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Vasily Mikhailovich Peskov has Gone

Vasily Mikhailovich Peskov, the well-known journalist, press photographer, novelist and anchorman, has died. Such losses are irreplaceable, and the sad news hurts our hearts.

The journalist entered upon his career in the Voronezh youth daily. Since 1956 he had worked actively for the “Komsomolskaya Pravda” as regular contributor to the column “Window to Nature”. Over the 15 years (1975–1990), he and Nikolay Drozdov made a TV show “In the World of Animals”.

He was awarded five orders of the USSR and one “Order of Merit” of the IV degree, the medal of the Russian Union of Journalists “Golden Pen of Russia”. He was the winner of Lenin Prize and the prizes of M.Koltsov, M.Prishvin (2005) and others.

Vasily Mikhailovich was an active and inquisitive man. He travelled a lot about Russia, visited Africa, Indo-China, Antarctica and made a car trip across the USA. His trips resulted in books. The best known collections of essays and short stories are: “Notes of a Press Photographer” (1960), “Steps in the Dew”(1963), “White Dreams” (1965), “The World’s End”(1967), “The Land Across the Ocean”(1975), “Birds on the Wires” (1982), “Country Roads” (1988), “The Taiga Deadlock” (1990). In his books Peskov told in a restraint, simple, deep, poetic and always in his original way about people, different events and the nature. The pictures by Peskov were always characterized by the immediacy of what he saw, authenticity and were not just additions to the text, but often were independent complete works.

Late in the 50-s, Vasily Mikhailovich two times visited Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya, was a guest of Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, described his meetings with the writer in his essays “Visiting Sholokhov” and “ The Autumn in Vyoshki”. The Museum keeps a book by Vasily Peskov” Steps in the Dew” with an autograph to Sholokhov: “To the Russian writer Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov from his faithful and regular reader. V.Peskov. May, 8, 64”.

The last time Peskov visited Vyoshenskaya in the autumn of 2010, when he worked over the essay “Sholokhov – Fisherman and Hunter” (the “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, No 43, October, 28–November, 4, 2010).

Galina Govorukhina