Yuri Nikitin (author)

Yuri Aleksandrovich Nikitin (Russian: Ю́рий Алекса́ндрович Ники́тин; 30 November 1939 – 23 May 2025) was a Russian writer of science fiction, historical fiction, and Slavic fantasy.

Although he was active in science fiction before perestroika, the recognition came when he wrote a Slavic fantasy novel, The Three from the Forest (Russian: Трое из Леса). One of the protagonists is a character based on the Russian Rurikid Prince Oleg of Novgorod, who is a mainstay of many sequels. Nikitin also wrote a couple of novels about Vladimir the Great. Nikitin created a website called Inn (Russian: Корчма) as a community portal to help young writers.

Nikitin's books have a distinct, free, and often intentionally primitive and repetitive style with many jokes, reflecting his intent to keep the reader on topic and carry his ideas through. His later books develop the idea of becoming a transhuman through self-development and survival of the spiritually fittest.

According to the literary critic Sergei Chuprinin, Nikitin, with his series of novels "Three from the Forest", is one of the founders of Slavic fantasy. Some of Nikitin's works reproduce the ideas of Slavic neopaganism.