Tvardovsky education. Alexander Tvardovsky: biography and creativity (detailed review)

Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky (1910-1971) - Soviet writer and poet, public figure.
Born in the Smolensk province, on the Zagorye farm in the family of the village blacksmith Trifon Gordeevich Tvardovsky. Tvardovsky’s mother, Maria Mitrofanovna, came from the same palace. Trifon Gordeevich was a well-read man, and in the evenings in their house they often read aloud Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Nekrasov, A.K. Tolstoy, Nikitin, Ershov. Alexander began to compose poems early, while still illiterate, and not being able to write them down. The first poem was an angry denunciation of the boys who destroyed birds' nests.
While studying at school, Tvardovsky at the age of 14 became a village correspondent for Smolensk newspapers, and in 1925 his poems were published there.
In 1929, Tvardovsky left for Moscow in search of permanent literary work; in 1930 he returned to Smolensk, where he entered the Pedagogical Institute and lived until 1936. This period coincided with difficult trials for his family: his parents and brothers were dispossessed and exiled. Nevertheless, it was precisely during these years that a series of essays by Tvardovsky “Across the Collective Farm Smolensk Region” and his first prose work “The Chairman’s Diary” (1932) were published.
A serious stage in Tvardovsky’s poetic work was the poem “The Country of Ant” (1934-36), dedicated to collectivization. Nikita Morgunk's search for the fabulous Country of Ant leads him to certain conclusions about the good or evil of the “great turning point”; the open ending of the poem is based on the contradictory fate of the poet himself and his family.
In 1936, Tvardovsky moved to Moscow, where he entered the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature to study. During these years, he translated a lot of classics of the peoples of the USSR. While still a student, he was awarded the Order of Lenin for his services in the field of literature. All-Union recognition and literary fame allow the poet to achieve the return of his relatives from exile.
Tvardovsky's military career began in 1939. As a military officer, he took part in the campaign in Western Belarus, and later in the Finnish campaign of 1939-40.
Alexander Tvardovsky’s true fame comes from the works created during the Great Patriotic War, especially the poem “Vasily Terkin”, the hero of which gains truly popular love. The horrors of war, its cruelty and senselessness are described in the poem “House by the Road”, in the poems “Two Lines”, “I Was Killed Near Rzhev”...
In 1947, a book of essays and stories was published under the general title “Motherland and Foreign Land.” In the same year he was elected deputy of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR for the Vyaznikovsky district of the Vladimir region; in 1951 - according to Nizhnedevitsky Voronezh region.
Since 1950, Tvardovsky has been editor of the magazine " New world"And holds this post (with a short break) almost until his death.
In the 1960s, Tvardovsky, in the poems “By the Right of Memory” (published in 1987) and “Terkin in the Next World,” reconsidered 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 in the magazine.
The new direction of the magazine caused discontent among the so-called “neo-Stalinists” in Soviet literature. For several years there was a literary controversy between the magazines “New World” and “October” ( editor-in-chief V. A. Kochetov).
After the removal of Khrushchev, a campaign was carried out in the press against the “New World”. 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 the magazine staff left with him.
Soon after the defeat of his magazine (December 18, 1971), Tvardovsky fell ill and died. Buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Tvardovsky Alexander Trifonovich

Poems by A. T. Tvardovsky

1910 - 1971 Russian poet, editor-in-chief of the magazine "New World" (1950 - 54, 1958 - 70). The poem "Vasily Terkin" (1941 - 45) is a vivid embodiment of the Russian character and national feelings of the era of the Great Patriotic War. In the poem "Beyond the Distance - Distance" (1953 - 60, Lenin Prize, 1961) and the lyrics (book "From the lyrics of these years. 1959 - 67)", 1967) - thoughts about the movement of time, the duty of the artist, about life and death . The poem "Terkin in the Other World" (1963) is a satirical image of the bureaucratic death of existence. In the final confessional poem “By the Right of Memory” (published in 1987) there is the pathos of the uncompromising truth about the time of Stalinism, about the tragic inconsistency spiritual world man of this time. Poems "The Country of Ant" (1936), "House by the Road" (1946); prose, critical articles. Tvardovsky’s lyrical epic enriched and updated the traditions of Russian classical poetry. State awards USSR (1941, 1946, 1947, 1971).

