The creative and life path of Tvardovsky Alexander Trifonovich. Tvardovsky A.T. Autobiography

June 21 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the poet and writer Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky.

Poet and writer Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky was born on June 21 (08 old style) June 1910 in the village of Zagorye, Smolensk province (now Pochinkovsky district, Smolensk region). His father was a village blacksmith, a literate and very well-read man.

The poet's childhood occurred in the first post-revolutionary years, and in his youth he had the opportunity to learn from his own fate how collectivization was carried out. In the 1930s his father was “dispossessed” and expelled from his native village.

The poet's talent awoke in Alexander Tvardovsky in early childhood. In 1925, while still studying at a rural school, he began working in Smolensk newspapers as a rural correspondent, for which he wrote articles, essays, and sometimes published his own poems there. The first publication of the future poet - the note "How re-elections of cooperatives occur" was published on February 15, 1925 in the newspaper "Smolenskaya Derevnya".

Alexander Trifonovich was married. The marriage produced two children, daughters Valentina and Olga.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources.

Alexander Tvardovsky

Russian Soviet writer and poet, journalist, war correspondent; editor-in-chief of the magazine "New World" (1950-1954; 1958-1970)

short biography

Childhood

Born on June 8, 1910, on the Zagorye farm near the village of Seltso (now in the Smolensk region) in the family of the village blacksmith Trifon Gordeevich Tvardovsky (1880-1957) and Maria Mitrofanovna (1888-1972), nee Pleskachevskaya, who came from one-household.

The poet's younger brother is Ivan Trifonovich Tvardovsky (1914-2003), later a Russian writer and writer, cabinetmaker, wood and bone carver, dissident.

The poet’s grandfather, Gordey Tvardovsky, was a bombardier (artillery soldier) who served in Poland, from where he brought the nickname “Pan Tvardovsky,” which passed on to his son. This nickname (in reality not related to noble origin) forced Trifon Gordeevich to perceive himself more as a fellow nobleman than a peasant.

The mother, whom Tvardovsky loved very much, Maria Mitrofanovna, really came from the same palace. Trifon Gordeevich was a well-read man - and in the evenings in their house they often read aloud by Nekrasov, Nikitin, Ershov. Alexander began to compose poetry early, while still illiterate.

Beginning of literary activity

At the age of 15, Tvardovsky began writing small notes for Smolensk newspapers. In 1925, Tvardovsky’s first poem “New Izba” was published in the newspaper “Smolenskaya Derevnya”. Then Tvardovsky, having collected several poems, brought them to Mikhail Isakovsky, who worked in the editorial office of the Rabochy Put newspaper. Isakovsky greeted the poet warmly, becoming a friend and mentor of the young Tvardovsky.

In 1928, Tvardovsky left his family and moved to Smolensk.

In 1931, his first poem, “The Path to Socialism,” was published. In 1935, in Smolensk, at the Western Regional State Publishing House, the first book, “Collection of Poems” (1930-1936), was published. In total for 1925-35. Tvardovsky wrote and published, mainly on the pages of Smolensk newspapers and other regional publications, more than 130 poems.

In 1932, Tvardovsky entered the first year of the Smolensk State Pedagogical Institute. In 1936, Tvardovsky moved to Moscow and entered the third year of MIFLI. In 1939, Tvardovsky graduated from MIFLI.

In 1939-1940, as part of a group of writers, Tvardovsky worked in the newspaper of the Leningrad Military District “On Guard of the Motherland.” As a war correspondent, Tvardovsky participated in the Red Army's campaign in Western Belarus and in the war with Finland.

The poem “At a Halt” was published in the newspaper “On Guard of the Motherland” on December 11, 1939. In the article “How “Vasily Terkin” was written,” A. Tvardovsky reported that the image of the main character was invented in 1939 for a permanent humorous column in the newspaper “On Guard of the Motherland.”

Collectivization, family repression

In the poems “The Path to Socialism” (1931) and “The Country of Ant” (1934-1936), he depicted collectivization and dreams of a “new” village, as well as Stalin riding a horse as a harbinger of a bright future. Despite the fact that Tvardovsky’s parents, along with his brothers, were dispossessed and exiled, and his farm was burned by fellow villagers, he himself supported the collectivization of peasant farms.

"Vasily Terkin"

In 1941-1942 he worked in Voronezh in the editorial office of the newspaper of the Southwestern Front "Red Army". The poem “Vasily Terkin” (1941-1945), “A book about a fighter without beginning and end” is Tvardovsky’s most famous work; this is a chain of episodes from the Great Patriotic War. The poem is distinguished by a simple and precise syllable and energetic development of action. The episodes are connected to each other only by the main character - the author proceeded from the fact that both he and his reader could die at any moment. As the chapters were written, they were published in the Western Front newspaper Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda and were incredibly popular on the front line. The poem became one of the attributes of front-line life, as a result of which Tvardovsky became a cult author of the military generation.

Among other things, “Vasily Terkin” stands out among other works of that time by the complete absence of ideological propaganda and references to Stalin and the party.

By order of the Armed Forces of the 3rd Belorussian Front No.: 505 dated: 07/31/1944, the poet of the editorial office of the newspaper of the 3rd Charity Fund "Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda", Lieutenant Colonel A. Tvardovsky was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree, for writing 2 poems (one of them - “Vasily Terkin”, the second - “House by the Road”) and numerous essays about the liberation of the Belarusian land, as well as speeches in front-line units in front of soldiers and officers.

By order of the Armed Forces of the 3rd Belorussian Front No.: 480 dated: 04/30/1945, the special correspondent of the newspaper of the 3rd Charitable Fleet "Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda", Lieutenant Colonel A. Tvardovsky, was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, for improving the content of the newspaper (writing essays about battles in East Prussia) and increasing its educational role.

Post-war poems

In 1946, the poem “House by the Road” was written, which mentions the first tragic months of the Great Patriotic War.

On the days of Stalin’s death and funeral, A. T. Tvardovsky wrote the following lines:

“In this hour of greatest sorrow
I won't find those words
So that they fully express
Our nationwide misfortune..."

In the poem “Beyond the Distance, the Distance,” written at the peak of Khrushchev’s “thaw,” the writer condemns Stalin and, as in the book “From the Lyrics of These Years. 1959-1968" (1969), reflects on the movement of time, the duty of the artist, life and death. In this poem, the cult of Stalin’s personality and its consequences are discussed in the chapter “So it was,” and the rehabilitation of those illegally repressed under Stalin is discussed in the chapter “Childhood Friend.”

This poem most clearly expressed such ideological side of Tvardovsky’s life and work as “sovereignty.” But, unlike the Stalinist and neo-Stalinist statists, Tvardovsky’s cult of a strong state, of power, is not associated with the cult of any statesman or a specific form of state in general. This position helped Tvardovsky to belong among Russophiles - admirers of the Russian Empire.

"New world"

Tvardovsky was editor-in-chief of the New World magazine twice: in 1950-54. and 1958-70

In the fall of 1954, by resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Tvardovsky was removed from the post of editor-in-chief of the magazine “New World” for attempting to print the poem “Terkin in the Next World” and publishing in the “New World” journalistic articles by V. Pomerantsev, F. Abramov, M. Lifshits, M. Shcheglova.

During both periods of Tvardovsky’s editorship at Novy Mir, especially after the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, the magazine became a refuge for anti-Stalinist forces in literature, a symbol of the “sixties,” and an organ of legal opposition to Soviet power. The “New World” published works by F. Abramov, V. Bykov, B. Mozhaev, Y. Trifonov, Y. Dombrovsky.

In the 1960s, Tvardovsky, in the poems “By the Right of Memory” (published in 1987) and “Terkin in the Next World,” revised his attitude towards Stalin and Stalinism. At the same time (early 1960s), Tvardovsky received Khrushchev’s permission to publish the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Solzhenitsyn.

The new direction of the magazine (liberalism in art, ideology and economics, hiding behind words about socialism “with a human face”) aroused discontent not so much among the Khrushchev-Brezhnev party elite and officials in ideological departments, but rather among the so-called “neo-Stalinist power holders” in Soviet literature. For several years, there was a sharp literary (and, in fact, ideological) polemic between the magazines “New World” and “October” (editor-in-chief V. A. Kochetov, author of the novel “What Do You Want?”, directed, among other things, against Tvardovsky). “Sovereign patriots” also expressed their persistent ideological rejection of the magazine.

After Khrushchev was removed from senior positions in the press (Ogonyok magazine, Socialist Industry newspaper), a campaign was carried out against the New World magazine. Glavlit waged a fierce struggle with the magazine, systematically not allowing the most important materials to be published. Since the leadership of the Writers' Union did not dare to formally dismiss Tvardovsky, the last measure of pressure on the magazine was the removal of Tvardovsky's deputies and the appointment of people hostile to him to these positions. In February 1970, Tvardovsky was forced to resign as editor, and part of the magazine’s staff followed his example. The editorial office was essentially destroyed. The KGB note “Materials on the mood of the poet A. Tvardovsky” on behalf of Yu. V. Andropov was sent on September 7, 1970 to the CPSU Central Committee.

