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Boris Lvovich Vasilyev was a Soviet writer. He is considered the last representative of the so-called "lieutenant prose", a group of former low-ranking Soviet officers who dramatised their traumatic World War II experience.
After his World War II service, Vasiliev enrolled at the Malinovsky Tank Academy. His short novel The Dawns Here Are Quiet was a Soviet bestseller, selling 1.8 million copies within a year after its publication in 1969. It was adapted for the stage and the screen; there is also an opera and a Chinese TV series based on the story.
The Dawns Here Are Quiet was the first of Vasiliev's sentimental patriotic tales of female heroism in the Second World War which brought him renown in the Soviet Union, China, and other communist countries. Many of his books give a harsh picture of life in Stalin's Russia.
Vasiliev's short novel Don't Shoot the White Swans, a milestone of Russian-language environmental fiction, is sharply critical of "the senseless destruction of beautiful creatures and the exploitation of nature for personal gain". It was made into a 1980 Soviet film.
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