Venedikt Eroféiev (1938-1990) was born in the small settlement Niva-2, in Murmansk Oblast. His father was a victim of Stalinist purges and survived 16 years in the gulags. Venedikt was able to enter the philology department of the University of Moscow, but was expelled soon after for not fulfilling the obligatory military formation. Although he tried to continue his studies in several other centers, he never managed to graduate in none (most of the time he was expelled for "amoral behavior"). Between 1958 and 1975 he lived in various localities in the provinces of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, performing various low-skilled jobs, including the cable phone line that occupies the protagonist of his best-known novel.