In the "New World" ideological liberalism was combined with aesthetic traditionalism. Tvardovsky had a cold attitude towards modernist prose and poetry, preferring literature developing in the classical forms of realism. Many of the greatest writers of the 1960s were published in the magazine, and the magazine exposed many to the reader. For example, in 1964, a large selection of poems by the Voronezh poet Alexei Prasolov was published in the August issue.

In 1966, Tvardovsky refused to approve the court sentence of writers Y. Daniel and A. Sinyavsky.

Soon after the defeat of the New World, Tvardovsky was diagnosed with lung cancer. The writer died on December 18, 1971 in the holiday village of Krasnaya Pakhra, Moscow region. He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery (site No. 7).

Family

• Grandfather - Gordey Tvardovsky (1841-1905), was a bombardier (artillery soldier), served in Poland.
• Father - Trifon Gordeevich (1880-1949) - was a well-read man, and in the evenings in his house they often read Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Tolstoy, Nikitin, Ershov aloud.
• Mother - Maria Mitrofanovna (1888-1965), came from one-yard dwellers.
• Brothers: Konstantin (1908-2002), Ivan (1914-2003), Pavel (1917-1983), Vasily (1925-1954)
• Sisters: Anna (1912-2000) and Maria (1922-1984)
• Wife - Maria Illarionovna Gorelova (1908-1991)
• two daughters: Olga and Valentina

Perpetuation of memory

• In 1990, an artistic marked envelope was published in honor of the writer.
• In Smolensk, Voronezh, Novosibirsk, Balashikha and Moscow, streets are named after Tvardovsky.
• Moscow school No. 279 was named after Tvardovsky.
• The Aeroflot aircraft Airbus A330-343E VQ-BEK was named in honor of A. Tvardovsky.
• In 1988, the memorial museum-estate “A. T. Tvardovsky on the Zagorye farm"
• On June 22, 2013, a monument to Tvardovsky was unveiled on Strastnoy Boulevard in Moscow, next to the editorial office of the Novy Mir magazine. The authors are People's Artist of Russia Vladimir Surovtsev and Honored Architect of Russia Viktor Pasenko. At the same time, there was an incident: on the granite of the monument it was engraved “with the participation of the Ministry of Culture” with the second letter “t” missing.
• In 2015, a memorial plaque was unveiled in Russian Turek in honor of Tvardovsky’s visit to the village.

Other information

In collaboration with M. Isakovsky, A. Surkov and N. Gribachev, he wrote the poem “The Word of Soviet Writers to Comrade Stalin,” read at a ceremonial meeting on the occasion of J. V. Stalin’s seventieth birthday at the Bolshoi Theater on December 21, 1949.

Awards and prizes

• Stalin Prize of the second degree (1941) - for the poem “The Country of Ant” (1936)
• Stalin Prize, first degree (1946) - for the poem “Vasily Terkin” (1941-1945)
• Stalin Prize, second degree (1947) - for the poem “House by the Road” (1946)
• Lenin Prize (1961) - for the poem “Beyond the Distance - Distance” (1953-1960)
• USSR State Prize (1971) - for the collection “From the Lyrics of These Years. 1959-1967" (1967)
• three Orders of Lenin (01/31/1939; 06/20/1960; 10/28/1967)
• Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree (04/30/1945)
• Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree (07/31/1944)
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor (06/20/1970)
• Order of the Red Star (1940) - for participation in the Soviet-Finnish war (1939-1940)

Laureate of the State Prize (1941, for the poem “The Country of Ant”)
Laureate of the State Prize (1946, for the poem “Vasily Terkin”)
Laureate of the State Prize (1947, for the poem “House by the Road”)
Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1961, for the poem “Beyond the Distance - Distance”)
State Prize Laureate (1971, for the collection “From the Lyrics of These Years. 1959-1967”)
Knight of three Orders of Lenin (1939, 1960, 1967)
Knight of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1970)
Knight of the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree (1945)
Knight of the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree (1944)
Knight of the Order of the Red Star

Alexander Tvardovsky was born on June 21, 1910 in the Zagorye village of Smolensk province in the family of a village blacksmith.

Tvardovsky called his difficult peasant childhood, which passed during the harsh war and revolutionary years, “the beginning of all beginnings.” His father Trifon Gordeevich was strict to the point of severity, ambitious to the point of painfulness, he had highly developed possessive habits, and the children, especially Alexander, who was impressionable and sensitive to any injustice, sometimes had a very difficult time with him. “I was born in the Smolensk region,” Tvardovsky wrote about himself, “in 1910, June 21, on the “stolpovo wasteland farm,” as the piece of land acquired by my father Trifon Gordeevich Tvardovsky was called in the papers, through the Land Peasant Bank with payment in installments. This land - a little over ten acres, all in small swamps, “Ruffles”, as we called them, and all overgrown with willow, spruce, and birch trees - was unenviable in every sense. But for the father, who was the only son of a landless soldier and who, through many years of hard work as a blacksmith, earned the amount necessary for the first contribution to the bank, this land was the road to holiness. And to us, children, from a very young age, he instilled love and respect for this sour, podzolic, stingy and unkind, but our land - our “estate,” as he jokingly and not jokingly called his farm... This area was quite wild, away from the roads, and the father, a wonderful blacksmith, soon closed the forge, deciding to live off the land. But every now and then he had to turn to a hammer: rent someone else’s forge and anvil in waste, working half-and-half... My father was a literate man and even well-read in the village language. The book was not a rarity in our household. We often devoted whole winter evenings to reading aloud some book. My first acquaintance with “Poltava” and “Dubrovsky” by Pushkin, with “Taras Bulba” by Gogol, the most popular poems of Lermontov, Nekrasov, A.V. Tolstoy, Nikitin happened in this way. My father knew many poems from memory - “Borodino”, “Prince Kurbsky”, almost all of Ershov’s “The Little Humpbacked Horse”.

In childhood, “studying” at his father’s forge, which for the entire district was “a club, a newspaper, and an academy of sciences,” had a great influence on the formation of the future poet. There is nothing surprising or accidental in the fact that Tvardovsky’s first poem, composed at an age when the author did not yet know all the letters of the alphabet, denounced the boys of his peers, destroyers of birds’ nests, and sounded piercingly ringing and rhythmic. “The aesthetics of labor,” which Tvardovsky subsequently spoke about at the teachers’ congress, he did not need to comprehend on purpose - it entered into his life itself, when he “as a small child” saw how, under his father’s blacksmith’s hammer, “everything was born with which they plow the field, forest and build a house.” And the hours of waiting for the customer were filled with furious arguments of people eager to talk to a competent person. Therefore, Tvardovsky studied at the rural school with pleasure, continuing to write poetry under the guidance of the school literature teacher in accordance with the trends of the then poetic fashion, although, as he later admitted, it turned out poorly for him in the struggle with himself.

Soon Alexander Tvardovsky left his native Zagorje. By this time, he had visited Smolensk more than once, once visited Moscow, met Mikhail Isakovsky, and became the author of several dozen published poems. The name of Alexander Tvardovsky first appeared on February 15, 1925, when his note “How re-elections of cooperatives occur” was published in the newspaper “Smolenskaya Derevnya”. On July 19, the same newspaper published his first poem, “New Hut.” In the following months, several more notes appeared, the publication of Tvardovsky’s poems in various newspapers in Smolensk, and at the beginning of 1926, when the poet specially came to this city to meet Isakovsky, he again published his poems in the newspaper “Rabochy Put”. The artist I. Fomichev drew a pencil portrait of “village correspondent Alexander Tvardovsky,” which was printed on a newspaper page with his poems. In April 1927, the Smolensk newspaper “Young Comrade” published a note about Alexander Tvardovsky along with a selection of his poems and a photograph - all of this was united under the general heading “The Creative Path of Alexander Tvardovsky.” At that time, Alexander Tvardovsky was only 17 years old. According to Isakovsky, “he was a slender young man with very blue eyes and light brown hair. Sasha was wearing a jacket made of sheepskin. He held the hat in his hands.”

Tvardovsky moved to Smolensk, but the editorial office of Rabochy Put did not find any full-time position for Tvardovsky, and he was offered to write notes for the chronicle, which did not guarantee a permanent income. Tvardovsky agreed, although he perfectly understood that he was dooming himself to a half-starved existence. In the summer of 1929, when many Rabochy Put employees went on vacation, Tvardovsky was loaded with work, sending him on correspondent assignments to the regions. His earnings increased and his circle of acquaintances, including literary ones, expanded. The poet dared to send his poems to Moscow, to the editorial office of the magazine "October", where Mikhail Svetlov liked the poems of the young poet, and he published them in the magazine "October". After this event, the Smolensk horizons began to seem too narrow to Tvardovsky, and he moved to the capital. But it turned out about the same as with Smolensk: “I was occasionally published,” Tvardovsky recalled, “someone approved of my experiments, supporting childish hopes, but I did not earn much more than in Smolensk, and lived in corners, bunks, I wandered around the editorial offices, and I was increasingly noticeably carried somewhere away from the direct and difficult path of real study, real life. In the winter of 1930 I returned to Smolensk.”

