Arkady Gaidar

Arkady Petrovich Gaidar (Арка́дий Петро́вич Гайда́р, born Golikov, Го́ликов; 22 January 1904 – 26 October 1941) was a Russian Soviet writer, whose stories were very popular among Soviet children, and a Red Army commander.

Gaidar was born in the town of Lgov, Kursk Governorate, Russian Empire (now in Kursk Oblast, Russia), to a family of teachers of Russian aristocratic descent.

Through his noble mother, he was a descendant of Mikhail Lermontov.

In 1912, the family moved to Arzamas where in 1914 Arkady enrolled in a local secondary school.

In 1917, as an ardent 13-year-old Bolshevik follower, Gaidar started to distribute leaflets and patrol the streets.

During one such mission, he received his first wound, a stab in the chest.

Arkady Gaidar's father, Pyotr Isidorovich Golikov, a teacher (after the 1917 Revolution a Red Army commissar), came from a working-class family.

His mother, Natalya Arkadyevna Golikova (née Salkova), also a teacher (after the Revolution a doctor), was a daughter of a Tsarist Army officer.

Arkady was the first of the couple's four children.

His three sisters were Natalya, Olga and Yekaterina.

The Russian economist Yegor Gaidar was Arkady Gaidar's grandson.

In 1918, Golikov applied for Communist Party membership and started working for the local newspaper Molot as a correspondent.

In August 1918, he became a party member and in December volunteered for the Red Army, having lied about his age.

In January 1919, Golikov went to the front as a Special Unit commander's adjutant, to fight what Soviet biographies referred to as the 'kulak gangs'.

Fresh from the 7th Moscow Red Commanders' courses, Gaidar went to the Ukrainian (later Polish) front as a company commander.

In December 1919, injured and shell-shocked, he was demobilised, but in March 1920 returned to the Red Army, to the Caucasian Front's 9th Army, 37th Kuban Division, as a company commander again.

In summer 1920, Gaidar took part in operations against the units of generals Geyman and Zhitikov.

In 1921, Gaidar participated in the suppression of several anti-communist uprisings, among them Antonovshchina.

In 1922, he was moved to the Mongolian border (where the Red Army was fighting White Army units led by colonels Oliferov and Solovyov), but later that year he was hospitalised with traumatic neuroses.

He retired from the army in 1924 due to a contusion.

As the Great Patriotic War broke out, Gaidar was sent to the front as a special correspondent for the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

In 1925, Gaidar's debut novel In the Days of Defeats and Victories was published, followed by Life For Nothing and The Mystery of a Mountain, a sci-fi novel and, most notably, R.V.S. (1925) which formed a blueprint for his career as a children's writer, telling stories of front-line camaraderie and the romanticism of the revolutionary struggle.

In 1927, Gaidar moved to Moscow.

A year later, he went to Archangelsk to work for a local newspaper, Pravda Severa.

Back in Moscow, in 1930, he published the novel School (originally titled "The Plain Biography").

In the early 1930s, several articles on Gaidar's works appeared in the Soviet press, Konstantin Fedin being his major supporter and mentor.

Short stories "The Military Secret" (1935), "The Blue Cup" (1936) and the novel Blue Stars (1939) were followed by his most famous work, Timur and His Squad (1940), its hero named after, and partially based on the character of, the author's son.

A captivating account of an altruistic pioneer youth gave birth to the mass Timur movement among Young Pioneers and other children's organisations all over the Soviet Union.

A number of films were made based on his stories.

Gaidar's books have been translated into many languages.

Gaidar was awarded two orders and several medals.

In 1939, Gaidar was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honour.

In the fall of 1941, Gaidar and other soldiers were surrounded by German troops.

He joined the partisans and became a machine gunner.

On 26 October, Gaidar was killed in combat near the village of Lipliave.

He was buried in the town of Kaniv.

A monument honouring him was erected in Kaniv in 1953.

Three biographical movies about Arkady Gaidar were released in the USSR: Serebryanye truby (Russian: Silver Trumpets) (1970), Konets imperatora taygi (Russian: The Death of the Taiga Emperor) (1978), and Ostayus s vami (Russian: I'll Stay with You) (1981).

The latter was a story of Arkady Gaidar's last days.

Arkady's son, Timur Gaidar published two versions of the pseudonym's origin: