Nikolay Borisov

Nikolay Andreyevich Borisov (Russian: Николай Андреевич Борисов, Ukrainian: Микола Андрійович Борисов; October 11, 1889 - September 3, 1937) was a Soviet Ukrainian writer best known for an adventure novel Ukrasia which was the base of the popular 1925 film Ukrasia [ru] directed by Pyotr Chardynin. ^[1][2][3]He wrote his books in Russian, but they were immediately translated in Ukrainian.^[4]

He graduated from the Yaroslavl Cadet Corps [ru], and Kiev Military School [ru] and fought in World War I, earning military decorations. During the Russian Civil War, for a short time he was with White Army, then joined the Red Army. ^[4]

He wrote adventure novels he dubbed "cine-novels" (cinema novels), a popular form in these times. In 1920s he worked as a screenwriter in film studios of Odesa and Yalta.^[5] He knew several foreign languages and was a fan of Esperanto, which was a pretext for his ill fate. He was arrested and executed in 1937, accused of participation in the "counter-revolutionary Trotskyite organization among Esperantists".^[4][2]

Works

• 1925: "Укразия" (Ukraziya, Ukrasia), cine-novel (cinema novel, Кино-роман)
• 1925: Генерал с того света, a lost short film, co-authored the screenplay with Vladimir Vajnshtok^[6]

  time slip genre: a Russian Imperial Army general wakes up in the Soviet Union

• 1927: Green Apples: A Collective Novel

  pseudotranslation "from American language by Nikolay Borisov", allegedly written by a Kornelius Krok; in fact it was a "bouts-rimés-novel", a collage of excerpts of translations of 17 popular novels

  The subtitle "Collective Novel" is a parody on the real tradition of the crowdwritten collective novels of the time^[7]

• 1927: Слово за наганом., cine-novel

  Subtitled "Из жизни белогвардейского поручика в период гражданской войны 1918 г." [From the life of a White Guard lieutenant during the civil war of 1918]

• 1928: Vive la commune! A novel from the epoch of 1871^[8]
• 1929: "Четверги мистера Дройда", cine-novel, a sequel to "Ukrasia" set in near future^[5][9]

  The story is set in a future capitalist country where total mind control has been invented, and the citizens are controlled by the "Committee for Human Salvation"