It is difficult to say how Tvardovsky’s further literary fate would have developed if he had remained in Moscow. The main reason for his return to Smolensk was that Tvardovsky’s demands on himself as a poet increased, and he began to increasingly experience dissatisfaction with his poems. Later he wrote: “There was a period when, having left the village, at one time I was essentially cut off from life, moving in a narrow literary environment.”

After returning to Smolensk, Alexander Tvardovsky entered the Pedagogical Institute. During his first year at the institute, he undertook to pass the high school exams in all subjects and successfully completed this. “These years of study and work in Smolensk,” Tvardovsky later wrote, “are forever marked for me by high spiritual elation... Taking a break from books and studies, I went to collective farms as a correspondent for regional newspapers, delving into everything that was new with passion.” , for the first time the system of rural life was taking shape, wrote articles, correspondence and kept all sorts of notes, with each trip noting for myself the new things that had revealed themselves to me in the complex process of the formation of collective farm life.”

Beginning in 1929, Tvardovsky began to write in a new way, achieving the utmost prosaicness of the verse. He, as he later said, wanted to write “naturally, simply,” and he expelled “all lyricism, manifestation of feeling.” Poetry immediately took revenge on him for this. In some poems (“Apples”, “Poems about universal education”), along with truly poetic works, such lines began to appear, for example:

And here
Guys big and small
The school team will gather.

Subsequently, Tvardovsky realized that he had chosen the wrong path, because what he put above all - plot, narrative verse, concreteness - was expressed in practice, as he admitted in 1933, “in saturating poems with prosaisms, “conversational intonations” to the fact that they stopped sounding like poetry and everything in general merged into dullness, ugliness... later on, these excesses sometimes reached the point of absolute anti-artism.” The poet had to go through a long and difficult path of search before he finally lost faith in the vitality of semi-prosaic verse. For a whole decade he struggled with solving the painful task of “finding himself within himself.” In his youth, Tvardovsky went through a thorny path of apprenticeship, imitation, temporary successes and bitter disappointments, right up to disgust for his own writings, a joyless and humiliating journey through editorial offices. Dissatisfaction with himself also affected his studies at the Pedagogical Institute, which he dropped out of in his third year, and completed his studies at the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature, where he entered in the fall of 1936. Tvardovsky’s works were published from 1931 to 1933, but he himself believed that only after he wrote the poem about collectivization “The Country of Ant” in 1936 did he become established as a writer. This poem was a success among readers and critics. The publication of this book changed the poet’s life: he finally moved to Moscow, graduated from MIFLI in 1939, and published a book of poems, “Rural Chronicle.”

In 1939, Tvardovsky was drafted into the Red Army and participated in the liberation of Western Belarus. During the outbreak of the war with Finland, Tvardovsky received an officer rank and served as a special correspondent for a military newspaper.

During the armed conflict with Finland, the first publications appeared with the main character - Vasily Terkin. On April 20, 1940, the day he was accepted as a member of the CPSU(b), Tvardovsky made an entry in his diary: “Yesterday evening or this morning a hero was found, and now I see that he is the only one I need, it is he, Vasya Terkin ! It is similar to a folklore image. He is a proven case. It is only necessary to raise it, raise it imperceptibly, in essence, and in form almost the same as it was on the pages of “On Guard of the Motherland.” No, and the form will probably be different. And how necessary is his gaiety, his luck, energy and resilient soul to overcome the harsh material of this war! And how much he can absorb from what needs to be touched! It will be a funny army joke, but at the same time there will be lyricism in it. When Vasya crawls, wounded, to the point and his affairs are bad, but he does not give in - all this should be truly touching...”

Already in 1940, the name of Terkin was known to many outside of Leningrad and the Karelian Isthmus, and the authors of feuilleton couplets about him themselves looked at their brainchild somewhat down, condescendingly, as something frivolous. “We rightfully did not consider this literature,” Tvardovsky later remarked.

The authorship of the creation of this hero did not belong to Tvardovsky alone, who later said: “But the fact is that he was conceived and invented not only by me, but by many people, including writers, and most of all not by writers and, to a large extent, by my correspondents themselves . They actively participated in the creation of Terkin, from its first chapter to the completion of the book, and to this day continue to develop this image in various forms and directions. I explain this in order to consider the second question, which is posed in an even more significant part of the letters - the question: how was “Vasily Terkin” written? Where did this book come from? What served as the material for it and what was the starting point? Wasn't the author himself one of the Terkins? This is asked not only by ordinary readers, but also by people specially involved in the subject of literature: graduate students who took “Vasily Terkin” as the theme of their works, literature teachers, literary scholars and critics, librarians, lecturers, etc. I’ll try to talk about what How “Terkin” was “formed”. “Vasily Terkin,” I repeat, has been known to the reader, primarily the army, since 1942. But “Vasya Terkin” has been known since 1939-1940 - from the period of the Finnish campaign. At that time, a group of writers and poets worked in the newspaper of the Leningrad Military District “On Guard of the Motherland”: N. Tikhonov, V. Sayanov, A. Shcherbakov, S. Vashentsev, Ts. Solodar and the one writing these lines. Once, discussing with the editorial staff the tasks and nature of our work in a military newspaper, we decided that we needed to start something like a “humor corner” or a weekly collective feuilleton, where there would be poems and pictures. This idea was not an innovation in the army press. Following the model of the propaganda work of D. Bedny and V. Mayakovsky in the post-revolutionary years, newspapers had a tradition of printing satirical pictures with poetic captions, ditties, feuilletons with continuations with the usual heading - “At leisure”, “Under the Red Army accordion”, etc. There There were sometimes conventional characters moving from one feuilleton to another, like some merry chef, and characteristic pseudonyms, like Uncle Sysoy, Grandfather Yegor, Machine Gunner Vanya, Sniper and others. In my youth, in Smolensk, I was involved in similar literary work in the district “Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda” and other newspapers.”

Thus was born an amazing hero - Vasya Terkin from the village, but working somewhere in the city or in a new building. A merry fellow, a wit and a joker. He can lie, but not only does he not exaggerate his exploits, but, on the contrary, invariably presents them in a funny, random, real form. The poem “Vasily Terkin” was written by Tvardovsky throughout the war and became his most famous work. Being by nature alien to any vanity, Tvardovsky was indeed quite indifferent to how many articles, studies, dissertations and reader conferences would be devoted to his book in the future. But it was very important for him that his book, which brought so much joy to “people living during the war,” would continue to live in the popular consciousness after the war. Tvardovsky said: “And somewhere in 1944, the feeling firmly matured in me that “Vasily Terkin” is the best of everything written about war in war. And none of us can write the way this is written.” For Tvardovsky, “The Book about a Fighter” was the most serious personal contribution to the common cause - to the Victory over the mortal danger of fascism: “Whatever its actual literary significance, for me it was true happiness. She gave me a feeling of the legitimacy of the artist’s place in the great struggle of the people, a feeling of the obvious usefulness of my work, a feeling of complete freedom to handle poetry and words in a naturally occurring, relaxed form of presentation. “Terkin” was for me in the relationship between the writer and his reader, my lyrics, my journalism, song and teaching, anecdote and saying, heart-to-heart conversation and a remark to the occasion.”

The first morning of the Great Patriotic War found Tvardovsky in the Moscow region, in the village of Gryazi, Zvenigorod district, at the very beginning of his vacation. In the evening of the same day he was in Moscow, and a day later he was sent to the headquarters of the Southwestern Front, where he was to work in the front-line newspaper “Red Army”. Some light on the poet’s life during the war was shed by his prose essays “Motherland and Foreign Land,” as well as the memoirs of E. Dolmatovsky, V. Muradyan, E. Vorobyov, 0. Vereisky, who knew Tvardovsky in those years, V. Lakshin and V. Dementiev , to whom Alexander Trifonovich later told a lot about his life. Thus, he told V. Lakshin: “In 1941, near Kiev... he barely escaped the encirclement. The editorial office of the Southwestern Front newspaper, where he worked, was located in Kyiv. It was ordered not to leave the city until the last hour... The army units had already retreated beyond the Dnieper, and the editorial office was still working... Tvardovsky was saved by a miracle: the regimental commissar took him into his car, and they barely jumped out of the closing ring of German encirclement.”

In the spring of 1942, Tvardovsky was surrounded for the second time - this time near Kanev, from which, according to I.S. Marshak, he emerged again “by a miracle.” In mid-1942, Tvardovsky was moved from the Southwestern Front to the Western Front, and until the very end of the war, the editorial office of the front-line newspaper “Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda” became his home. It became the home of the legendary Tyorkin. According to the recollections of the artist O. Vereisky, who painted portraits of Tvardovsky and illustrated his works, “he was amazingly handsome. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a thin waist and narrow hips. He stood straight, walked with his shoulders back, stepping softly, moving his elbows as he walked, as wrestlers often do. The military uniform suited him very well. His head sat proudly on his slender neck, his soft brown hair, combed back, fell to the sides, framing his high forehead. His very light eyes looked attentively and sternly. Movable eyebrows sometimes raised in surprise, sometimes frowned, converging towards the bridge of the nose and giving a sternness to the facial expression. But there was some kind of feminine softness in the outline of the lips and the rounded lines of the cheeks.”

