Born into a
Jewish family, his father was a prominent medical scholar, Lev Zilbertrud. Bykov graduated from the
Faculty of Journalism of the elite
Moscow State University. Dmitry Bykov taught literature and the
history of Soviet literature in Moscow's secondary schools. He was a professor at the Department of World Literature and Culture of
Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), often considered the most elite university of the USSR. As a journalist and critic, Bykov has been writing for the magazine
Ogoniok since 1993. Earlier, he was one of the hosts of an influential TV show
Vremechko. Being one of the most prolific modern Russian writers, he gained additional recognition for his biography of
Boris Pasternak published in 2005. The biography earned Bykov the 2006
National Bestseller () and
Big Book () awards. He later wrote influential biographies of
Maxim Gorky and
Bulat Okudzhava. In 2008 a documentary called
Virginity () was released in which Bykov was a co-writer. In 2009, Bykov was named assistant editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine
Profile. He is also the editor-in-chief of the monthly literature-focused magazine
What to Read (). Together with actor
Mikhail Yefremov, he created project "Citizen Poet" (a pun on
Nikolay Nekrasov's poem "Poet and Citizen"). Yefremov reads poems, written by Bykov, which are usually satirical comments on contemporary Russian society,
politics and
culture. Each poem parodies the style of a famous poet of the past, e.g.
Pushkin,
Nekrasov,
Kipling, among others. It was originally broadcast on
TV Rain channel, but the project was closed because the poems were too critical of the Russian government. For years, the show had been hosted in audio format by
Echo of Moscow radio station. In 2022 Bykov, who has criticized the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, was declared by Russian
Ministry of Justice to be a "
foreign agent". Subsequently, many booksellers started withdrawing sales of his books in Russia. Since being declared a "foreign agent", Bykov has been fined for not declaring his status as such, and is subject to a criminal case. On July 14, 2025, it was reported that Dmitry Bykov was added to Russia's federal wanted list for spreading false information about the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (
Article 207.3), as well as for evading duties required by foreign agents (
Article 330.1). Since 2022, Bykov was a visiting critic in the Institute for European Studies in
Cornell University. In 2024, he was named Inaugural Humanities Center Scholar in Exile at the
University of Rochester, where he then began teaching in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. On September 11, 2025, Bykov was added to
Rosfinmonitoring's list of terrorists and extremists. In October, Bykov was sentenced in absentia to seven years.
Poisoning In mid-April 2019, while aboard a domestic flight en route to
Ufa, Bykov fainted and was hospitalized upon arrival. Initially, Russian media covered the story regarding Bykov's health status in different ways.
Echo of Moscow reported that a
chronic illness was responsible for Bykov's condition, which was specified by online portal as being
diabetes, and that Bykov suffering from a
hyperglycemic crisis. In addition, a source told
RIA Novosti that Bykov had experienced severe circulatory failures in his brain. However, the next week, on 25 April, Bykov denied having diabetes. After the doctors at the hospital in Ufa told him that they could not find the cause of his illness, he concluded that it was poisoning. In early September 2020, Aric Toler, director of research and training at
Bellingcat, suspected that a
nerve poison was used. The possible poisoning of Bykov by Russian government agents was reportedly investigated, along with other similar cases, by Christo Grozev of Bellingcat. Bellingcat describes a "striking resemblance" between the poisoning of Bykov and the
poisoning of Alexei Navalny. == Bibliography ==