[3] Vladimir Voinovich claimed that his father belonged to the Serbian Vojnović noble family, although this is solely based on his surname and the book by the Yugoslavian writer Vidak Vujnovic Vojinovici i Vujinovici od srednjeg veka do danas (1985) which he received as a gift from the author during his stay in Germany.

[7] In 1969 he published the first part of The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, a satirical novel about a Russian soldier during World War II.

[2] Voinovich helped publish Vasily Grossman's famous novel Life and Fate by smuggling photo films secretly taken by Andrei Sakharov.

[10][11] On 25 February 2015 he published an "Open Letter from Vladimir Voinovich to the President of Russia" in which he asked Putin to release the Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko who went on a hunger strike.

[8] The first and second parts of his epic magnum opus The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin ("Жизнь и необычайные приключения солдата Ивана Чонкина") are set in the Red Army during World War II, satirically exposing the daily absurdities of the totalitarian regime.

Much attention is also paid to the figures of Lavrentiy Beria and Joseph Stalin, the latter being mockingly depicted as a son of Nikolai Przhevalsky and a Przewalski's horse.

This party is led by a KGB general Bukashev (the name means "the bug") who meets the main character of the novel in Germany.

A Slavophile, Sim Karnavalov (apparently inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), eventually overthrows the Party and enters Moscow on a white horse.

His Monumental Propaganda is a stinging critique of post-Communist Russia, a story that shows the author's opinion that Russians haven't changed much since the days of Joseph Stalin.

[21] His darkly humorous memoir The Ivankiad tells the true story of his attempt to get an upgraded apartment in the bureaucratic clog of the Soviet system.

Yuri Semenov supported the point regarding "Solzhenitsyn's continuous degradation" as a writer, but also criticized Voinovich for simultaneously "glorifying himself and his books".

[22] Liza Novikova of Kommersant compared the book to performance art, suggesting that "the author only helps creating the very same myth by trying to prove that Solzhenitsyn doesn't match the rank of a great writer".

[23] The book was widely seen as a reaction to Solzhenitsyn's two-volume historical work Two Hundred Years Together that was published in 2001–2002 and dedicated to the history of Jews in Russia and frequently regarded as antisemitic.

Voinovich, however, said that he had started the work on his book before Two Hundred Years Together was even published and that he didn't have patience to read it till the end.

[13] Voinovich was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation for 2000, for his book "Monumental propaganda" about Soviet Neo-Stalinist legacy sitting in the subconscious of almost every citizen of the "free Russia".