Biography

Born on June 8 (21 n.s.) in the village of Zagorye, Smolensk province, in the family of a blacksmith, a literate and even well-read man, in whose house books were not uncommon. The first acquaintance with Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Nekrasov took place at home, when these books were read aloud on winter evenings. He started writing poetry very early. He studied at a rural school. At the age of fourteen, the future poet began sending small notes to Smolensk newspapers, some of which were published. Then he dared to send poetry. Isakovsky, who worked in the editorial office of the Rabochiy Put newspaper, accepted the young poet, helped him not only get published, but also develop as a poet, and influenced him with his poetry.

After graduating from a rural school, the young poet came to Smolensk, but could not get a job not only to study, but also to work, because he did not have any specialty. I had to exist “on a pittance of literary earnings and knock on the doors of editorial offices.” When Svetlov published Tvardovsky’s poems in the Moscow magazine “October,” he came to Moscow, but “it turned out about the same as with Smolensk.”

In the winter of 1930 he returned to Smolensk again, where he spent six years. “It is to these years that I owe my poetic birth,” Tvardovsky later said. At this time, he entered the Pedagogical Institute, but left the third year and completed his studies at the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature (MIFLI), where he entered in the fall of 1936.

Tvardovsky's works were published in 1931 - 1933, but he himself believed that it was only with the poem about collectivization "The Country of Ant" (1936) that he began as a writer. The poem was a success among readers and critics. The publication of this book changed the poet’s life: he moved to Moscow, graduated from MIFLI in 1939, and published a book of poems, “Rural Chronicle.”

In 1939, the poet was drafted into the Red Army and participated in the liberation of Western Belarus. With the beginning of the war with Finland, already in officer rank, was a special correspondent for a military newspaper.

During the Great Patriotic War, the poem "Vasily Terkin" (1941 - 45) was created - a vivid embodiment of the Russian character and national patriotic feeling. According to Tvardovsky, “Terkin was... my lyrics, my journalism, a song and a teaching, an anecdote and a saying, a heart-to-heart conversation and a remark to the occasion.”

Almost simultaneously with “Terkin” and the poems of “Front-line Chronicle”, the poet began the poem “House by the Road” (1946), completed after the war.

In 1950 - 60, the poem "Beyond the Distance - the Distance" was written, and in 1967 - 1969 - the poem "By the Right of Memory", which tells the truth about the fate of the poet's father, who became a victim of collectivization, banned by censorship, published only in 1987.

Along with poetry, Tvardovsky always wrote prose. In 1947, a book about the past war was published under the general title “Motherland and Foreign Land.”

He also showed himself as a deep, insightful critic: the books “Articles and Notes on Literature” (1961), “The Poetry of Mikhail Isakovsky” (1969), articles on the work of S. Marshak, I. Bunin (1965).

For many years, Tvardovsky was the editor-in-chief of the New World magazine, courageously defending the right to publish every talented work that came to the editorial office. His help and support affected creative biographies such writers as Abramov, Bykov, Aitmatov, Zalygin, Troepolsky, Molsaev, Solzhenitsyn and others.

Born on June 8 (21 n.s.) in the village of Zagorye, Smolensk province, in the family of a blacksmith, a literate and even well-read man, in whose house books were not uncommon. The first acquaintance with Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Nekrasov took place at home, when these books were read aloud on winter evenings. He started writing poetry very early. He studied at a rural school. At the age of fourteen, the future poet began sending small notes to Smolensk newspapers, some of which were published. Then he dared to send poems. M. Isakovsky, who worked in the editorial office of the newspaper "Rabochy Put", accepted the young poet, helped him not only get published, but also develop as a poet, and influenced him with his poetry.

After graduating from a rural school, he came to Smolensk, but could not get a job not only to study, but also to work, because he did not have any specialty. I had to exist “on a pittance of literary earnings and knock on the doors of editorial offices.” When M. Svetlov published Tvardovsky’s poems in the Moscow magazine “October,” he came to Moscow, but “it turned out about the same as with Smolensk.”

In the winter of 1930 he returned to Smolensk again, where he spent six years. “It is to these years that I owe my poetic birth,” Tvardovsky would later say. At this time, he entered the Pedagogical Institute, but left the third year and completed his studies at the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature (MIFLI), where he entered in the fall of 1936.

