Vladimir Tendryakov (Russian: Влади́мир Фёдорович Тендряко́в) (December 5, 1923 – August 3, 1984) was a Soviet short story writer and novelist.

His novel Assassinating Mirages (Pokushenie na mirazhi) (written 1979-1982), which was critical of the Soviet state, remained unpublished until 1987 [1].

Thus, his most famous novella "Three, Seven, Ace" (Тройка, Семерка, Туз) is about an ordinary citizen's fear to speak up and save an innocent man from a murder conviction.

His novella "Potholes" (Ukhaby) describes an accident victim's life being sacrificed to blind adherence to rules and regulation.

His novel Assassinating Mirages is Tendryakov's masterpiece, containing a lifetime of reflections on issues of ethics, violence, cruelty and difficulty of moral choice (the novel's plot revolves around a physicist's attempt to analyse History by creating a computer model of it, then removing the figure of Jesus Christ from the equation and studying the differences that result.