Irkutsk State University
Aleksandr Valentinovich Vampilov was born in Cheremkhovo in the Irkutsk Oblast of eastern Siberia on 19 August 1937. His father, Valentin Nikitich Vampilov, born in 1898, was a Buryat from the nearby village of Alar. At his father's death, Valentin, who was seventeen, undertook the running of the family's cattle farm. He managed at the same time to graduate from the gymnasium and go on to study in the historical-philological department of Irkutsk State University. Valentin taught Russian language and literature in, and became director of, the high school in Kutulik, the regional center of the Irkutsk oblast, some thirty kilometers south of Alar. In the summer of Vampilov's birth he was transferred to Alar as chief teacher.