Born June 8 (21), 1915, in Rostov-on-Don. Soviet literary scholar. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1974). Member of the CPSU since 1942.
Berdnikov graduated from the philology department of Leningrad State University in 1939. In 1977 he became the director of the A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. His chief works deal with A. P. Chekhov; they include Chekhov the Playwright: Tradition and Innovation in Chekhov’s Dramas (1957) and Chekhov (1974). Berdnikov has compiled and edited the collected works of such Russian writers as I. S. Turgenev and S. Karonin.
Berdnikov has been awarded three orders and various medals.