Aleksandr Tvardovsky

Aleksandr Trifonovich Tvardovsky (Александр Трифонович Твардовский; 21 June 1910 – 18 December 1971) was a Soviet poet and writer and chief editor of Novy Mir literary magazine from 1950 to 1954 and 1958 to 1970.

During his editorship, the magazine published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

He is best known for his epic poem .

Tvardovsky was born into a Russian family in Zagorye, in the Smolensky Uyezd of the Smolensk Governorate of the Russian Empire.

At the time of his birth, the family lived on a farm that his father had purchased in installments from the Peasant Land Bank.

Tvardovsky's father, the son of a landless soldier, was a blacksmith by trade.

The farm was situated on poor land, but Tvardovsky's father loved it and was proud of what he had acquired through years of hard labor.

He transmitted this love and pride to Aleksandr.

Tvardovsky's father was a well-read and intelligent man who often read to Aleksandr and the rest of the family.

From an early age, Aleksandr became familiar with the works of Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolay Nekrasov and others.

He began composing poetry while still very young.

At age 13, he showed some of his poems to a young teacher who gave him misleading criticism, telling him that poetry should be written as unintelligibly as possible.

His first published poem was "A New Hut", which was printed in the newspaper, Smolensk Village.

After its publication, he collected his poems and showed them to the poet, Mikhail Isakovsky.

Aleksandr later acknowledged Isakovsky's influence, saying that he had been the only Soviet poet who had had a beneficial effect on him.

He left the village school because of poverty after attending only four classes and devoted himself entirely to literature.

At the age of 18 he went to Smolensk, but was unable to find literary work.

In the winter of 1930, after visiting Moscow, he returned to his native village.

During this period, he entered a Pedagogical Institute with the help of a party official, but didn't finish his studies there.

He completed his education later at the Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature in Moscow.

In 1930, after Aleksandr had moved to Smolensk, his father ran away from the family home fearing arrest.

This poem, along with his other early narrative poem, The Road to Socialism (1931), were products of Tvardovsky's effort to come to terms with collectivization.

He was awarded the Stalin Prize for The Land of Muravia.

Tvardovsky's father was accused of being a kulak during the period of collectivisation in the Soviet Union.

In 1931, apart from Aleksandr, the whole family was deported from Zagorye.

The family spent several years moving from place to place, splitting up and reuniting, looking for work and safety.

Some of them spent time in labour camps.

Orlando Figes describes Aleksandr's sense of uneasiness at the way his family had been treated while at the same time fearing for himself, his career and growing creative accomplishments if he was to actively help them.

In August 1931, when his father and brother arrived unexpectedly in Smolensk at his work, Aleksandr called the police and his father was arrested.

It is highly likely that if Tvardovsky had been seen to help his kulak father (a dangerous and criminal element in the eyes of many), he would have been arrested alongside his father.

His poem The Land of Muravia was written in 1934–36 and was favorably received by the critics.

In 1939, he participated in the march into Western Belorussia, and also in the Winter War, where he was part of a "writers' brigade" composing patriotic verse.

He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1940 and was a war correspondent during World War II.

Early in the war, he began independently working on his poem .

During the post-war years, he served as chief editor of Novy Mir, an influential literary magazine.

He became the chief editor of Novy Mir in 1949.

He was dismissed from his post in 1954 for publishing officially unacceptable articles by V. Pomerantsev, Fyodor Abramov and M. Shcheglov.

He was made chief editor again in July 1958.

Tvardovsky fought hard to maintain the traditional independence Novy Mir had, even against official disapproval.

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