Aleksandr Tvardovsky

Tvardovsky's World War II-themed poem, A House by the Road, was the basis for Valery Gavrilin's 1984 symphonic suite of the same name. In 1963, Tvardovsky published Tyorkin in the Other World, a satire on the everyday life in the Soviet Union and Stalinism. Tyorkin gets in hell for a short time and finds out that hell is a lot like everyday life in the Soviet Union.

Aleksandr Trifonovich Tvardovsky (Russian: Александр Трифонович Твардовский, IPA: [ɐlʲɪkˈsandr ˈtrʲifənəvʲɪtɕ tvɐrˈdofskʲɪj]; 21 June [O.S. 8 June] 1910 – 18 December 1971) was a Soviet poet and writer and chief editor of Novy Mir literary magazine from 1950 to 1954 and 1958 to 1970. During his editorship, the magazine published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He is best known for his epic poem Vasili Tyorkin [fr].

Devastated at losing the editorship of Novy Mir, Tvardovsky's health collapsed, and he died in December 1971. On hearing of his death, Solzhenitsyn wrote:

In February 1970, Tvardovsky was dismissed from Novy Mir. In May, Zhores Medvedev, a contributor to Novy Mir was arrested and interned in a psychiatric hospital in Kaluga. It was common practice in the USSR to abuse psychiatry to silence critics. Tvardovsky and the writer Vladimir Tendryakov visited Medvedev on 6 June, when according to Medvedev, "the doctors were deeply affected by their conversation" and agreed to release Medvedev. On the day he was released, on 17 June, Tvardovsky was summoned before a communist party official, rebuked for interfering in the case and told "we were going to give you a very different award." This was a reference to his 60th birthday, when he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner "for services to the development of Soviet poetry" - implying that he would have received a more prestigious award if he had not intervened.

Tvardovsky acknowledged the guilt he felt about his father in his late poem, "By Right of Memory" (1968).

In January 1965, a few month after Khrushchev had been ousted, Tvardovsky wrote an article commemorating 40 years of Novy Mir, in which he singled out several new young writers for praise, including Andrei Sinyavsky. ON 15 April, Izvestia - under a new chief editor - commissioned a piece accusing Tvardovsky of 'losing his sense of proportion' when he criticised Stalinist literature, and of being too much of an admirer of Solzhenitsyn. Five months later, Sinyavsky was arrested. According to rumour, the authorities then intended to sack Tvardovsky and appoint Konstantin Simonov in his place, but Simonov refused the position, and Tvardovsky's staff threatened to strike.

In January 1963, Tvardovsky was attacked in Izvestia for publishing Yashin's story, which was considered too pessimistic. The chief editor of Izvestia, Alexei Adzhubey, was a son-in-law of the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, but the editorial appears to have been organised behind their backs while Khrushchev and Adzhubey were visiting Poland and East Germany. Attacks on Tvardovsky persisted for three months, but he did not issue any apology or retraction. On 18 August 1963, Izvestia published Tvardovsky's poem Tyorkin in the Other World, a satire in which the hero continued to meet bureaucratic obstruction even if the afterlife, with an introduction praising the work, signed by Adzhubey. Tvardovsky wrote this poem in 1954, but it was banned for nine years, and was one of the reasons that he was temporarily dismissed from the editorship of Novy mir. A few days before it was finally published, Tvardovsky was accorded the honour of being invited to recite the poem to Khrushchev and a group of foreign writers in Gagra.

Tvardovsky fought hard to maintain the traditional independence Novy Mir had, even against official disapproval. During his editorship, the magazine published Ilya Ehrenburg's Thaw in 1954, The Vologda Wedding by Alexander Yashin in 1962, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1962. During those years, the Oktyabr' magazine, with the editor in chief Vsevolod Kochetov, was the pro-Soviet, anti-Western and anti-liberal counterpart of Tvardovsky's Novy Mir.

The poem is regarded by critics as a masterpiece, remarkable for "positive good humor, its freedom from dogma, and its closeness to the reality of life", "a national and even international horizon". It is also unique as a work written during Stalin's regime, as it lacks ideological content, glorification of Stalin and the Soviet state, and triumphalist tone which were required for a work of "Socialist realism". Tvardovsky's wife wrote in 1943: "I have the impression that it is getting dangerous here to pronounce your name aloud", but the poem's popularity saved it from the censorship.

Tvardovsky received the Stalin Prize (1941, 1946, 1947), the USSR State Prize (1971), and the Lenin Prize (1961) for the large poem, Distance After Distance (За далью – даль 1950–60), a collection of poetic impressions and meditations on Russian life first conceived during a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Tvardovsky's most popular long poem, Vasili Tyorkin [fr] (Russian: Василий Тёркин. Книга про бойца, 1941–1945), is about an ordinary soldier in the German-Soviet War. Filled with humor, the poem was a hymn to the optimism and resourcefulness of the Russian soldier. It was surprisingly non-politicized, down-to-earth, and intentionally devoid of any picturesque heroism. It was printed chapter by chapter and immediately sent to the front in newspapers and magazines as well as read over the radio by Dmitry Orlov. Tvardovsky was awarded his second Stalin Prize for Vasili Tyorkin.

In 1939, he participated in the march into Western Belorussia, and also in the Winter War, where he was part of a "writers' brigade" composing patriotic verse. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1940 and was a war correspondent during World War II. Early in the war, he began independently working on his poem Vasili Tyorkin [fr]. During the post-war years, he served as chief editor of Novy Mir, an influential literary magazine. He became the chief editor of Novy Mir in 1949. He was dismissed from his post in 1954 for publishing officially unacceptable articles by V. Pomerantsev, Fyodor Abramov and M. Shcheglov. He was made chief editor again in July 1958.

He left the village school because of poverty after attending only four classes and devoted himself entirely to literature. At the age of 18 he went to Smolensk, but was unable to find literary work. In the winter of 1930, after visiting Moscow, he returned to his native village. During this period, he entered a Pedagogical Institute with the help of a party official, but didn't finish his studies there. He completed his education later at the Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature in Moscow. His poem The Land of Muravia was written in 1934–36 and was favorably received by the critics. This poem, along with his other early narrative poem, The Road to Socialism (1931), were products of Tvardovsky's effort to come to terms with collectivization. He was awarded the Stalin Prize for The Land of Muravia.

Tvardovsky's father was accused of being a kulak during the period of collectivisation in the Soviet Union. In 1930, after Aleksandr had moved to Smolensk, his father ran away from the family home fearing arrest. In 1931, apart from Aleksandr, the whole family was deported from Zagorye. The family spent several years moving from place to place, splitting up and reuniting, looking for work and safety. Some of them spent time in labour camps. Orlando Figes describes Aleksandr's sense of uneasiness at the way his family had been treated while at the same time fearing for himself, his career and growing creative accomplishments if he was to actively help them. In August 1931, when his father and brother arrived unexpectedly in Smolensk at his work, Aleksandr called the police and his father was arrested. It is highly likely that if Tvardovsky had been seen to help his kulak father (a dangerous and criminal element in the eyes of many), he would have been arrested alongside his father.