Tvardovsky's works were published in 1931-33, but he himself believed that it was only with the poem about collectivization "The Country of Ant" (1936) that he began as a writer. The poem was a success among readers and critics. The publication of this book changed the poet’s life: he moved to Moscow, graduated from MIFLI in 1939, and published a book of poems, “Rural Chronicle.”

In 1939 he was drafted into the Red Army and participated in the liberation of Western Belarus. With the outbreak of the war with Finland, already in the rank of officer, he was in the position of special correspondent for a military newspaper. During the Patriotic War, he created the poem "Vasily Terkin" (1941 - 45) - a vivid embodiment of the Russian character and national patriotic feeling. According to Tvardovsky, “Terkin” was ... my lyrics, my journalism, a song and a lesson, an anecdote and a saying, a heart-to-heart conversation and a remark to the occasion.”

Almost simultaneously with “Terkin” and the poems of “Front-line Chronicle”, he began the poem “House by the Road” (1946), completed after the war.

In 1950 - 60 the poem “Beyond the Distance is Distance” was written.

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”.

For many years, Tvardovsky was the editor-in-chief of the New World magazine, courageously defending the right to publish every talented work that came to the editorial office. His help and support were reflected in the creative biographies of such writers as F. Abramov, V. Bykov, Ch. Aitmatov, S. Zalygin, G. Troepolsky, B. Mozhaev, A. Solzhenitsyn and others.

A short message about the life and work of Alexander Tvardovsky for children 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 classes

The Zagorye farmstead, Smolensk province, is considered the birthplace of A. T. Tvardovsky. In short, Tvardovsky was the son of a blacksmith, who, in turn, was extremely well-read and quite literate. Even as a child, little Sasha was familiar with such great literary figures as Gogol, Pushkin, Lermontov - all these books were in his father’s library.

However, soon, Trifon Tvardovsky was dispossessed and exiled to the north.

Already at the age of 14, Tvardovsky began sending his notes to many Smolensk magazines.

The Soviet-Russian poet Isakovsky, at that time editor of the magazine “Working Way,” supported the young talent and helped Alexander Tvardovsky publish his notes.

After graduating from school, a difficult period began for the writer. It turned out that it is not so easy to get a job and find income without a decent education. Tvardovsky wandered around the editorial offices for a long time with his articles, but almost everywhere he was refused publication. The same thing happened in Moscow.

Tvardovsky, short biography upon returning to Smolensk.

In 1930, A. T. Tvardovsky returned to his native land and entered the pedagogical specialty at the institute, however, he did not complete his studies, he quit studying at this institute from the 3rd year and received a diploma, but still received it in Moscow.

1931 - publication of Tvardovsky’s earliest poem, “The Path to Socialism.” However, Tvardovsky became famous only after his poem “The Country of Ant” was published, in which the main the hero Morgunok is looking for a country for eternal happiness.

For this unusual work, A. Tvardovsky was awarded the State Prize.

After the publication of the poem, several collections of Tvardovsky were published -

"Road",

"Rural Chronicle"

"Zagorye"

In 1941, Tvardovsky began large-scale work on his greatest poem, “Vasily Terkin,” which has not yet lost its popularity. The poem was published in chapters. The first chapters were published in the magazine “Krasnoarmeyskaya Zvezda” (1942). The last version of the poem that Tvardovsky finished writing in 1945, and Vasily Terkin truly became a folk hero. The book became popular in famous literary circles, Tvardovsky was awarded the State Prize.

In addition to “Vasily Terkin”, the poem “House by the Road” was also written, completed at the end of the war.
In parallel with his poetic activity, A. Tvardovsky wrote prose - “Motherland and Foreign Land,” a book about the war.

The magazine “New World”, of which he was the editor, can briefly speak about Tvardovsky.
On December 18, 1971, A. Tvardovsky passed away; he died as a result of a serious illness.

Autobiography

I was born in the Smolensk region, in 1910, on the “stolpovo wasteland farm,” as a piece of land was called in the papers, acquired by my father, Trifon Gordeevich Tvardovsky, through the Land Peasant Bank with payment in installments. This land - a little over ten acres - all in small swamps - "frills", as we called them - and all overgrown with willow, spruce, and birch trees, was unenviable in every sense. But for the father who was only son a landless soldier and 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-handedly.

