Anatoly Pristavkin

After spending several years in Soviet orphanages, Pristavkin had to start working from the age of 14, and had various jobs.

[3] Pristavkin's novel "The Inseparable Twins" was successful in the Soviet Union, and describes the miserable conditions of orphans' life in an orphanage near Moscow during the years of World War II and the re-settlement to Chechnya in 1944, as Chechens had been deported.

In 1991 he supported the Latvian independence movement, stood at barricades in Riga and appealed to Soviet soldiers via regional television, urging them not to shoot at civilians.

In the 1990s, Pristavkin headed the Pardon Commission of the Russian Federation.

[5] In 1993, he signed the Letter of Forty-Two in support of Boris Yeltsin in his stand against the Russian parliament.