Kin, Viktor

(pseudonym; real surname, Surovikin). Born 1903 in Borisoglebsk; died 1937. Soviet Russian writer. Member of the CPSU (1920).

Kin was the son of a railroad worker. He worked in the partisan underground in the Far East. He began his literary career in 1923 as a topical satirist for the Moscow press (for example in Komsomol’skaia Pravda). Between 1931 and 1936, Kin worked as a TASS correspondent in Italy and France. In 1937 he became the editor of Journal de Moscou. His only completed book is the novel On That Side (1928), in which he describes the Civil War in the Far East in 1921 and 1922. The heroes of the novel are young romantics who do not conceive of life outside the framework of revolution and who bear the entire burden of the struggle on their shoulders. The novel has been adapted many times for the stage. A. Simukov and Ts. Kin wrote a film version in 1958. Kin’s unfinished works include the novel Lille, dealing with World War I (1914–18), and a book on Soviet journalists.