In the life of our family there were occasional glimmers of prosperity, but in general life was meager and difficult, and perhaps all the more difficult because our surname in everyday life was also accompanied by the playfully benevolent or ironic addition of “pan,” as if obliging our father to stretch with all his might to at least somehow justify it. By the way, he wore a hat, which in our area was strange and even a bit of a challenge, and he did not allow us children to wear bast shoes, although because of this it happened that we ran barefoot until late autumn. In general, many things in our life were “not like people’s.”

My father was a literate man and even well-read in the village style. The book was not a rarity in our household. We often devoted entire winter evenings to reading a book out loud. My first acquaintance with Pushkin's "Poltava" and "Dubrovsky", Gogol's "Taras Bulba", the most popular poems of Lermontov, Nekrasov, A.K. Tolstoy, Nikitin happened in exactly this way. My father knew many poems from memory: “Borodino”, “Prince Kurbsky”, almost all of Ershov’s “The Little Humpbacked Horse”. In addition, he loved and knew how to sing - from a young age he even excelled in the church choir. Having discovered that the words of the well-known “Korobushka” are only a small part of Nekrasov’s “Peddlers,” he sang the entire poem on occasion.

My mother, Maria Mitrofanovna, was always very impressionable and sensitive to many things that were outside the practical, everyday interests of the peasant household, the troubles and worries of the housewife in the big 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.

I started writing poetry before I mastered basic literacy. I remember well that I tried to write down my first poem, denouncing my peers, destroyers of birds’ nests, not yet knowing all the letters of the alphabet and, of course, having no idea about the rules of versification. There was no harmony, no series, nothing from the verse, but I clearly remember that there was a passionate, heart-pounding desire for all this - both the mode, and the series, and music, - the desire to give birth to them immediately, - a feeling that accompanies every plan to this day. That you can compose poetry yourself, I realized from the fact that our distant city relative on the maternal side, a lame high school student, who was visiting us during a hungry time in the summer, once read poetry at the request of his father own composition"Autumn":

The leaves have long fallen off,
And bare branches stick out...

These lines, I remember, shocked me then with their expressiveness: “bare branches” - it was so simple, ordinary words that are spoken by everyone, but these were poems that sounded like from a book.

Since then I have been writing. Of the first poems that inspired me with some confidence in my ability to do this, I remember the lines written, apparently, under the influence of Pushkin’s “Ghoul”:

Sometimes I'm late
I was walking home from Voznov.
I was a little cowardly
And the road was terrible:
On the lawn between the willows
Old Shupen was killed...

It was about a lonely grave halfway from the village of Kovalevo, where our relative Mikhailo Voznov lived. A certain Shupen, who was once killed in that place, was buried there. And although there were no willow trees nearby, none of the family reproached me for this inaccuracy: but it was smooth.

My parents reacted in different ways favorably and in different ways with alarm to the fact that I began to write poetry. This was flattering to my father, but he knew from books that writing did not promise great benefits, that some writers were not famous, penniless, living in attics and starving. My mother, seeing my commitment to such unusual activities, sensed in her some sad destiny of my fate and felt sorry for me.

When I was about thirteen, I once showed my poems to a young teacher. Not joking at all, he said that it’s not good to write like that now: everything is clear to me down to the word, but it’s necessary that it’s impossible to understand from any end what is written in the poems and about what, these are modern literary requirements. He showed me magazines with some samples of poetry of that time - early twenties. For some time I persistently strived for incomprehensibility in my poems. I did not succeed for a long time, and then I experienced, perhaps, the first bitter doubt in my abilities. I remember that I finally wrote something so incomprehensible at all that I couldn’t remember a single line from it and didn’t even know what it was about. I only remember the fact of writing something like this.

In the summer of 1924, I began sending short notes to the editors of Smolensk newspapers. He wrote about faulty bridges, about Komsomol subbotniks, about abuses of local authorities, etc. Occasionally, notes were published. This made me, an ordinary rural Komsomol member, a significant person in the eyes of my peers and the surrounding residents in general. People approached me with complaints, with proposals to write about this and that, to “promote” such and such in the newspaper... Then I dared to send poetry. My first published poem, “The New Hut,” appeared in the newspaper “Smolenskaya Derevnya.” It started like this:

Smells like fresh pine resin
The yellowish walls shine.
We'll live well in the spring
Here in a new, Soviet way.

