Valery Petrochenkov

Obituary for Valery Petrochenkov

Valery Petrochenkov was a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, a poet, a prose writer, a

professor, and a beloved husband and father. He is survived by his wife, Peggy, and his 4 children: Alina,

Andrey, Katya, and Grisha.

Soon after he was born on May 2, 1940 in Moscow, he accompanied his parents, Alexandra

Reznik and Vassily Petrochenkov, to a naval base in Finland. He was said to have died in a submarine.

Petrochenkov and his pregnant mother were evacuated into the Siege of Leningrad. He and his mother

survived the blockade, but his baby sister Tatyana perished, as did his grandparents and most of his

aunts and uncles.

After a year in a structural engineering program, he left Leningrad to join a surveying mission in

Kazakhstan, riding a camel through the desert. After a difficult return to Leningrad, he was drafted into

the Soviet Army, where he served for 2 years, and barely missed going to Cuba when he was accepted to

study journalism at the university.

Petrochenkov received a degree in journalism, was editor of a technical magazine, had a

television program on literary topics very briefly, and worked as an assistant to Father Alippi at the

Pechorsky Cave Monastery. A poet and prose writer, he was part of the Leningrad intelligentsia and

Samizdat in the 1960s and early 1970s.

After writing part of a book on the history of the Pechorsky Cave Monastery that described the

repression against the church, he was arrested, but allowed to leave the country after he became

officially disabled in a serious car accident. After a brief stint in Italy, where he was offered a chance to

work in the Vatican Library, he emigrated to the United States. He earned two Master’s degrees and a

Ph.D. in Russian Literature. He was hired at Georgetown University and retired as an emeritus professor

after more than 20 years of teaching and writing.