Nikolai Pogodin

Nikolai Fyodorovich Pogodin (Никола́й Фёдорович Пого́дин) (pseudonym of Nikolai F. Stukalov) (16 November 1900 – 19 September 1962) was a Soviet playwright.

His plays were recognized in Soviet Union theater for their realistic portrayals of common life combined with socialist and communist themes.

He is most widely known as the author of a trilogy about Lenin, the first time Lenin was used as a character in any theatrical works.

Pogodin was born Nikolai Stukalov in modern-day Donetsk Oblast on 16 November [ O.S. 3 November] 1900.

Both parents were peasants.

His educational career lasted through the elementary level.

Between 14 and 20, Pogodin worked a variety of low-level jobs: selling newspapers, distributing supplies for typewriters and dental equipment, working in a machine shop, bookbinding and carpentry.

During the Russian Civil War he served as a volunteer with the Red Army.

In 1920 he worked as a reporter for the Rostov-on-Don newspaper Trudovaya zhizn, and was a traveling correspondent for Pravda from 1922 to 1932.

From 1925 he lived in Moscow.

In 1929, Pogodin's first play, Tempo (Temp, 1929) was published after a visit to the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, where the play was later set.

The play's major theme of young Communists outdoing their American counterparts was a common theme of Soviet Realism.

His first play was "Tempo" written in 1929, a story of a tractor factory.

The second play written by Pogodin was "Impertinence".

This play was about the youth who lived in a commune.

His later works, Poema o topore (A Poem about an Ax, 1930) and Moi Drug (My Friend, 1930) also touched on themes of soviet industrialism and ingenuity.

His plays frequently mixed "factual reports" with dramatization.

Third was "Poem of an Axe" written in 1930 which was a story about rust-resistant axe blades that the Soviet Union was dependent on the West for supplies.

Next was the play "Snow" about Soviet scientific exploration.

Pogodin next wrote "My Friend" in 1932 that was about the building of a large factory in a peasant country.

In 1933, Pogodin took part in a carefully organized writers' tour of the White Sea–Baltic Canal that was being constructed with prison labor.

A year later, in 1934, he wrote the play "Aristocrats" about the rehabilitation of criminals in the labor camp that was building the Canal.

In 1936, the government commissioned, under the People's Commissariat of Education, a collection of writers and directors to make films depicting Lenin and also the revolution in an approved format and presentation style.

Among those invited to the initial commission were Alexander Korneichuk, Alexander Afinogenov, Vladimir Kirshon, and the novelist Alexei Tolstoi.

Despite his historical significance of presenting Lenin in this approved style, Pogodin was not invited at first.

Instead, he volunteered to join the commission and was accepted.

Pogodin did not limit his writing to mainstream theater.

This play became the screenplay of Convicts, a 1936 Soviet comedy about this BeltBaltLag labor camp.

His most popular play was Chelovek s ruzhyom (Man with a Gun, 1937), about Shadrin, a soldier who comes to Petrograd in October 1917 and gets involved in the Revolution; the climax of the play is his meeting with Lenin.

The second play in his Lenin trilogy, Kremlyovskie kuranty (The chimes of the Kremlin, 1940), was set in 1920 and featured a scene in which Lenin talks with an old Jewish watchmaker engaged in repairing the Kremlin chimes so they can play the Internationale; the third, Tretya pateticheskaya (The Third: Pathetic, 1958) used the news of Lenin's death as a tragic leitmotif.

He also lent his screenplay skills to the State Leningrad Puppet Theater of Fairy Tales with a play titled The Tale of the Beast Called Indrik. Pogodin also provided a report on children's literature at the Tenth Plenary Meeting of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1946.

Despite working under restrictive creative conditions, Pogodin did support the primary journal for "permitted, formal" dissent at the time, Novyi Mir.

From 1951 to 1960 Pogodin was the chief editor of the theatrical journal Teatr.

The works of Nikolai Pogodin fall under, or closely adhere to, the wider artistic movement known as Socialist realism.

Pogodin being a Socialist Realist playwright created his works by taking topics that were prevalent in early Soviet history.

Many of his works are an example of the early difficulties of the construction of the early Soviet era.

Kogda lomaiutsya kop'ya (When the Spears Break, 1953) was a comedy; Sonet Petrarki (Petrarch's Sonnet, 1956) "takes the position that there are certain individual matters--personal feelings and affairs of the heart--which are none of the collective's or the Party's business."

Pogodin died in Moscow on 19 September 1962.

He was 61 years old.

Pogodin's series of three plays featuring Lenin as a character was part of a Soviet movement referred to as Leniniana, which sought to control the way Lenin was portrayed in artistic works.