After that, having collected about a dozen poems, I went to Smolensk to see M.V. Isakovsky, who worked there in the editorial office of the newspaper “Working Way”. He received me warmly, selected some of the poems, called an artist who sketched me, and soon a newspaper with poems and a portrait of “village poet A. Tvardovsky” arrived in the village.

I owe a lot in my development to M. Isakovsky, a fellow countryman and later a friend. He is the only Soviet poet whose direct influence on me I always recognize and believe that it was beneficial for me. In the poems of my fellow countryman, I saw that the subject of poetry could and should be the life of the Soviet village around me, our unassuming Smolensk nature, my own world of impressions, feelings, and spiritual attachments. The example of his poetry converted me into mine youthful experiences to a significant objective topic, to the desire to tell and speak in poetry about something interesting not only for me, but also for those simple, not literary-sophisticated people among whom I continued to live. To all this, of course, a disclaimer is necessary that I wrote very poorly then, in a helplessly studentish, imitative manner.

In the development and growth of my literary generation, it seems to me that the most difficult thing and for many disastrous was that we, being drawn into literary work, its specific interests, speaking in print and even becoming, very early, professional writers, remained people without any something serious general culture, without education. Superficial erudition and some knowledge of the “small secrets” of the craft fed dangerous illusions in us.

My education was essentially interrupted when I graduated from rural school. The years appointed for normal and consistent study are gone. As an eighteen-year-old boy, I came to Smolensk, where for a long time I could not get a job not only to study, but even to work - at that time it was not easy, especially since I did not have any specialty. Involuntarily, I had to accept a pittance of literary earnings as a source of livelihood and knock on the doors of editorial offices. Even then I understood the unenviability of such a situation, but there was nowhere to retreat - I could not return to the village, and my youth allowed me to see only good things ahead in the near future.

When my poems were published in the Moscow magazine "October" and someone somewhere noted them in criticism, I showed up in Moscow. But it turned out about the same as with Smolensk. I was occasionally published, someone approved of my experiments, supported my childish hopes, but I did not earn much more than in Smolensk, and I lived in corners, bunks, wandered around editorial offices, and I was increasingly noticeably carried somewhere away from the direct and the hard way real study, real life. In the winter of 1930, I returned to Smolensk and lived there for six or seven years until the poem “The Country of Ant” appeared in print.

This period is the most decisive and significant in my literary destiny. These were the years of the great reorganization of the village on the basis of collectivization, and this time was the same for me as for the older generation - October Revolution And civil war. Everything that happened then in the village concerned me most closely in the everyday, social, moral and ethical sense. It was to these years that I owe my poetic birth. In Smolensk I finally took up normal teaching. By using good people I entered Pedagogical Institute without admission tests, but with the obligation to pass everything in the first year necessary items for high school, in which I did not study. In the very first year I managed to catch up with my classmates, successfully complete the second year, I left the third due to current circumstances and completed my studies at the Moscow Historical and Philosophical Institute, where I entered in the fall of thirty-six.

These years of study and work in Smolensk are forever marked for me by high spiritual elation. No comparison could exaggerate the joy I experienced then for the first time of being introduced to the world of ideas and images that were revealed to me from the pages of books whose existence I had previously had no idea about. But, perhaps, all this would have been “passing through” the institute program for me, if at the same time I had not been captured by a completely different world - the real, current world of upheavals, struggle, changes that took place in those years in the village. Taking time away from books and studies, I went to collective farms as a correspondent for regional editorial offices, delved into with passion everything that constituted a new system of rural life that was emerging for the first time, wrote newspaper articles and kept all sorts of notes, noting for myself what was new with each trip. what was revealed to me in the complex and majestic process of rebuilding the village.

Around this time, I completely forgot how to write poetry, as I had written them before, and experienced an extreme aversion to “poetry” - composing lines of a certain size with an obligatory set of epithets, looking for rare rhymes and assonances, falling into a well-known tone, accepted in poetic usage of that time.

My poem “The Path to Socialism,” entitled after the name of the collective farm in question, was a conscious attempt to speak in verse in words common to colloquial, business, and by no means “poetic” use:

In one of the rooms of the former manor house
Oats are poured right up to the windows.
The windows were broken during the pogrom
And hung with shields made of straw,
To prevent oats from sprouting
From the sun and dampness indoors.
The grain for baking is stored in the common area.

