A message on the topic of the father of the poet Tvardovsky. Alexander Tvardovsky - biography, information, personal life. Alexander Tvardovsky - biography

Brief biography of the poet, basic facts of life and work:

ALEXANDER TRIFONOVICH TVARDOVSKY (1910-1971)

The father of the future poet, Trifon Gordeevich Tvardovsky, was the seventh son in a large peasant family and worked as a blacksmith. Mother, Maria Mitrofanovna, née Pleskachevskaya, was one of the bankrupt nobles. Having married a simple man, the girl found herself in a world completely alien to her. Trifon Gordeevich turned out to be a stern man; he often beat his wife and children.

On June 8 (21 New Style), 1910, the Tvardovskys had a son, who was baptized Alexander. This happened in the village of Zagorye, Smolensk province. The boy turned out to be the eldest child; there were also brothers Vasily, Konstantin, Pavel, Ivan and sisters Anna and Maria.

The Tvardovskys had relatively many books, so Sasha first became acquainted with the works of A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, M. Yu. Lermontov, N. A. Nekrasov at home - they were read aloud on winter evenings. Under the influence of the great Russian classics, the boy began to compose poetry early. The father did not approve of his son’s hobby and regarded it as self-indulgence.

Tvardovsky was sent to study 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.

Tvardovsky’s poetic debut took place in 1925 - his poem “New Hut” was published in the newspaper “Smolenskaya Derevnya”.

After graduating from a rural school, Tvardovsky moved to live in Smolensk. At first he lived in complete poverty. The poet was sheltered by the Smolensk writer Efrem Maryenkov. They lived in a tiny walk-through room without furniture, slept on the floor, and covered themselves with newspapers. I had to exist “on a pittance of literary earnings and knock on the doors of editorial offices.”

In the Smolensk Press House, Alexander Trifonovich met his future wife Maria Illarionovna. She acted as a critic and reviewer. But at some point, for the sake of love, she decided to give up her literary career and devoted her life to her husband. Tvardovsky's parents were against the young daughter-in-law, since she finally took their son away from the family. Soon the young couple had two daughters - Valentina and Olga - and a son, Alexander.

During the years of collectivization, the poet's family was dispossessed, although even the middle peasants had difficulty getting by. During the period of democratization of Soviet society, the poet was accused of betraying his family who had been sent into exile. Much later, documents were discovered, from which it follows that as soon as their arrest became known, Alexander Trifonovich began to go to the authorities and bother. However, the secretary of the regional committee, Ivan Rumyantsev, who was later also repressed and executed, told the poet:

- Choose: either mom and dad, or revolution.

Tvardov understood the hint and was forced to stop his troubles. He tried in every possible way to help the exiles. The brothers ran away from the settlement every now and then. One day they all appeared at once in front of Tvardovsky in the center of Smolensk near the House of Soviets. Alexander Trifonovich already knew that the NKVD had opened a case against him, he was even expelled from the Writers' Union, and was persecuted in the newspapers. If he had hidden his brothers, he would have gone along the stage himself. And the poet drove the brothers away. For some reason, not his brothers, but zealous Russian journalists could not forgive Tvardovsky for this.

As soon as Tvardovsky had reliable connections in Moscow, the first thing he did was go to the Northern Urals and take out his entire family.

Tvardovsky’s works were published in 1931-1933, but Alexander Trifonovich himself believed that he began as a writer only with the poem about collectivization “The Country of Ant,” which was published in 1936. The poem was a success among readers and critics.

At the beginning of 1937, an arrest warrant for Tvardovsky was issued in Smolensk. The poet's friend Makedonov was taken first. Half an hour later they arrived for Alexander Trifonovich, but he was already rushing away on the Moscow train.

In the capital, Tvardovsky was supported by the head of the Writers' Union, Alexander Aleksandrovich Fadeev, who noted the talent of the young poet in a conversation with Stalin. With his help, Tvardovsky’s relatives were also freed.

On the personal instructions of Joseph Vissarionovich, the persecution of the poet was stopped. In 1939 he was awarded the Order of Lenin. It is curious that on the days of the award, Tvardovsky was a student at IFLI, and the exam papers included questions on his poem “The Country of Ant.”

Immediately after graduating from the institute, Tvardovsky was drafted into the Red Army. Alexander Trifonovich participated in the liberation of Western Belarus from Polish occupation. From the beginning of the war with Finland, already in the rank of officer, he served as a special correspondent for a military newspaper.