Almost simultaneously with “Terkin” and the poems of “Front-line Chronicle”, Tvardovsky wrote the poem “House by the Road”. The author himself did not see the war “from the other side” with his own eyes, however, purely personal circumstances played a significant role in everything that pushed Tvardovsky to write “House by the Road”: his native Smolensk region was occupied for more than two years. His parents and sisters lived there, and why didn’t he change his mind about them during that time? True, he could be said to be lucky: the Smolensk region in 1943 was liberated by the troops of the Western Front, with which his army destiny was connected, and in the first days after liberation from the occupiers he was able to see his native places. Tvardovsky described this event as follows: “Native Zagorje. Only a few residents here managed to escape being shot or burned. The area was so wild and looked so unusual that I didn’t even recognize the ashes of my father’s house.”

Alexander Tvardovsky in his native village of Zagorye. 1943

In the 1950s and 60s, he wrote the poem “Beyond the Distance, the Distance.” Along with poetry, Tvardovsky always wrote prose. In 1947, he published a book about the past war under the general title “Motherland and Foreign Land.” He also showed himself as a deep, insightful critic in the books “Articles and Notes on Literature” in 1961, “The Poetry of Mikhail Isakovsky” in 1969, and also wrote articles about the work of Samuil Marshak and Ivan Bunin in 1965.

Tvardovsky actively worked to complete the poetic story about Vasily Terkin. Its final part was called “Terkin in the Other World”; he also tried to most fully express his thoughts about what became the work of his whole life - about poetry. Perhaps the most important of all the poems dealing with this topic was “A Word about Words” in 1962, the creation of which was dictated by acute concern for the fate of Russian literature and a call for the reader to fight for the value and effectiveness of the word.

Years passed, the war moved further into the past, but Tvardovsky’s pain from the feeling of loss did not go away. The better life became, the more acutely he felt the need to remind those who paid for it with their lives. Significant dates and events often served Tvardovsky as an occasion to once again force the reader to remember those who died defending the future of their people. In 1957, the country celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the revolution, and among the many works written for the anniversary was Tvardovsky’s poem “That blood that was not shed in vain.”

Knocks on our hearts, controls us,
Without letting go for an hour,
May our victims be in holy memory
She did not leave us along the way.
So that we, listening to the praise,
And on the holiday of current victories
Do not forget that with this blood
Our yesterday's trail is smoking.

Gagarin's flight into space evoked special and rather unexpected associations for Tvardovsky. In the February 1962 book of the New World, his poem “To the Cosmonaut” was published, in which Gagarin was not the hero of heroes, and Tvardovsky urged him not to forget about those guys who died in their “plywood jalopies” in 1941 “under Yelnya, Vyazma and Moscow itself":

They are proud, they are involved
Special glory gained in battle,
And that one, harsh and voiceless,
Wouldn't trade it for yours.

The poet was very worried about the death of his mother. “My mother, Maria Mitrofanovna, was always very impressionable and sensitive, not even without sentimentality, to many things that were outside the practical, everyday interests of a peasant household, the troubles and concerns of a housewife in a large large family. She was moved to tears by the sound of a shepherd’s trumpet somewhere in the distance behind our farm bushes and swamps, or the echo of a song from distant village fields, or, for example, the smell of the first young hay, the sight of some lonely tree, etc.” - this is how Alexander Trifonovich wrote about her during his mother’s life in his “Autobiography”. In 1965, he saw her off on her last journey. In the same year, he created the cycle “In Memory of the Mother,” which consisted of four poems.

When do we need handkerchiefs, socks
Kind hands will lay them down,
And we, fearing delay,
We are eager for the appointed separation...

The end of the “fairy tale” about the national hero Vasya Terkin required the utmost effort from Tvardovsky. In total, she was given nine years of his life. It was in this work that Tvardovsky showed himself as a satirist, and it was clear to readers that he was the strongest satirist, merciless and completely original, able to even combine satire with lyricism. The publication and completion of “Terkin in the Next World” gave Tvardovsky new strength, evidence of which was all his subsequent lyrics, about which Konstantin Simonov, who commented together with Mikhail Ulyanov on a documentary about Tvardovsky, said: “It seemed that in his poem “Beyond the Distance is the Distance” “Tvardovsky has risen to such a pinnacle of poetry that it is no longer possible to rise higher. And he did it. And this last, highest peak of his is his lyrics of recent years.”

Tvardovsky’s last poem published during his lifetime was called “To the bitter grievances of his own person,” and was dated 1968. This does not mean that Tvardovsky did not write another line at all, although, according to A. Kondratovich, “he wrote more and more painfully and difficultly every year.” In one of the poems, written already in the sixtieth year of his life and published posthumously, Tvardovsky said goodbye to life:

What does it take to live wisely?
Understand your plan:
Find yourself within yourself
And don't lose sight of it.

And loving your work closely, -
He is the basis of all foundations, -
It's hard to ask yourself,
For others it is not so harsh.

At least now, at least in reserve,
But doing the work like this
To live and live,
But every hour
Get ready to take off.

And don’t worry - oh yes oh -
What, close or distant, -
He still takes you by surprise
If it catches you, the hour is lethal.

Amen! Calmly put a stamp,
Toy, contrary to hindsight:
If there is only sadness in her, -
So, that means everything is in order.

Tvardovsky was the editor-in-chief of the New World magazine for many years, courageously defending the right to publish every talented work that came to the editorial board. He twice became the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir, but it was during the second period of Tvardovsky’s editorship in Novy Mir, especially after the XXII Congress of the CPSU, that the magazine became a refuge for anti-Stalinist forces in literature, a symbol of the “sixties,” and an organ of legal opposition to Soviet power. In the 1960s, Tvardovsky, in the poems “By the Right of Memory” in 1987 and “Terkin in the Next World,” revised his attitude towards Stalin and Stalinism. In the early 1960s, Tvardovsky received permission from Khrushchev to publish the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Solzhenitsyn. But the new direction of the magazine (liberalism in art, ideology and economics, hiding behind words about socialism “with a human face”) aroused discontent not so much among the Khrushchev-Brezhnev party elite and officials in ideological departments, but rather among the so-called “neo-Stalinists-power holders” in Soviet literature. In the "New World" ideological liberalism was combined with aesthetic traditionalism. Tvardovsky had a cold attitude towards modernist prose and poetry, preferring literature developing in the classical forms of realism. Many of the largest writers of the 1960s were published in the magazine, many of them were revealed to the reader by the magazine - F. Abramov, V. Bykov, Ch. Aitmatov, S. Zalygin, G. Troepolsky, B. Mozhaev and A. Solzhenitsyn.

For several years, there was a sharp literary (and in fact ideological) polemic between the magazines “New World” and “October”, led by editor V. Kochetov. The “sovereign” patriots also expressed their persistent ideological rejection of the magazine. After Khrushchev's removal from senior positions, a campaign against the New World was carried out in the magazine Ogonyok and the newspaper Socialist Industry. Glavlit waged a fierce struggle with the magazine, systematically not allowing the most important materials to be published. Since the leadership of the Writers' Union did not dare to formally dismiss Tvardovsky, the last measure of pressure on the magazine was the removal of Tvardovsky's deputies and the appointment of people hostile to Tvardovsky to these positions. In February 1970, Tvardovsky was forced to resign as editor, and part of the magazine’s staff followed his example. The editorial office was essentially destroyed.

Soon after the defeat of the New World, Tvardovsky was diagnosed with lung cancer. During this period of his life, next to the poet were his closest people - his wife Maria Illarionovna and daughters Valentina and Olga. Alexander Tvardovsky lived with his wife Maria Illarionovna for more than 40 years. She became for him not only his wife, but also a true friend and ally who devoted her entire life to him. Maria Illarionovna reprinted his works many times, visited the editorial offices, and supported him in moments of despair and depression. In the letters published by Maria Illarionovna after the poet’s death, it is clear how often he resorts to her advice, how much he needs her support. “You are my only hope and support,” Alexander Trifonovich wrote to her from the front. There were few poems about love in Tvardovsky’s work. Maria Illarionovna Tvardovskaya wrote in her memoirs about her husband: “What seemed only personal to him, what constituted the deepest part of his soul, was not often brought out. This is the law of people's life. He kept it to the end." After the death of Tvardovsky, Maria Illarionovna, already an elderly woman, published several books of memoirs about Alexander Trifonovich, published his early works, participated in the creation of museums for the poet, publishing records, preserving the memory of him until her death. Maria Illarionovna died in 1991. One of the poet’s daughters, Valentina, was born in 1931, graduated from Moscow State University in 1954, and became a Doctor of Historical Sciences. Another daughter, Olga, was born in 1941, graduated from the V.I. Surikov Art Institute in 1963, and became a theater and film artist.

