Daniil GRANIN has been awarded the 2016National Award for Outstanding Achievements in Humanitarian Activity.
Daniil German (Granin), born January 1, 1919, a writer and public activist, fought in the Great Patriotic War and holds combat decorations. After the war, he helped rebuild the damaged electricity networks in Leningrad (now St Petersburg).
He published his first literary work in 1949. The main theme of his writings can be described as the scientist’s moral code and civic position, as seen from his novels Those Who Seek, Into the Storm and The Picture, stories A Personal Opinion, A Place for a Monument and The Unknown Man, and essays Deliberations by a Non-Existent Portrait, A Story of the Scientist and the Emperor, This Strange Life, Choosing the Goal, and The Bison: A Novel about the Scientist Who Defied Stalin. A Book of the Blockade is a story of human heroism during the siege of Leningrad. Presently, he mostly writes memoirs.
In the 2000s, he created several shows and documentaries on the Culture television channel, such as Evenings with Peter the Great, I Remember, The Leningrad Tragedy, and Dmitry Likhachev’s Uphill Road.
Daniil Granin initiated the creation of the first Relief Society in the Soviet Union. He chairs the board of the Dmitry Likhachev International Charitable Foundation and co-authored the cultural education programme titled International Peter the Great Congress.
Honours and awards: Hero of Socialist Labour (1989), USSR State Prize (1976) Russian Federation National Award in Literature and Arts (2001), Presidential Prize for Literature and Art (1998), Government Prize in Culture (2014), Order of Lenin (1984, 1989), Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1967), Order of the Red Banner (1942), Order of the Patriotic War II degree (1985), Order for Services to the Fatherland III degree (1999), Order of St Andrew the First-Called (2008) and Order of Alexander Nevsky (2013). Daniil Granin is an honorary freeman of the City of St Petersburg.