Владимир Тендряков Tendryakov as a writer was a foremost ethicist, and most of his works revolve around the problems of moral choice. He was born at Makarovskaya near Vologda in 1923. His father was a judge and prosecutor; after WW2 he became a school teacher. In 1946 Tendryakov enrolled into the State Institute of Cinematography, but later transferred to Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow and started writing in the late 1940s. He graduated with a degree in literature in 1951 and became a professional writer in 1955, during the first wave of Nikita Khrushchev's destalinization. His novel Assassinating Mirages (Pokushenie na mirazhi) (written 1979-1982), which was critical of the Soviet state, remained unpublished until 1987, when censorship was eased during Perestroika.