During the Great Patriotic War, the great poem “Vasily Terkin. A book about a fighter" is a vivid embodiment of the Russian character and national patriotic feeling. “This is a truly rare book: what freedom, what wonderful prowess, what accuracy, precision in everything and what an extraordinary soldier’s folk language - not a hitch, not a single false, ready-made, that is, literary-vulgar word!” - this is how an independent reader, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, assessed Tvardovsky’s masterpiece.

Almost simultaneously with “Terkin” and the poems of “Front Chronicle,” the poet created the great poem “I was killed near Rzhev” and began the poem “House by the Road,” completed after the war.

But then Alexander Trifonovich began to have a creative crisis. His poetry didn't work. Tvardovsky began to think about suicide, and then started drinking in the company of Fadeev.

In 1950, Tvardovsky was appointed editor-in-chief of the New World magazine, which he headed for twenty years (1950-1954 and 1958-1970) with a break. The poet attracted such significant masters of the Russian word as Viktor Astafiev, Vasily Belov, Fyodor Abramov, Sergei Zalygin, Vasily Shukshin, Yuri Bondarev to the pages of the New World. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was originally published in the magazine.

Despite strong pressure from the editors, Tvardovsky, who firmly defended the position of high national poetry, categorically refused to publish Joseph Brodsky's poems in Novy Mir. Alexander Trifonovich admitted that all kinds of poetry are needed, but not on the pages of his magazine. However, when Brodsky was arrested and tried, Tvardovsky was outraged and tried to prevent the trial, arguing that poets should not be imprisoned.

In 1970, Alexander Trifonovich was removed from his post as editor-in-chief of Novy Mir. The poet fell into depression, then he had a stroke and lost his hand. Then he was diagnosed with cancer.

Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky died in Krasnaya Pakhra near Moscow on December 18, 1971. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in the capital.

Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky (1910-1971)

We all remember from our school years: “Crossing, crossing! The left bank, the right bank...” And then, more often in adulthood, we discover the deep wisdom of Tvardovsky’s famous six-line:

I know. It's not my fault

The fact is that others did not come back from the war.

The fact that they - some older, some younger -

We stayed there, and it’s not about the same thing,

That I could, but failed to save them, -

This is not about that, but still, still, still...

And “I was killed near Rzhev” is a ballad for all times.

The poems “Vasily Terkin” and “Beyond the Distance” became phenomena not only of the literary life of the country, but in the literal sense, phenomena of the life of the country, in the state sense. They evoked such a response among the people that people lived by them, as they live by the most significant events of real historical life - such as, for example, the first manned flight into space or victory in a difficult war.

Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky realized what his work meant in the fate of the country. And although he was a rather reserved and modest person, his comparisons, at least in this poem, speak volumes:

The whole point is in one single covenant:

What I will say before the time melts,

I know this better than anyone in the world -

Living and dead, only I know.

Say that word to anyone else

There's no way I could ever

Entrust. Even Leo Tolstoy -

It is forbidden. He won’t say, let him be his god.

And I'm only mortal. I am responsible for my own,

During my lifetime I worry about one thing:

About what I know better than anyone in the world,

I want to say. And the way I want.

Tvardovsky said his word about collectivization (the poem “The Country of Ant”), about the Great Patriotic War (his poem “Vasily Terkin” was appreciated even by such an irreconcilable person towards Soviet power and Soviet literature as I. A. Bunin), about the post-war decades ( poem “Beyond the Distance”)... He was called the poet of people's life, because in his work he captured the entire difficult, painful, intense spiritual process that went on among the people throughout the 20th century.

Alexander Trifonovich was born on June 8 (21), 1910 in the village of Zagorye, Smolensk province, into the family of a peasant blacksmith. Until 1928, he lived in the village, studied at school, worked in a forge, and was the secretary of a rural Komsomol cell. Since 1924, he began publishing notes and poems in Smolensk newspapers. Since 1928 he lived in Smolensk and studied at the Pedagogical Institute. Collaborating in Smolensk newspapers and magazines, he traveled a lot around the Smolensk region, as he himself wrote, “he delved with passion into everything that constituted a new, first emerging system of rural life.”

No matter how today they criticize collective farms and all sorts of excesses with collectivization, there is no getting around the true joy with which many, many villagers, including poets, greeted everything new back then.

Along the village, from hut to hut,

Hasty pillars walked...

The wires hummed and began to play,

We've never seen anything like this.

This was written by Mikhail Isakovsky in 1925.

At the end of the 1930s, a critic wrote about the poems of the young Tvardovsky: “Tvardovsky’s poems breathe a young, cheerful, full of goodwill belief that the new will prevail everywhere. But it will overcome without mocking the feelings and ideas of those people who entered this new world from the past...” That’s why Tvardovsky became great because he was not a straightforward, flat singer - he saw the situation in the country in all its complexity, and so imprinted. He never threw anything “from the ship of modernity.”

In 1936, the poet came to study in Moscow - at the philological faculty of the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature, from which he graduated in 1939. They say that during one of the exams, Tvardovsky received a ticket with a question about A. Tvardovsky’s poem “The Country of Ant,” which by that time had become popular and was included in the curriculum.

During the Great Patriotic War, the poet worked in the front-line press. It was at the fronts that his famous “book about a fighter”, the poem “Vasily Terkin”, was born, which received nationwide recognition. Tvardovsky wrote in his autobiography: “This book 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.” Thomas Mann once wrote: “What is a writer? The one whose life is a symbol.” Of course, Tvardovsky’s life is a symbol, because his life and work touches many, many Russian people of the 20th century. And not only Russians. “Vasily Terkin” is now inextricably linked for centuries with the feat of our people in the Great Patriotic War. The language of this poem is so lively, folk, organic that many, many lines of it have become popular proverbs, the fabric of popular speech.

The front-line soldier himself, the poet Evgeny Vinokurov, writes about Tvardovsky: “Patriotic, conscientious, kind-hearted poetry teaches him, educates, instructs him, the significance of Tvardovsky’s poetry is great. And here, in his words, “neither subtract nor add”... In Nekrasov’s way, he cares about the country, and this concern for the country is felt in his every word. Great historical cataclysms, the fate of millions of people - that’s what always interested the poet, that’s what his pen was always subordinated to. The theme of the people became his internal lyrical theme..."

That’s right - the theme of the people became Tvardovsky’s internal lyrical theme. He is perhaps the only one in Russian poetry of the 20th century who does not have poems about love - about love for his beloved. There are poems about mother and poems about the Motherland. Such is his talent that all his heroic love was directed towards his country, towards his people. And this is not a deficiency of talent, but its deep originality.

After the war, Tvardovsky published book after book. Poem "House by the Road" - 1946. The poem “Beyond the Distance is Distance” - 1960. The poem “Terkin in the Other World” - 1962. And between these epic things, collections of lyrics, a two-volume, four-volume set of selected works are published. Tvardovsky is awarded state prizes. The head of state N.S. Khrushchev called him nothing less than “our Nekrasov.”

Tvardovsky led the magazine “New World” - he published “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Solzhenitsyn, the first works of the then young Vasily Belov, Fyodor Abramov, Vasily Shukshin, Yuri Kazakov, Boris Mozhaev, Yuri Trifonov...

Editorialism in the “New World” is a whole era with many events, collisions and even tragedies. Apparently, dissertations have already been written or will be written on this topic. Tvardovsky did a lot of good and wise things in the field of editing. There was a lot of struggle, sometimes Tvardovsky argued with the “party line”, sometimes he gave in to it, sometimes he himself gave in to his personal weaknesses... In a word, it’s not for us to judge. But if a meticulous reader wants to know the history of the New World magazine under Tvardovsky, he will discover a lot of interesting things. In the end, the poet was removed from the leadership of the New World. On December 18, 1971, he died.

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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 household. 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 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 - in Nizhnedevitsky, Voronezh region.
Since 1950, Tvardovsky has been editor of the New World magazine 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. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.

Born on June 8 (21 NS) 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.”

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 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.

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."

The main theme of the writer’s entire work was the Great Patriotic War. And the hero-soldier Vasily Terkin created by him received such enormous popularity that, one might say, he surpassed the author himself. We will talk about the life and work of the amazing Soviet writer in this article.

Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky: biography

The future poet was born according to the old style on June 8 (June 21 - according to the new one) 1910 in the village of Zagorye, which is located in His father, Trifon Gordeevich, was a blacksmith, and his mother, Maria Mitrofanovna, came from a family of odnodvortsev (farmers who lived on the outskirts Russia and were supposed to protect its borders).

His father, despite his peasant origins, was a literate man and loved to read. There were even books in the house. The mother of the future writer also knew how to read.

Alexander had a younger brother, Ivan, born in 1914, who later became a writer.