The poem, published in 1931 by the publishing house "Young Guard" as a separate book, was received positively in the press, but I could not help but feel that such poems are riding with the reins lowered - a loss of the rhythmic discipline of verse, in other words, prose. But I could no longer return to poetry in the same, familiar spirit. I dreamed of new possibilities in the organization of verse from its elements included in living speech - from the turns and rhythms of proverbs, sayings, sayings. My second poem, “Introduction,” published in Smolensk in 1933, was a tribute to such a one-sided search for the “naturalness” of verse:

Fedot lived in the world,
There was a joke about him:
- Fedot, what is the grind?
- Just like last year.
-What is the harvest?
- Almost a whole cartload.
-What about lard?
- The cat stole...

According to the material, content, even those outlined in general outline In images, both of these poems preceded “The Country of Ant,” written in 1934–1936. But for this new thing of mine, through my own difficult experience, I had to lose faith in the possibility of verse, which loses its basic natural principles: the musical-song basis, the energy of expression, and a special emotional coloring.

A close acquaintance with examples of great domestic and world poetry and prose gave me such a “discovery” as the legitimacy of convention in depicting reality by means of art. The conventions of at least a fantastic plot, exaggeration and displacement of details of the living world into work of art no longer seemed to me like vestiges of art, contrary to the realism of the image. And what I carried in my soul, what I personally observed and gained from life, drove me to new job, to new searches. What I know about life, it seemed to me then, I know better, more thoroughly and more accurately than anyone living in the world, and I must tell about it. I still consider such a feeling not only legitimate, but also obligatory in the implementation of any serious plan.

With “The Country of Ant,” which met with an approving reception from readers and critics, I begin counting my writings that can characterize me as a writer. The publication of this book caused significant changes in my personal life. I moved to Moscow; in 1938 he joined the ranks of the CPSU (b); in 1939 he graduated from the Moscow Historical and Philosophical Institute (MIFLI) in the department of language and literature.

In the fall of 1939, I was drafted into the ranks of the Red Army and participated in the liberation campaign of our troops in Western Belarus. At the end of the campaign, I was transferred to the reserve, but soon again called up and, already in the rank of officer, but in the same position as a special correspondent for a military newspaper, participated in the war with Finland. Months of front-line work in conditions harsh winter 1940 to some extent preceded for me the actual military impressions of the Great Patriotic War. And my participation in the creation of the feuilleton character “Vasya Terkin” in the newspaper “On Guard of the Motherland” (LVO) is essentially the beginning of my main literary work during the Patriotic War of 1941–1945. But the fact is that the depth of the national historical disaster and national historical feat in Patriotic War from the first days they distinguished it from any other wars, and especially military campaigns.

“The Book about a Soldier,” whatever its actual literary significance, was true happiness for me during the war years: it gave me a feeling of the obvious usefulness of my work, a feeling of complete freedom to handle verse and words in a naturally occurring, relaxed form of presentation. "Terkin" was for me in the relationship between the poet and his reader - the warrior Soviet man– my lyrics, my journalism, song and teaching, anecdote and saying, heart-to-heart conversation and a remark to the occasion. However, all this, it seems to me, is more successfully expressed in the final chapter of the book itself.

Almost simultaneously with “Terkin,” I began writing during the war, but finished it after the war—the lyrical chronicle “House by the Road.” Its theme is war, but from a different angle than in Terkin. The epigraph of this book could be lines taken from it:

Come on people, never
Let's not forget about this...

Along with poetry, I always wrote prose - correspondence, essays, stories, and even before "Ant" I published something like a short story - "The Diary of a Collective Farm Chairman" - the result of my village notes "for myself." In 1947 he published a book of essays and stories under the general title “Motherland and Foreign Land”.

Recent years wrote little, published a dozen poems, several essays and articles. He made a number of trips as part of various cultural delegations abroad - he visited Bulgaria, Albania, Poland, Democratic Germany and Norway. I also traveled around my native country on business trips to the Urals, Transbaikalia and Far East. The impressions of these trips should form the material for my new works in poetry and prose.

In 1947, he was elected deputy of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR for the Vyaznikovsky district of the Vladimir region; in 1951 – in Nizhnedevitsky, Voronezh region.

Since the beginning of 1950, I have been working as editor-in-chief of the New World magazine.