Ivan Gavrilovich Chigrinov [Іван Гаўрылавіч Чыгрынаў] - national writer of Belarus, publicist, playwright, screenwriter.
Born December 21, 1934 in the village of Veliky Bor, Mogilev region, Belarusian SSR, in the family of the chairman of the village council. In childhood, he survived the Great Patriotic War, in which he lost his father. After graduating from the Velikoborsky seven-year school, he continued his studies at the Samotevichy secondary school, located eight kilometers from the house.
In 1952 he entered the journalism department of the philological faculty of the V. I. Lenin Belarusian State University. After graduating from university, from 1957 to 1962 he worked at the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR.
Since 1965, the editor of the journalism department of the magazine "Polymya". In 1973 he joined the Communist Party. Since 1975, deputy chief, and since 1976 - secretary of the board of the Union of Writers of the BSSR.
Since 1986, deputy of the Supreme Council of the BSSR. Since 1987 - Chairman of the Belarusian Branch of the Soviet Cultural Foundation. Since 1989, he has been the chief editor of Spadchyna magazine.
He was married, has two daughters.
Chigrinov died on January 5, 1996. He was buried in Minsk, at the East (Moscow) cemetery.
He first began to write and publish poetry in the republican press while still at school, was influenced by the work of Arkady Kuleshov. As a prose writer he made his debut in 1958 in the youth newspaper “Chirvonaya Zmena”.
The first collections of stories are devoted to the life and work of Soviet people, the heroics and consequences of the past war. The novel trilogy “Crying of Quail” (1972), “Justification of the Blood” (1977) and “Friends and Others” (1982) conveys the drama of events and human destinies at the beginning of World War II.
He took part in the creation of six serial television film about the Minsk party underground "Ruins shoot ...". In addition, in 1990, Igor Dobrolyubov made the nine serial film "Crying Quail" based on the novel of the same name by Chigrinov. Also, some works staged performances.
The writer translated into Belarusian the plays “At the Bottom” by M. Gorky and “Optimistic Tragedy” by V.V. Vishnevsky. Chigrinov also made a name for himself in the field of criticism, journalism, and literary criticism. He is the author of a number of books and articles on this subject. He wrote a monograph about the ethnographer and folklorist N. Ya. Nikiforovsky.