Alexander Tvardovsky died after a long illness on December 18, 1971 in the holiday village of Krasnaya Pakhra, Moscow Region and was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Many people who knew Alexander Tvardovsky closely noted his extraordinary thirst for justice. Sincerely believing in the communist idea, he often acted contrary to the established party line. He refused to sign a letter supporting the entry of troops into Czechoslovakia, and openly condemned it. He stood up for the disgraced scientist Zhores Medvedev, who was first fired for his book “Biological Science and the Cult of Personality”, and in 1970 was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Tvardovsky didn’t just intervene - he personally went to the hospital to rescue Medvedev. And to the warnings of people experienced in court intrigue: “Your 60th anniversary is coming up. They won’t give you a Hero of Socialist Labor!” - answered: “This is the first time I’ve heard that we give a Hero for cowardice.”

It was only thanks to Alexander Tvardovsky that Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published in the Novy Mir magazine. Alexander Dementyev tried to dissuade him: “If you and I publish this thing, we will lose the magazine.” To which Tvardovsky replied: “If I can’t print this, why do I need a magazine?”

Despite this, the relationship between both Solzhenitsyn and Tvardovsky was difficult. He did not fully know all the beliefs and views of the writer he was defending. Once, in a conversation with his literary “godson,” Tvardovsky exclaimed offendedly: “I’m sticking my neck out for you, and you!” And Solzhenitsyn himself admitted, talking about this outburst: “Yes, and one can understand him: after all, I did not open up to him, the entire network of my plans, calculations, moves was hidden from him and appeared unexpectedly.”
Nevertheless, when at the end of 1970 Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize, the terminally ill Tvardovsky was happy about this and said to his wife: “But they will remember us too, how we stood for him.”

Army General A. Gorbatov wrote in his memoirs about Tvardovsky that he considered him “... a real hero... As a communist, as a person, as a poet, he took everything upon himself and fearlessly answered for his honest party views.”

Many famous writers of that time noted the extraordinary sincerity of Tvardovsky’s works. Ivan Bunin in a letter to N. Teleshov wrote: “I have just read A. Tvardovsky (“Vasily Terkin”) and I cannot resist - I ask you, if you know and meet him, tell him on occasion that I (the reader, as you know, picky, demanding) is completely delighted with his talent - this is a truly rare book: what freedom, what wonderful prowess, what accuracy, precision in everything and what an extraordinary folk, soldier's language - not a hitch, not a single false one, a ready-made, that is, literary-vulgar word.” “Poems of unheard-of sincerity and frankness” - this is how Fyodor Abramov perceived the late lyrics of Alexander Tvardovsky. “It is impossible to understand and appreciate Tvardovsky’s poetry without feeling the extent to which all of it, to its very depths, is lyrical. And at the same time, she is widely, wide open to the world around her and to everything that this world is rich in - feelings, thoughts, nature, everyday life, politics,” wrote S.Ya. Marshak in his book “Education with Words.”

A documentary film “Ambush Regiment” was made about Alexander Tvardovsky.

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Text prepared by Tatyana Halina

Used materials:

A.T. Tvardovsky, “Autobiography”
Kondratovich A. I. “Alexander Tvardovsky. Poetry and personality"
A.T. Tvardovsky, “Encyclopedia: Working materials”
Akatkin V.M. "Alexander Tvardovsky. Verse and prose"
Akatkin V.M. “Early Tvardovsky. Problems of formation"
Materials from the site www.shalamov.ru

Name: Alexander Tvardovsky

Age: 61 years old

Place of Birth: Zagorye village, Smolensk region

A place of death: Podolsky district, Moscow region

Activity: writer, poet, journalist

Family status: was married to Maria Gorelova

Alexander Tvardovsky - biography

The Zagorye farm in the Smolensk province was just an inconspicuous piece of land for everyone, but Trifon Gordeevich Tvardovsky proudly called it “my estate.” Here his second son, Sashka, was born on June 21, 1910. He loved the boy, but did not allow tenderness. In this part there was a mother - Maria Mitrofanovna, a woman of the kindest soul.

Since childhood, Tvardovsky’s biography included a love of writing. Sashka grew up as an impressionable child, loved nature, living creatures, and wrote poetry from childhood. The family's house was small, but the farm was growing. In order not to disturb anyone, Sasha ran to the bathhouse, where he wrote down his poems. When he grew up, he began sending them to Smolensk newspapers. The talented boy was willingly published, but he himself could not fully believe in himself. It’s like when he sees his poem in the newspaper, he’ll be happy. And the next day he will receive a slap in the face from his father and the insulting: “Darmoed, poetic weaver!”

Tired of his father's scolding, at the age of 17 the young man left home. He arrived in Smolensk, where, as he hoped, he would finally be able to live like a human being. Besides - what luck! - he was noticed by Mikhail Isakovsky, editor of a local newspaper. Seeing talent in the young man, he sent Tvardovsky’s works to Moscow. There they were also greeted with a bang and the young man was invited to the capital.

But Moscow did not accept the poet and put him in his place. Unable to find shelter, he was forced to return to Smolensk.

Alexander Tvardovsky - kulak son...

Bitter news always comes at the wrong time. Only Tvardovsky met the woman he loved, only she gave him a daughter and they established family life, personal life, as he learns - his parents are in trouble.

When collective farms began to be created in 1931 and wealthy peasants were dispossessed, the head of the family, Trifon Gordeevich, could not even think that this would affect him too. What kind of a fist is he, because he worked all his life without straightening his back? But the authorities thought differently. All the property of the Tvardovsky family was taken away, and the father himself, his wife and the rest of the children were sent into exile to the Urals.

Alexander, having learned about this, rushed to the secretary of the regional committee. There was a pounding in my head: I need to save, I need to help! His ardor was cooled by the words: “You will have to choose: either the revolution, or father and mother. But you are a reasonable person, you can’t go wrong. ..”

Tvardovsky paced the room for a long time, thinking. The wife understood everything, but could not help: her husband’s experiences were too personal. A few days later he sent a letter to his parents with the words: “Take courage! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to write to you. Alexander".

Having distanced himself from his “unenviable” past and relatives, Tvardovsky was never able to get rid of the stigma of “son of the kulak.” Because of him, the poet was expelled from the Writers Association and a case was opened.

In 1936, Tvardovsky completed work on the poem “The Country of Ant,” glorifying collectivization. The work turned out to be powerful, and most importantly, Stalin liked it. The noose around Tvardovsky's neck loosened. They immediately forgot that he was a “kulak son,” and the poet was even able to bring his relatives back from exile. Finally his conscience was silent! After all, only now was he able to settle them in a Smolensk apartment without fear for his fate. He and his family moved to the capital - now they could afford it.

Life was getting better. His wife soon gave Tvardovsky a son. His father doted on him and spoiled him. And then... he buried him - the one-and-a-half-year-old baby caught pneumonia.

The loss in Tvardovsky’s biography was irreparable; Alexander Trifonovich could not find a place for himself. It seemed that he was a little distracted only on June 22, 1941, when he heard from his daughter Valya: “Dad, the war has begun!” The very next day he rushed to Kyiv, where he was sent as a war correspondent. Tvardovsky preferred to cover events not from the side, but by getting into the very thick of it, where the fire was blazing and shells were exploding. I kept waiting - when will he be wounded, and the physical pain will supplant the mental pain?..

Alexander Trifonovich returned from the war unharmed and not empty-handed. His friend and hero Vasily Terkin was invisibly present next to him. He and his comrades came up with this soldier back in 1939, when the Soviet-Finnish war was going on. It was necessary to cheer up our own people, so the correspondents began to write a humorous column in the magazine. During the Great Patriotic War, Terkin became a real talisman for soldiers. “Well, at least this way I can make my contribution to this war,” Alexander Trifonovich thought to himself.

But the war ended, and with it Terkin. But Tvardovsky did not want to part with him and decided to send him... to the next world.

Alexander Tvardovsky - my friend, Nikita Khrushchev

In the fall of 1961, the poet received a parcel from the Ryazan teacher Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Inside was a manuscript, on the first page the heading “One day of one prisoner.” It sounds controversial, but it’s worth reading... In the morning, Tvardovsky woke up a different person.

Alexander's comrades dissuaded him from publishing the story in the New World magazine, of which he was the editor. They recalled his recent dismissal due to an attempt to publish the political-satirical poem “Terkin in the Other World.” But Tvardovsky had already decided for himself: “Why do I need a magazine if I don’t publish this in it?”

At that moment, Alexander Trifonovich had someone to rely on. Nikita himself was his unspoken protector. Khrushchev. The Secretary General happily let both Solzhenitsyn and Tvardovsky and his new Terkin pass.

But Brezhnev, who came to power, categorically did not like the “upstart” Tvardovsky. The New World magazine, considered cutting-edge at the time, was a thorn in Leonid Ilyich’s side. The publication was persecuted mercilessly. The editorial staff also suffered - one fine day, four employees, close friends of Tvardovsky, were fired at once. The poet's opponents were put in their place. Alexander Trifonovich could not work with them and wrote a letter of resignation.