Childhood

For the first time, Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky became acquainted with the works of Russian classics at home. A short biography of the writer tells that in the Tvardovsky family there was a custom - on winter evenings one of the parents read Gogol, Lermontov, Pushkin aloud. It was then that Tvardovsky acquired a love for literature, and even began to compose his first poems, without even really learning to write correctly.

Little Alexander studied at a rural school, and at the age of fourteen he began sending small notes to local newspapers for publication, some of them were even published. Soon Tvardovsky dared to send poetry. The editor of the local newspaper “Rabochy Put” supported the young poet’s initiative and largely helped him overcome his natural timidity and begin to publish.

Smolensk-Moscow

After graduating from school, Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky moved to Smolensk (whose biography and work are presented in this article). Here the future writer wanted to either continue studying or find a job, but he was unable to do either one or the other - this required at least some kind of specialty, which he did not have.

Tvardovsky lived on pennies, which were brought in by inconsistent literary earnings, to obtain which he had to beat the thresholds of editorial offices. When the poet’s poems were published in the capital’s magazine “October,” he went to Moscow, but even here luck did not smile on him. As a result, in 1930, Tvardovsky was forced to return to Smolensk, where he spent the next 6 years of his life. At this time, he was able to enter a pedagogical institute, which he did not graduate from, and again went to Moscow, where in 1936 he was accepted into MIFLI.

During these years, Tvardovsky already began to actively publish, and in 1936 the poem “The Country of Ant” was published, dedicated to collectivization, which made him famous. In 1939, Tvardovsky’s first collection of poems, Rural Chronicle, was published.

War years

In 1939, Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky was drafted into the Red Army. The writer’s biography changes dramatically at this moment - he finds himself at the center of military operations in Western Belarus. Since 1941, Tvardovsky worked for the Voronezh newspaper “Red Army”.

This period is characterized by the flourishing of the writer’s creativity. In addition to the famous poem “Vasily Terkin,” Tvardovsky created a cycle of poems “Front-line Chronicle” and began work on the famous poem “House by the Road,” which was completed in 1946.

"Vasily Terkin"

The biography of Tvardovsky Alexander Trifonovich is replete with various creative achievements, but the greatest of them is the writing of the poem “Vasily Terkin”. The work was written throughout the Second World War, that is, from 1941 to 1945. It was published in small parts in military newspapers, thereby raising the morale of the Soviet army.

The work is distinguished by its precise, understandable and simple style, and the rapid development of actions. Each episode of the poem is connected to each other only by the image of the main character. Tvardovsky himself said that he chose such a unique construction of the poem because he himself and his reader could die at any minute, therefore each story should be finished in the same issue of the newspaper in which it was started.

This story made Tvardovsky a cult author of wartime. In addition, the poet was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degrees for his work.

Post-war creativity

Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky continued his active literary work after the war. The poet’s biography is supplemented by the writing of a new poem, “Beyond the Distance, the Distance,” which was written between 1950 and 1960.

From 1967 to 1969, the writer worked on the autobiographical work “By the Right of Memory.” The poem tells the truth about the fate of Tvardovsky’s father, who became a victim of collectivization and was repressed. This work was banned for publication by censorship and the reader was able to get acquainted with it only in 1987. The writing of this poem seriously spoiled Tvardovsky’s relations with the Soviet regime.

The biography of Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky is also rich in prosaic experiments. All the most important things, of course, were written in poetic form, but several collections of prose stories were also published. For example, in 1947, the book “Motherland and Foreign Land”, dedicated to the Second World War, was published.

"New world"

We should not forget about the writer’s journalistic activities. For many years, Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky served as editor-in-chief of the literary magazine “New World”. The biography of this period is full of all sorts of clashes with official censorship - the poet had to defend the right to publish for many talented authors. Thanks to the efforts of Tvardovsky, Zalygina, Akhmatova, Troepolsky, Molsaev, Bunin and others were published.

Gradually the magazine became a serious opposition to Soviet power. Writers of the sixties published here and anti-Stalinist thoughts were openly expressed. The real victory for Tvardovsky was permission to publish Solzhenitsyn’s story.

However, after the removal of Khrushchev, strong pressure began to be exerted on the editorial board of Novy Mir. This ended with Tvardovsky being forced to leave his position as editor-in-chief in 1970.

Last years and death

Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky, whose biography was interrupted on December 18, 1971, died of lung cancer. The writer died in a town located in the Moscow region. The writer's body was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Alexander Tvardovsky lived a rich and vibrant life and left behind a huge literary heritage. Many of his works were included in the school curriculum and remain popular to this day.