Vladimir Volkoff (7 November 1932 – 14 September 2005) was a French writer of Russian extraction. He produced both literary works for adults and spy novels for young readers under the pseudonym Lieutenant X. His works are characterised by themes of the Cold War, intelligence and manipulation, but also by metaphysical and spiritual elements.
Of Russian descent with Tatar roots on his paternal side, Volkoff was born in Paris, the son of a Russian émigré who earned his living in France washing cars. Vladimir grew up with his family's memories of the lost motherland and loyalty to their new homeland. He was a great grandnephew of the composer Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
After studying at the Sorbonne in Paris and the university of Liège, Volkoff taught English at Amiens from 1955-57. He served as an intelligence officer in the French army during the Algerian War, where he learnt how war is fought as much in the shadows and the embassies as in the open air of the battlefield.
After his demobilisation, Volkoff travelled to the United States to teach French and Russian literature. He worked as a translator (1963–65), and a professor of French and Russian from 1966-77. Fascinated by the powerful country teeming with contradictions, he remained there for almost three decades, returning to France in 1992. Among his "American" works are L'Agent triple (1962), Métro pour l'enfer (1963), Les Mousquetaires de la République (1964) and Vers une métrique française (1977).
Throughout the 1970s under his pseudonym Lieutenant X, Volkoff published stories for teenagers in the Langelot series of Hachette's Bibliothèque verte imprint, featuring the adventures of the eponymous hero, a young French secret agent. In these works Volkoff showed his taste for romantic intrigues and plot twists, and his profound understanding of the balance of forces prevailing in the world.
In the later 1970s, with the standoff between East and West a constant reality, Volkoff's writings analyzed the ideological combat between two opposing conceptions of the world and of freedom with a solid geopolitical background.
An avid competitive fencer, Volkoff was a valued member of the Georgia Division of the AFLA and the Atlanta (and later, Macon) fencing community during his time in America. He claimed to have begun learning to fence in a stint in the Foreign Legion. His book "The Traitor," translated from the French by J.F. Bernard and published by Doubleday and Company was written and published during his time in Atlanta (1973); it was published under another pseudonym, Lavr Divomlikoff (a reshuffling of the letters of his name).
Volkoff's 1979 novel Le retournement (The Turnaround) earned him international acclaim and was translated into a dozen languages. Dedicated to Graham Greene, whom Volkoff greatly admired, the novel's title refers to the intelligence manoeuvre of turning an uncovered enemy agent to one's own side. The book tells a story of espionage in which the American, French and Soviet intelligence services do battle, but also of a spiritual overturning which, unknown to these secret services, almost makes a martyr of the main character.
Source: Article "Vladimir Volkoff" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