Many people who knew Alexander Tvardovsky closely noted in his biography an extraordinary thirst for justice. A sincere believer in the communist idea, he often opposed the party line. For example, he condemned the introduction of troops into Czechoslovakia and refused to sign a letter in support of these actions. A little later, he stood up for the disgraced scientist Zhores Medvedev, who was first fired and then sent to a psychiatric hospital. Tvardovsky personally went to save Medvedev. To all the warnings - “Your 60th anniversary is coming up. They won’t give you a Hero of Socialist Labor!” he answered: “This is the first time I’ve heard that we give a Hero for cowardice.”

Alexander Tvardovsky - long-awaited peace

The patient was brought to the Kuntsevo hospital on time. A little more and it would have been impossible to save him. The diagnosis is disappointing: stroke, partial paralysis. “I was probably worried,” the doctor thought. And so it was. No matter how much Alexander Trifonovich’s wife asked him not to worry, no matter how much she persuaded him to think about himself, it was all in vain. Later, doctors reported: the poet had advanced lung cancer, which had metastasized, and he did not have long to live. And so it happened. Alexander Tvardovsky died on December 18, 1971 in the holiday village of Krasnaya Pakhra, Moscow Region and was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Who hides the past jealously
He is unlikely to be in harmony with the future...
A. T. Tvardovsky, “By right of memory”

Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky was born on June 21, 1910 in the Zagorye farmstead, located near the village of Seltso (now Smolensk region). The surrounding area, in the words of the poet himself, “was located away from the roads and was quite wild.” Tvardovsky's father, Trifon Gordeevich, was a complex man with a strong and strong-willed character. The son of a retired landless soldier, he worked as a blacksmith from a young age and had his own distinctive style and cut of products. His main dream was to get out of the peasant class and provide a comfortable existence for his family. He had plenty of energy for this - in addition to his main work, Trifon Gordeevich rented forges and took out contracts to supply the army with hay. Shortly before Alexander was born, in 1909, his dream came true - he became a “land owner”, purchasing an unsightly plot of thirteen hectares. Tvardovsky himself recalled on this occasion: “From a very early age, he instilled in us, little children, respect for this podzolic, sour, unkind and stingy, but our land, our, as he jokingly called, ‘estate’...”

Alexander was born the second child in the family, the eldest son Kostya was born in 1908. Later, Trifon Gordeevich and Maria Mitrofanovna, the daughter of the impoverished nobleman Mitrofan Pleskachevsky, had three more sons and two daughters. In 1912, the parents of Tvardovsky Sr., Gordey Vasilyevich and his wife Zinaida Ilyinichna, moved to the farm. Despite their simple origins, both Trifon Gordeevich and his father Gordey Vasilyevich were literate people. Moreover, the father of the future poet knew Russian literature well, and, according to the memoirs of Alexander Tvardovsky, evenings on the farm were often devoted to reading books by Alexei Tolstoy, Pushkin, Nekrasov, Gogol, Lermontov... Trifon Gordeevich knew many poems by heart. It was he who in 1920 gave Sasha his first book, a volume of Nekrasov, which he exchanged at the market for potatoes. Tvardovsky kept this treasured book throughout his life.

Trifon Gordeevich passionately wanted to give his children a decent education and in 1918 he enrolled his eldest sons Alexander and Konstantin in the Smolensk gymnasium, which was soon transformed into the first Soviet school. However, the brothers studied there for only one year - during the Civil War, the school building was requisitioned for the needs of the army. Until 1924, Alexander Tvardovsky exchanged one rural school for another, and after finishing the sixth grade he returned to the farm - he returned, by the way, as a Komsomol member. By that time, he had already been writing poetry for four years - and the further he went, the more and more they “took” the teenager. Tvardovsky Sr. did not believe in his son’s literary future, laughed at his hobby and frightened him with poverty and hunger. However, it is known that he loved to boast about Alexander’s printed speeches after his son took the place of village correspondent for Smolensk newspapers. This happened in 1925 - at the same time Tvardovsky’s first poem “Izba” was published. In 1926, at the provincial congress of village correspondents, the young poet became friends with Mikhail Isakovsky, who at first became his “guide” to the world of literature. And in 1927, Alexander Trifonovich went to Moscow, so to speak, “for reconnaissance.” The capital stunned him, he wrote in his diary: “I walked along the sidewalks where Utkin and Zharov (popular poets of that time), great scientists and leaders walk...”

From now on, his native Zagorje seemed to the young man a dull backwater. He suffered, being cut off from the “big life,” passionately wanting to communicate with young writers like himself. And at the beginning of 1928, Alexander Trifonovich decided on a desperate act - he moved to live in Smolensk. The first months were very, very difficult for eighteen-year-old Tvardovsky in the big city. In his autobiography, the poet notes: “He lived in beds, corners, wandered around editorial offices.” Coming from a village, for a very long time he could not feel like a city resident. Here is another late confession of the poet: “In Moscow, in Smolensk, there was a painful feeling that you were not at home, that you didn’t know something and that at any moment you could turn out to be funny, get lost in an unfriendly and indifferent world...”. Despite this, Tvardovsky actively joined the literary life of the city - he became a member of the Smolensk branch of RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers), traveled alone and as part of brigades to collective farms and wrote a lot. His closest friend in those days was the critic and later geologist Adrian Makedonov, who was a year older than Tvardovsky.

In 1931, the poet had his own family - he married Maria Gorelova, a student at the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute. In the same year their daughter Valya was born. And the next year, Alexander Trifonovich himself entered the pedagogical institute. He studied there for a little over two years. The family needed to be fed, and as a student it was difficult to do this. However, his position in the city of Smolensk strengthened - in 1934 Tvardovsky was present as a delegate with an advisory voice at the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers.

After his departure from the family nest, the poet visited Zagorye extremely rarely - approximately once a year. And after March 1931, he actually had no one to visit on the farm. Back in 1930, Trifon Gordeevich was subject to a high tax. In order to save the situation, Tvardovsky Sr. joined an agricultural artel, but soon, unable to control himself, he took his horse from the artel. Fleeing from prison, Tvardovsky Sr. fled to Donbass. In the spring of 1931, his family, who remained on the farm, was “dispossessed” and sent to the Northern Urals. After some time, the head of the family came to them, and in 1933 he led everyone along forest paths to today’s Kirov region - to the village of Russian Turek. Here he settled under the name Demyan Tarasov; the rest of the family also bore this surname. This “detective” ended in 1936, after Alexander Trifonovich published the poem “The Country of Ant,” which served as his “pass” to the forefront of Soviet writers and to the world of great literature.

Tvardovsky began working on this work in 1934, being impressed by one of the performances of Alexander Fadeev. By the autumn of 1935 the poem was completed. In December, it was discussed in the capital's House of Writers, and it turned out triumphant for Tvardovsky. The only fly in the ointment was Maxim Gorky’s negative review, but Alexander Trifonovich did not lose heart, writing in his diary: “Grandfather! You have only sharpened my pen. I will prove that you made a mistake.” In 1936, “The Country of Ant” was published in the literary magazine “Krasnaya Nov”. She was openly admired by Mikhail Svetlov, Korney Chukovsky, Boris Pasternak and other recognized writers and poets. However, the most important connoisseur of the poem was in the Kremlin. He was Joseph Stalin.

After the resounding success of “The Country of Ant,” Tvardovsky came to the village of Russky Turek and took his relatives to Smolensk. He placed them in his own room. Moreover, he no longer needed her - the poet decided to move to Moscow. Soon after moving, he entered the third year of the famous IFLI (Moscow Institute of History, Literature and Philosophy), through which many famous writers passed in the late thirties. The level of teaching in the educational institution was, by the standards of that time, unusually high - the greatest scientists, the entire flower of the humanities of those years, worked at IFLI. The students were also equal to the teachers - it is worth mentioning at least the poets who later became famous: Semyon Gudzenko, Yuri Levitansky, Sergei Narovchatov, David Samoilov. Unfortunately, many graduates of the institute died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. Tvardovsky, who came to IFLI, did not get lost against the general, brilliant background. On the contrary, according to Narovchatov’s notes, “in the Iflian horizon he stood out for his large figure, character, and personality.” Writer Konstantin Simonov - at that time a graduate student at IFLI - confirms these words, recalling that “IFLI was proud of Tvardovsky.” This was due to the fact that while the poet “humbly” studied, critics praised his “Country of Ant” in every possible way. No one else dared to call Tvardovsky a “kulak echoer,” which had often happened before. Alexander Trifonovich graduated from IFLI with honors in 1939.

