling of Rasputin's influence over the Russian imperial court. Richard Stites says he was "a name hardly known to literary scholars but the most widely read author in the Soviet Union from the seventies to today ... Pikul's works were wildly popular: more than 20 million copies were sold in his lifetime .
Little of Pikul's work has been translated into English. In May 2001 a seagoing minesweeper of the Black Sea Fleet was named in his honor. So too was an oil tanker built in 2023 for state oil producer Rosneft's shipping business.

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Works

Ocean patrol,, 1954Bajazet,, 1961Tares,, 1962Paris for three hours,, 1962On the outskirts of a great empire,, 1964–66Out of the deadlock,, 1968Requiem for Convoy PQ-17,, 1970Moonzund,, 1970 By plume and sword,, 1972Stars over the marsh,, 1972Boys with bows,, 1974The Word and the Action,, 1974–75The Battle of Iron Chancellors,, 1977Riches,, 1977The Demonic Forces,, 1979The Three Ages of Okini-San,, 1981To each his own,, 1983The Favorite,, 1984Cruisers,, 1985I have the honour,, 1986Hard Labor,, 1986Go and sin no more,, 1990Operation Barbarossa,, 1990Arakcheevshina, Domini canes, Janissary, Fat, dirty and corrupt,