Vitali Vitaliev

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Vitali Vitaliev (Виталий Витальев) is a Ukrainian-born journalist and writer who has worked in Russia, the UK, Australia and Ireland.

Vitali Vitaliev was born in 1954 in Kharkov, Ukraine. He graduated from Kharkov University in French language and English language and worked as an interpreter and translator before becoming a journalist in 1981. He worked as a special correspondent for Krokodil magazine in Moscow when he appeared as Clive James' 'Moscow Correspondent' on Saturday Night Clive. On 31 January 1990 he and his family 'defected', moving first to London, then taking up residence (and citizenship) in Australia. After a few years there he moved back to the UK, living in London. He is now back in London again after spending some time in Edinburgh and Dublin.

His journalism work in the former Soviet Union included stories and essays for Ogonyok, Literaturnaya Gazeta and Nedelya as well as Krokodil, earning him the Golden Calf Literary Award, five annual Krokodil Awards, the Journalist of the Year Honorary Diploma for 1987 and the 1989 Ilf and Petrov Prize for Satirical Journalism. He has written for newspapers in Australia (e.g. The Age), as well as Punch, The Guardian, The Spectator, The European, The Herald, London Courier and The Daily Telegraph, for the latter contributing a regular column 'Vitali Vitaliev's America'.

He has made several television documentaries for Channel 4, ABC and the BBC, including Tasmania, Moscou Central, Vitali's Australia, My Friend Little Ben (in BBC1's Byline series, 1990) and The Train To Freedom- a programme in the series Travels With My Camera (Channel 4, 1994). He has been a guest on After Dark and Have I Got News for You for the BBC, and for almost 3 years appeared regularly in Europe Direct, BBC World's magazine programme on weekday evenings. His appearances on BBC Radio 4 include Breakaway and Excess Baggage.

[edit] Vitaliev's Books

1987 King of the Bar Pravda Publishers. A collection of articles written for Krokodil magazine (in Russian).
1990 Special Correspondent- Investigating in the Soviet Union, ISBN 0-09-174297-8
1991 Dateline Freedom- Revelations of an Unwilling Exile, ISBN 0-09-174677-9.
1991 Vitali's Australia, ISBN 0-09-182554-7
1993 The Third Trinity (with Derek Kartun), ISBN 0-340-55366-9
1995 Little is the Light- Nostalgic Travels in the Mini-states of Europe, ISBN 0-671-71925-4
1997 Dreams on Hitler's Couch, ISBN 1-86066-088-6
1998 The Last Eighteen Drops, in Granta magazine's Russia: The Wild East issue (no. 64)
1999 Borders Up! Eastern Europe Through the Bottom of a Glass, ISBN 0-684-81810-8

A 19th century Russian literary critic, Vissarion Belinsky, once remarked that to write a good book about Russia, one had to leave it first. I think this can be applied not just to Russia, but to any place one had felt attached to before having to leave it.

I have left London again – for the umpteenth time – despite my friends' advice to the contrary. Again, I have ignored Sydney Smith's pronouncement that any life led out of London is a mistake – bigger or smaller, but still a mistake. I know it is, but keep leaving London, walking out on it like on an unfaithful woman, whom I still love, only to miss it (her?) almost to tears and then – against all odds – to come back again. (Vitali Vitaliev. London as a state of mind)