For the sake of fairness, it is worth noting that during these prosperous years, misfortunes did not bypass the writer. In the fall of 1938, he buried his one and a half year old son who died of diphtheria. And in 1937, his best friend Adrian Makedonov was arrested and sentenced to eight years of hard labor. At the beginning of 1939, a decree was issued on awarding a number of Soviet writers, and Tvardovsky among them. In February he was awarded the Order of Lenin. By the way, among those awarded, Alexander Trifonovich was perhaps the youngest. And already in September of the same year, the poet was drafted into the army. He was sent to the west, where, working in the editorial office of the newspaper “Chasovaya Rodina,” he took part in the annexation of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine to the USSR. Tvardovsky encountered real war at the end of 1939, when he was sent to the Soviet-Finnish front. The death of the soldiers horrified him. After the first battle, which Alexander Trifonovich observed from the regimental command post, the poet wrote: “I returned in a serious state of bewilderment and depression... It was very difficult to internally cope with this myself...”. In 1943, when the Great Patriotic War was already thundering around, in the work “Two Lines” Tvardovsky remembered a fighter boy who died on the Karelian Isthmus: “As if I were dead, alone, / As if I was lying there. / Frozen, small, killed / In that unfamous war, / Forgotten, small, I lie.” By the way, it was during the Soviet-Finnish war that a character under the name Vasya Terkin first appeared in a number of feuilletons, the introduction to which was invented by Tvardovsky. Tvardovsky himself later said: “Terkin was conceived and invented not by me alone, but by many people - both writers and my correspondents. They actively participated in its creation.”

In March 1940, the war with the Finns ended. The writer Alexander Bek, who often communicated with Alexander Trifonovich at that time, said that the poet was a person “alienated from everyone by some kind of seriousness, as if he was on a different level.” In April of the same year, “for valor and courage,” Tvardovsky was awarded the Order of the Red Star. In the spring of 1941, another high award followed - for the poem “The Country of Ant” Alexander Trifonovich was awarded the Stalin Prize.

From the first days of the Great Patriotic War, Tvardovsky was at the front. At the end of June 1941 he arrived in Kyiv to work in the editorial office of the newspaper “Red Army”. And at the end of September, the poet, in his own words, “barely got out of the encirclement.” Further milestones of the bitter path: Mirgorod, then Kharkov, Valuiki and Voronezh. At the same time, there was an addition to his family - Maria Illarionovna gave birth to a daughter, Olya, and soon the entire family of the writer was evacuated to the city of Chistopol. Tvardovsky often wrote to his wife, informing her about the daily routine of the editorial office: “I work quite a lot. Slogans, poems, humor, essays... If you leave out the days when I travel, then there is material for every day.” However, over time, editorial turnover began to worry the poet; he was attracted to the “great style” and serious literature. Already in the spring of 1942, Tvardovsky made the decision: “I won’t write any more bad poetry... The war is going on in earnest, and poetry must be taken seriously...”

At the beginning of the summer of 1942, Alexander Trifonovich received a new appointment - to the newspaper “Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda” on the Western Front. The editorial office was located a hundred kilometers from Moscow, in present-day Obninsk. From here his journey to the west began. And it was here that Tvardovsky had a great idea - to return to the poem “Vasily Terkin”, conceived at the end of the Soviet-Finnish war. Of course, now the topic was the Patriotic War. The image of the main character also underwent significant changes - a clearly folklore character who took the enemy to the bayonet, “like sheaves on a pitchfork,” turned into an ordinary guy. The genre designation “poem” was also very conventional. The poet himself said that his story about a Russian soldier does not fit any genre definition, and therefore he decided to simply call it “A Book about a Soldier.” At the same time, it is noted that in structural terms “Terkin” goes back to the works of Pushkin, idolized by Tvardovsky, namely “Eugene Onegin”, representing a set of private episodes that, like a mosaic, form an epic panorama of the great war. The poem is written in the rhythm of a ditty, and in this meaning it seems to naturally grow out of the thickness of the folk language, turning from a “work of art” composed by a specific author into a “self-revelation of life.” This is exactly how this work was perceived by the mass of soldiers, where the very first published chapters of “Vasily Terkin” (in August 1942) gained enormous popularity. After its publication and reading on the radio, Tvardovsky received countless letters from front-line soldiers who recognized themselves in the hero. In addition, the messages contained requests, even demands that the poem be continued. Alexander Trifonovich fulfilled these requests. Once again Tvardovsky considered his work completed in 1943, but again numerous demands for a continuation of “The Book about a Fighter” forced him to change his mind. As a result, the work consisted of thirty chapters, and the hero in it reached Germany. He composed the last line of “Vasily Terkin” on the victorious night of May 10, 1945. However, even after the war, the flow of letters did not dry up for a long time.

The story of the portrait of Vasily Terkin, reproduced in millions of copies of the poem and made by the artist Orest Vereisky, who worked during the war years together with Tvardovsky in the newspaper “Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda”, is interesting. Not everyone knows that this portrait was made from life, and, therefore, Vasily Terkin had a real prototype. Here is what Vereisky himself said about this: “I wanted to open the book with the poem with a frontispiece with a portrait of Terkin. And that was the hardest part. What is Terkin like? Most of the soldiers whose portraits I sketched from life seemed to me somewhat similar to Vasily - some with squinting eyes, some with a smile, some with a face dotted with freckles. However, not one of them was Terkin... Each time, of course, I shared the results of the search with Tvardovsky. And every time I heard the answer: “No, not him.” I myself understood - not him. And then one day a young poet came to our editorial office, who had come from an army newspaper... His name was Vasily Glotov, and we all immediately liked him. He had a cheerful disposition, a kind smile... A couple of days later, a joyful feeling suddenly pierced me - I recognized Vasily Terkin in Glotov. With my discovery, I ran to Alexander Trifonovich. At first he raised his eyebrows in surprise... The idea of ​​“trying out” for the image of Vasily Terkin seemed funny to Glotov. When I drew him, he broke into a smile and squinted slyly, which made him even more like the hero of the poem, as I imagined him to be. Having drawn him in front and in profile with his head down, I showed the work to Alexander Trifonovich. Tvardovsky said: “Yes.” That was all, from then on he never made any attempts to portray Vasily Terkin as someone else.”

Before the victorious night, Alexander Trifonovich had to endure all the difficulties of military roads. He literally lived on wheels, taking short sabbaticals to work in Moscow and also to visit his family in the city of Chistopol. In the summer of 1943, Tvardovsky, together with other soldiers, liberated the Smolensk region. For two years he did not receive any news from his relatives and was terribly worried about them. However, nothing bad, thank God, happened - at the end of September the poet met with them near Smolensk. He then visited his native village of Zagorye, which had literally turned into ashes. Then there were Belarus and Lithuania, Estonia and East Prussia. Tvardovsky met his victory in Tapiau. Orest Vereisky recalled this evening: “Fireworks of different types thundered. Everyone was shooting. Alexander Trifonovich also shot. He fired a revolver into the sky, bright from the colored lines, standing on the porch of a Prussian house - our last military refuge...”

After the end of the war, bonuses rained down on Tvardovsky. In 1946, he was awarded the Stalin Prize for the poem “Vasily Terkin”. In 1947 - another for the work “House by the Road”, on which Alexander Trifonovich worked simultaneously with “Terkin” since 1942. However, this poem, according to the author’s description, “is dedicated to the life of a Russian woman who survived the occupation, German slavery and liberation by Red Army soldiers ”, was overshadowed by the resounding success of “The Book about a Fighter”, although in terms of amazing authenticity and artistic merit it was hardly inferior to “Terkin”. Actually, these two poems complemented each other perfectly - one showed the war, and the second - its “wrong side”.

Tvardovsky lived a very active life in the second half of the forties. He performed many duties in the Writers' Union - he was its secretary, headed the poetry section, and was a member of various commissions. During these years, the poet visited Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, Albania, East Germany, Norway, traveled to Belarus and Ukraine, visited the Far East for the first time, and visited his native Smolensk region. These trips could not be called “tourism” - he worked everywhere, spoke, talked with writers, and published. The latter is surprising - it’s hard to imagine when Tvardovsky had time to write. In 1947, the elderly writer Nikolai Teleshov conveyed greetings to the poet, as Tvardovsky himself used to say, “from the other world.” This was a review of Bunin's Vasily Terkin. Ivan Alekseevich, who spoke very critically of Soviet literature, agreed to look at the poem, handed to him by Leonid Zurov almost by force. After this, Bunin could not calm down for several days, and soon he wrote to a friend of his youth, Teleshov: “I read Tvardovsky’s book - if you know and meet him, please tell me on occasion that I (as you know, a demanding and picky reader) admired his talent . This is truly a rare book - what freedom, what accuracy, what wonderful prowess, accuracy in everything and an unusually soldierly, popular language - not a single false, literary vulgar word!..”

However, not everything went smoothly in Tvardovsky’s life; there were both disappointments and tragedies. In August 1949, Trifon Gordeevich died - the poet was very worried about the death of his father. Alexander Trifonovich did not avoid the elaborations for which the second half of the forties turned out to be generous. At the end of 1947 - beginning of 1948, his book “Motherland and Foreign Land” was subjected to devastating criticism. The author was accused of “narrowness and pettiness of views on reality,” “Russian national narrow-mindedness,” and lack of a “state view.” Publication of the work was prohibited, but Tvardovsky did not lose heart. By that time, he had a new, significant business that completely captured him.

