Nikolay Prilepsky

Nikolay Georgievich Prilepsky is a Russian biologist, Candidate of Biological Sciences, and a lecturer at Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU). He is also a composer and performer of original songs (having written over 600 in total).

Biography

Nikolay Prilepsky was born on August 7, 1962, in Moscow, into a family of Great Patriotic War veterans.

His father, Georgy Nikitich Prilepsky (1919–1997), was a career military officer and a colonel in the USSR Air Force. He served on the front lines of the Great Patriotic War from June 24, 1941, to May 9, 1945. He was a recipient of four Orders of the Red Star and the Order of the Patriotic War (2nd class), as well as the "For Combat Merit" medal (awarded in the autumn of 1941, alongside his first Order of the Red Star), the "For the Defense of the Caucasus" medal, the "For the Victory over Germany" medal, and several other decorations.

His mother, Nina Alexandrovna Prilepskaya (née Samgina; 1923–2007), was a senior lecturer in the English Department at MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations) under the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs—having previously taught at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. She served on the front lines of the Great Patriotic War from the autumn of 1942 (joining as a volunteer) until May 9, 1945, working as an aircraft mechanic (technician). She was a recipient of the Order of the Patriotic War (2nd class), as well as the "For the Defense of the Caucasus" medal, the "For the Victory over Germany" medal, and several other decorations. His parents married at the front in late 1944. They had a daughter, Marina (born 1945), and a son, Nikolai.

Nikolai Georgiyevich Prilepsky was named after his uncle, Nikolai Nikitich Prilepsky (1900–1943/1944), who served as a driver on the "Road of Life" (the supply route across Lake Ladoga during the Siege of Leningrad). His uncle either died there or succumbed to his wounds later and was buried in an unidentified mass grave.

In 1979, Nikolai graduated from Moscow Secondary School No. 45—a school where several subjects were taught in English—receiving a gold medal for academic excellence.

In 1988, he graduated from the Faculty of Biology at Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU), specializing in zoology and botany, and was awarded a diploma with honors.

In 1989, he completed a program at Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire, USA) in environmental science, as well as English language and American culture, earning a certificate of completion with honors.

In 1992, he completed his postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University.

In 1993, he defended his Candidate of Sciences dissertation in the field of botany, titled "Vegetation Cover of the Northeastern Kostroma Region (Vokhma River Basin)."

Career

Nikolai Prilepsky is a senior research fellow at the Department of Ecology and Plant Geography, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University.

He also serves as a senior research fellow at JSC Atomenergoproekt (Rosatom). Lead Environmental Specialist at Environmental Business Association LLC.

Lieutenant in the Medical Service (specializing in the epidemiology of highly dangerous infections).

Expertise in:

Flora and vegetation of the tropics, the taiga, and the Arctic/polar regions;
Useful plants of the world;
Survival (including solo survival) in the wilderness across various regions of the planet. ...and others.

Since 1981, he has participated in numerous expeditions across Russia—including the Altai, Amur Oblast, Primorsky Krai, the Yamalo-Nenets and Nenets Autonomous Okrugs, the Komi Republic, and the Murmansk, Leningrad, Kostroma, Vologda, Kirov, Smolensk, Tula, Kursk, Voronezh, Rostov, and Ulyanovsk Oblasts, as well as Karachay-Cherkessia—as well as in Ukraine (the Carpathians), Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Iran, Turkey, the United States, Australia, and elsewhere.

In addition to his primary teaching responsibilities at Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU)—which include lectures, seminars, practical sessions, and summer field training for students from the Faculties of Biology, Geology, Soil Science, and Bioengineering and Bioinformatics; lectures and masterclasses for schoolchildren, prospective MSU students, Russian biology teachers, and students at Northeast Normal University (PRC; taught in English); and lectures as part of MSU’s interdisciplinary course program—he spent a year (1995–1996) teaching biology, geography, and history at a secondary school for the children of Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian diplomats, located at the Russian Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. Furthermore, he has spent several years teaching English (both through the "Znanie" [Knowledge] Society’s municipal courses and as a private tutor) and providing private instruction in guitar and musical accompaniment in Moscow. Over the years, he also held various other positions, including curator of an animal facility (vivarium) for experimental subjects (at the Research Institute of General and Communal Hygiene of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences), landscape design foreman, manual laborer (unloading trucks and railway freight cars), general worker for geological and surveying expeditions, and translator/interpreter (English-Russian and Russian-English), among others.

