Igor Vishnevetsky was born in Rostov-on-Don in 1964 to Georgiy and Alla Vishnevetsky. Vishnevetsky originally aspired to become a composer. He studied piano performance in school and audited music theory courses at Rostov State Rachmaninoff Conservatory before attending Moscow State University to pursue a degree in philology. After graduating in 1986, Vishnevetsky became an active member of the poetry and art scenes in Moscow and St. Petersburg prior to the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Vishnevetsky emigrated to the United States in 1992. Since that time his creative work has been done chiefly in North America.

In 1996 he received a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from the Department of Slavic Languages of Brown University. Subsequently, he taught at Emory University for five years. In the 2000s, he has also become a notable music historian, and is considered an authority on Sergei Prokofiev^[2] and the Russian-American composer Vladimir Dukelsky.

He also was a visiting professor of Russian and Film at Carnegie Mellon University.^[2] During this time, he wrote his experimental novel Leningrad which describes the dehumanizing effects of the Finno-German siege of the city during World War II and deals with transformation of former Russian capital into a Soviet city. Praised for its insights into the minds of the people who experienced the collapse of everything associated with humanity, Leningrad won a 2010 award for the best fiction published in Russia's leading literary periodical Novyi mir. In 2012 it won a prestigious "New Verbal Art (Novaya Slovesnost', or NoS)" literary award.

Since 2010 he had been working on a film version of Leningrad.^[3][4] The film was completed in 2014 (a slightly shorter version in 2015) and received a number of awards.^[5][6] Film historian and critic Andrei Plakhov called it "an absolutely amazing experiment,",^[7] while film critic Evgeny Maisel considered Visnevetsky's film "a true challenge to contemporary professional film production."^[8] Since 2018 he teaches English and Russian literature at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.^[2]

Vishnevetsky is an Eastern Orthodox Christian.^[2] His son is film critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky.

Collected poetry edit

• Poems (Stikhotvoreniya). Moscow: ALVA-XXI, 1992. 42 pp.
• Threefold Vision (Troynoe zrenie). New York: Slovo/Word, 1997. 88 pp.
• Air Mail: Poems 1996-2001 (Vozdushnaya pochta: Stikhi 1996–2001). Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2001. 96 pp. ISBN 5-86793-148-X
• West of the Sun (Na zapad solntsa). Moscow: Nauka; Russkiy Gulliver, 2006. 278 pp. ISBN 5-02-034198-3
• First Snow (Pervosnezhye). Moscow: Russkiy Gulliver, 2008. 76 pp. ISBN 978-5-91627-009-9
• Rhymologion (Stikhoslov). Moscow: Ikar, 2008. 126 pp. ISBN 978-5-7974-0184-1
• Collected Poems 2002-2020 (Sobranie strikhotvorenii 2002–2020). Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2021. 308 pp. ISBN 978-5-4448-1572-4

Fiction edit

• Leningrad: povest'. Moscow: Vremya, 2012. 160 pp. ISBN 978-5-9691-0796-0
• Leningrad: A novel. Translated by Andrew Bromfield. Champaign - London - Dublin: Dalkey Archive Press, 2013. 124 pp. ISBN 978-1-56478-902-0
• Leningrad. Translated into Macedonian by Мirjana Naumovski. Skopje: Bata pres, 2014. 154 pp. ISBN 978-608-4654-68-1
• Non-Elective Affinities (Neizbiratelinoe srodstvo[: сollected prose – novels Leningrad (2009), Islands in the Lagoon / Ostrova v lagune (2012), Non-Elective Affinities / Neizbiratelinoe srodstvo (2013-2017), short fiction Poet Who Was Not Forgotten / Nezabytyi poet (2012)]). Moscow: EKSMO, 2018. 384 pp. ISBN 978-5-04-093120-0
• Leningrad. Traduzione a cura di Daniela Rizzi e Luisa Ruvoletto. Venezia: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, 2019. 216 pp. ISBN 978-88-7543-465-6
• Le affinità non elettive: romanzo. Anno 1835. Traduzione, postfazione e cura di Iris Karafillidis; prefazione di Stefano Garzonio. Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2023. 216 pp. ISBN 978-88-3339-891-4

Academic works (selected) edit

• Tragic Subject in Action: Andrei Bely (Tragicheskiy sub'yekt v deystvii: Andrey Belyi). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000. 214 pp. ISBN 3-631-35238-7
• Sergei Solovyov as a Historian of Philosophy and Culture. In S. M. Solovyov. Vladimir Solovyov: His Life and Creative Evolution. Vol. 1 (Fairfax, Va.: Eastern Christian Publications, 2001): IX-XXII. ISBN 1-892278-05-7
• Andrei Bely and Sergei Solovyov in Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 295 (Thomson/Gale, 2004): 63–80, 369–376. ISBN 0-7876-6832-X
• The "Eurasianist Tendency" in the Music of the 1920s and 1930s («Evraziyskoe uklonenie» v muzyke 1920-kh -1930-kh godov). Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2005. 512 pp.
• Sergei Prokofiev (Sergey Prokof'ev). Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 2009. 704 pp. ISBN 978-5-235-03212-5
• Arseny Tarkovsky in Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 359 (Gale, 2011): 265–280. ISBN 978-0-7876-8177-7
• The Literary Fate of Vasiliy Kondrat'ev (Literaturnaya sud'ba Vasiliya Konrdat'eva), Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 3/157 (2019): 239-267
• Three Contemporary Russian Poets and Biblical Tradition: Sergey Zavyalov, Natalia Chernykh, Jaan Kaplinski, Religions, 11/13 (2022)

Filmography edit

• Leningrad (2015)