In February 1950, changes took place among the heads of the largest literary organs. In particular, the editor-in-chief of the New World magazine, Konstantin Simonov, moved to Literaturnaya Gazeta, and Tvardovsky was offered to fill the vacated position. Alexander Trifonovich agreed because he had long dreamed of such “public” work, expressed not in the number of speeches and meetings given, but in the real “product”. In fact, it was the fulfillment of his dream. During four years of editing, Tvardovsky, who worked under truly nervous conditions, managed to accomplish a lot. He managed to organize a magazine with a “uncommon expression” and create a close-knit team of like-minded people. His deputies were his longtime comrade Anatoly Tarasenkov and Sergei Smirnov, who “discovered” the defense of the Brest Fortress for the general reader. Alexander Trifonovich’s magazine did not immediately become famous for its publications; the editor-in-chief took a closer look at the situation, gained experience, and looked for people with similar attitudes. Tvardovsky himself wrote - in January 1954 he drew up a plan for the poem “Terkin in the Next World”, and three months later he finished it. However, the lines of fate turned out to be whimsical - in August 1954, Alexander Trifonovich was removed from the post of editor-in-chief with a scandal.

One of the reasons for his dismissal was precisely the work “Terkin in the Next World” prepared for publication, which was called in a memo by the Central Committee “a libel on Soviet reality.” In some ways, the officials were right; they correctly saw in the description of the “other world” a satirical depiction of the working methods of party bodies. Khrushchev, who replaced Stalin as party leader, described the poem as “politically harmful and ideologically vicious.” This became a death sentence. The New World was bombarded with articles criticizing the works that appeared on the pages of the magazine. An internal letter from the CPSU Central Committee summed up the result: “The editorial staff of the magazine “New World” has entrenched politically compromised writers... who had a harmful influence on Tvardovsky.” Alexander Trifonovich behaved courageously in this situation. Having never - until the very last days of his life - shown any doubts about the truth of Marxism-Leninism, he admitted his own mistakes, and, taking all the blame upon himself, said that he personally “oversaw” the articles that were criticized, and in some cases even published them contrary to opinion editorial board. Thus, Tvardovsky did not surrender his people.

In subsequent years, Alexander Trifonovich traveled a lot around the country and wrote a new poem, “Beyond the Distance, the Distance.” In July 1957, the head of the culture department of the CPSU Central Committee, Dmitry Polikarpov, arranged a meeting for Alexander Trifonovich with Khrushchev. The writer, in his own words, “suffered... the same thing that he usually said about literature, about its troubles and needs, about its bureaucratization.” Nikita Sergeevich wished to meet again, which happened a few days later. The two-part conversation lasted a total of four hours. The result was that in the spring of 1958 Tvardovsky was again offered to head the New World. After thinking about it, he agreed.

However, the poet agreed to take the place of editor-in-chief of the magazine under certain conditions. In his workbook it was written: “First - a new editorial board; second - six months, or even better, a year - not to carry out executions indoors...” By the latter, Tvardovsky, first of all, meant curators from the Central Committee and censorship. If the first condition was fulfilled with some difficulty, then the second was not. Censorship pressure began as soon as the new editorial board of Novy Mir prepared the first issues. All high-profile publications of the magazine were carried out with difficulty, often with censorship seizures, with reproaches for “political myopia,” and with discussion in the culture department. Despite the difficulties, Alexander Trifonovich diligently collected literary forces. During the years of his editorship, the term “Novomirsky author” began to be perceived as a kind of sign of quality, as a kind of honorary title. This concerned not only the prose that made Tvardovsky’s magazine famous - essays, literary and critical articles, and economic studies also caused considerable public resonance. Among the writers who became famous thanks to the “New World”, it is worth noting Yuri Bondarev, Konstantin Vorobyov, Vasil Bykov, Fyodor Abramov, Fazil Iskander, Boris Mozhaev, Vladimir Voinovich, Chingiz Aitmatov and Sergei Zalygin. In addition, on the pages of the magazine, the old poet talked about meetings with popular Western artists and writers, rediscovered forgotten names (Tsvetaeva, Balmont, Voloshin, Mandelstam), and popularized avant-garde art.

Separately, it is necessary to say about Tvardovsky and Solzhenitsyn. It is known that Alexander Trifonovich greatly respected Alexander Isaevich - both as a writer and as a person. Solzhenitsyn’s attitude towards the poet was more complicated. From the very first meeting at the end of 1961, they found themselves in an unequal position: Tvardovsky, who dreamed of a fair social construction of society on communist principles, saw his ally in Solzhenitsyn, not suspecting that the writer “discovered” by him had long ago set out on a “crusade” "against communism. While collaborating with the New World magazine, Solzhenitsyn “tactically” used the editor-in-chief, which he did not even know about.

The history of the relationship between Alexander Tvardovsky and Nikita Khrushchev is also interesting. The all-powerful First Secretary always treated the poet with great sympathy. Thanks to this, “problematic” essays were often saved. When Tvardovsky realized that he would not be able to break through the wall of party-censorship unanimity on his own, he turned directly to Khrushchev. And he, after listening to Tvardovsky’s arguments, almost always helped. Moreover, he “exalted” the poet in every possible way - at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, which adopted a program for the rapid construction of communism in the country, Tvardovsky was elected as a candidate member of the Central Committee of the party. However, one should not assume that Alexander Trifonovich under Khrushchev became an “untouchable” person - on the contrary, the editor-in-chief was often subjected to devastating criticism, but in hopeless situations he had the opportunity to appeal to the very top, over the heads of those who “held and did not let go.” This, for example, happened in the summer of 1963, when the leadership of the Writers' Union and foreign guests who had gathered for a session of the European Writers' Community, held in Leningrad, flew at the invitation of the Soviet leader, who was on vacation, to his Pitsunda dacha. Tvardovsky took with him the previously banned “Terkin in the Next World.” Nikita Sergeevich asked him to read the poem and reacted very lively, “either laughing loudly or frowning.” Four days later, Izvestia published this essay, which had been hidden for a whole decade.

It should be noted that Tvardovsky was always considered a “travelling” - such a privilege was given to few in the USSR. Moreover, he was such an active traveler that he sometimes refused to travel abroad. An interesting story happened in 1960, when Alexander Trifonovich did not want to go to the United States, citing the fact that he needed to finish work on the poem “Beyond the Distance - Distance.” USSR Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva understood him and allowed him to stay at home with the words: “Your work, of course, should come first.”

In the fall of 1964, Nikita Sergeevich was sent into retirement. From that time on, “organizational” and ideological pressure on Tvardovsky’s journal began to steadily increase. Issues of Novy Mir began to be delayed by censorship and published late in a reduced volume. “Things are bad, the magazine seems to be under siege,” wrote Tvardovsky. In the early autumn of 1965, he visited the city of Novosibirsk - people flocked to his performances, and the high authorities shied away from the poet as if he were plagued. When Alexander Trifonovich returned to the capital, the Party Central Committee already had a note in which Tvardovsky’s “anti-Soviet” conversations were detailed. In February 1966, the premiere of a “tortured” performance based on the poem “Terkin in the Next World” took place, staged at the Satire Theater by Valentin Pluchek. Vasily Tyorkin was played by the famous Soviet actor Anatoly Papanov. Alexander Trifonovich liked Pluchek’s work. The shows continued to be sold out, but already in June - after the twenty-first performance - the performance was banned. And at the XXIII Party Congress, held in the spring of 1966, Tvardovsky (a candidate member of the Central Committee) was not even elected as a delegate. At the end of the summer of 1969, a new development campaign broke out regarding the New World magazine. As a result, in February 1970, the secretariat of the Writers' Union decided to dismiss half of the members of the editorial board. Alexander Trifonovich tried to appeal to Brezhnev, but he did not want to meet with him. And then the editor-in-chief voluntarily resigned.

The poet said goodbye to life a long time ago - this can be clearly seen from his poems. Back in 1967, he wrote amazing lines: “At the bottom of my life, at the very bottom / I want to sit in the sun, / On the warm foam... / I can overhear my thoughts without interference, / I’ll draw a line with an old man’s stick: / No, that’s all- no, nothing, just for the occasion / I visited here and checked the box.” In September 1970, a few months after the defeat of the New World, Alexander Trifonovich was struck down by a stroke. He was hospitalized, but at the hospital he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Tvardovsky lived the last year of his life semi-paralyzed in the holiday village of Krasnaya Pakhra (Moscow region). On December 18, 1971, the poet passed away; he was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

The memory of Alexander Tvardovsky lives on to this day. Although rarely, his books are republished. In Moscow there is a school named after him and a cultural center, and in Smolensk the regional library bears the name of the poet. The monument to Tvardovsky and Vasily Terkin has stood since May 1995 in the center of Smolensk; in addition, the monument to the famous writer was unveiled in June 2013 in the capital of Russia on Strastnoy Boulevard not far from the house in which the editorial office of Novy Mir was located in the late sixties. In Zagorye, the poet’s homeland, the Tvardovsky estate was restored literally out of the blue. The poet’s brothers, Konstantin and Ivan, provided enormous assistance in recreating the family farm. Ivan Trifonovich Tvardovsky, an experienced cabinetmaker, made most of the furnishings with his own hands. Now there is a museum in this place.

Based on materials from the book “Alexander Tvardovsky” by A. M. Turkov and the weekly publication “Our History. 100 great names."