Musical Activity

Nikolai Prilepsky has been composing songs since 1987, primarily setting to music the verses of Vladimir Platonenko, as well as those of various other poets (including Vsevolod Emelin, Boris Chichibabin, Denis Korotaev, Lev Shcheglov, Alexander Furst, Vladimir Grevtsev, Vladimir Vetrov, Valery Khatyushin, Marina Strukova, Yaroslav Kaurov, Sergei Yesenin, Nikolai Rubtsov, Alexander Pushkin, Denis Davydov, Sergei Gorodetsky, Vladimir Vysotsky, Alexander Gorodnitsky, Valentin Gaft, Vladimir Bushin, Yevgeny Nefedov, Sergei Sokolkin, Lyudmila Shchipakhina, Konstantin Simonov, Yaroslav Smelyakov, Alexander Korolev, Alexander Izvolsky, Igor Sheptukhin, Alexander Mamontov, Oleg Pavlovsky, Leonid Kornilov, Oleg Sukachenko, Andrei Lishnevsky, Nikolai Guskov, and others).

He has collaborated with various musical associations and singer-songwriter clubs, such as "Vertikal," "Inokhodtsy," "Vysota," "Vtoroye Ya," "Dve Sudby," "Svecha," "Soyuz," and "Pyat Plyus," among others. He also worked with the singer-songwriter studio led by Alexander Yevstigneyev and Alexander Kostromin, as well as the singer-songwriter school directed by Alexander Vasin-Makarov at the Center for Singer-Songwriter Music (Moscow). Additionally, he served as a soloist in the singer-songwriter ensemble "Chetyre Pyatykh" (Four-Fifths).

Furthermore, he was a street musician, singer, and leader of a musical group on the Arbat in Moscow (1988–1989). He has toured in the USA, Australia, Greece, Spain, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, and elsewhere.

At the age of 25, he wrote his first song and began performing in concerts.

Nikolai Prilepsky has no formal musical education; he is self-taught in both singing and playing the guitar.

Songs

Left/Ultra-Left March (Song of the Revolutionary Sailors)
I Did Not See the War (Dedicated to the Unknown Soldier)
The Lights Are Burning (Six-Month Memorial Service)
Song of the Missing in Action (The Road Home)
My Guardian Angel (In Memory of My Father)
A Story with Geography
Well, Damn! (A Song in the "New Russian" Style)
Fidel
Dedicated to Ernesto Che Guevara
Song About a Working-Class Neighborhood (An Endless Song)
Dedicated to Vladimir Vysotsky
The Bell Will Crack at Dawn
Well, Damn—So This Is Democracy! # Civil War (A Response to Alexander Gorodnitsky)
The Wedding (Monologue of Sofya Perovskaya)
Song About the Crisis
I Want to Go Back to the Seventies
Yura, Forgive Us—We’ve Fucked It All Up
Black Water (Requiem for the Submarine *Kursk*)
Urban Romance from the End of the 20th Century
Old Castle (A Study in Spring Tones)
Planet Earth (Variations on a Nautical Theme)
A Romance with a Gypsy Flair (Just Give Me the Chance)
Winter Song (To Each His Own—"To the Hippo, What Belongs to the Hippo")
In Moments of Sad Music
Autumn Elegy
Maytime Gypsy Song
Archaeological Grave-Song (Song of a Corpse Being Unearthed)
Cherchez la Femme
Song of a Hallucination
The Five
Confession of an "Office Plankton" (I’ll Wake Up Today at Seven…)
Russian Song (Macheath/Mack the Knife)
Pushkin Forever (For the 200th Anniversary of Pushkin’s Birth)
Father Reads Yesenin to Me
I’m Tired of Living in My Native Land
Song of a Street Musician
Song of a Holy Fool
Song of the *Skomorokhi* (Minstrels)
I Am a Poet of Urban Dumpsters
Entertaining Linguistics (Dedicated to Alexander Rosenbaum)
Freedom Is Won with Blood
The Forest
The Monk
Monasteries
No, There’s Something Sexual About Elections
Squares
Song of the Participants in a Gulag Uprising
The Last Russian Must Die
The Shortest Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
The Final Whistle (A Funeral) Brezhnev era)
Epitaph for a Gladiator
Back then it was pure alcohol, now it’s cognac… (Not another word about Afghanistan)
Moscow Residence Permit
A Song About Petrine Rus’ (View from Below)
Once Defined by Class—Now Defined by Caste
I Am a City Under Contract
The Ichthyological Song (known among the people as "Prostipomka")
Ataman, Don’t Load with Blanks!
I Shall Turn to Banditry
The Steppe and the Saber
Dialogues About War
February 23rd (It’s Not Over Yet)
The Moskva River
A Song—Not by a Camel

Scientific Publications and Lecture Courses

Author of over 75 scientific publications (including 5 monographs) and 10 lecture courses:

Tropical Forests;
Tropical Ecology;
The Plant World of the Tropics: Mysteries, Uniqueness, Diversity, and Utility;
Useful Plants of the World;
The Jungle Book: Turning the Pages of Extreme Expeditions;
Plants in Human Life: Reliable Friends and Treacherous Foes;
Bioindication;
Tropical Ecology, Phytogeography, Floristics;
Tropical Forests;
Economic/Useful Plants of the World.

Awards and Achievements

Winner of a 1993–1994 competition focused on "Biodiversity" (1994) for the translation into Russian of the *International Code of Botanical Nomenclature* (1988).

Laureate of the International Singer-Songwriter Competition in memory of V. S. Vysotsky (Moscow, 1992).

Laureate of the Singer-Songwriter Competition at Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, 1993).

Laureate of the First All-Russian "Songs of Resistance" Competition (Moscow, 1997) and subsequent All-Russian (later, International) "Songs of Resistance" competitions (Moscow; 2000, 2005, 2006).

Laureate of the International Competition "New Songs About the Great Victory" (2010).

Laureate of the All-Russian Competition "White Cranes of Russia" (2019). * Included in the "Anthology of Contemporary Patriotic and Military Song of Russia" (2019). * Recipient of the following medals: "70 Years of the Great Victory," "80 Years of the Great Victory," "90 Years of the Great October Socialist Revolution," "100 Years of the Great October Socialist Revolution," "100 Years Since the Formation of the USSR," "100th Anniversary of the Birth of M. A. Sholokhov," "130th Anniversary of the Birth of I. V. Stalin," and an award as a laureate of the "Songs of Resistance" competitions (1997–2006), among others.

Recipient of commemorative badges, including "270 Years of Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU)," "70 Years of MSU on Lenin Hills," "50 Years of the Kremlin Regiment of the USSR/Russia," "300 Years of the Russian Naval Infantry," "Union of Officers of Russia," and "100 Years of the Magazine *Molodaya Gvardiya* (Young Guard)," among others.

Recipient of personalized watches themed "October Revolution" and "Great Victory."

Interests and Hobbies

Holds sports rankings in cross-country skiing, marathon swimming, Greco-Roman wrestling, and track and field (various running distances, including marathons; long jump). Also participated in ice hockey, karate (at a school affiliated with MGIMO, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations), artistic gymnastics, winter swimming (*morzhevaniye*), and cold-weather running. Engaged in parachuting (including delayed-opening/free-fall jumps) and scuba diving (in the Black and Red Seas, as well as the Indian and Pacific Oceans). In 1984, he swam across the Volga River near the city of Gorky. (currently Nizhny Novgorod). He has experience in solo survival in jungles, the taiga, and the tundra. He has developed (and repeatedly published online) his own original methods and "life hacks" covering topics such as:

How to survive in the jungle without a supply of fresh water;
How to survive in the jungle without animal-based food;
Which tropical fruits are edible;
How to survive in the jungle without a shelter;
How to avoid malaria and other tropical diseases;
How to avoid bites from blood-sucking insects and other arthropods when repellents or other artificial protective measures are unavailable;
What to do when encountering a cobra or other dangerous snakes in the jungle or other biomes;
What to do if you are bitten by a snake;
What to do when encountering a crocodile;
What to do when encountering large ungulates in various types of forests;
What to do when encountering a brown bear in the taiga;
What to do when encountering a polar bear in the Arctic;
The conditions under which predatory mammals and certain other animals become man-eaters;
Regions of the world inhabited by tribes of cannibals; and more.

Family

Nikolai Prilepsky has a daughter and a son from two marriages.