Editing Aleksandr Tvardovsky (section)

==Biography==
Tvardovsky was born into a Russian family in [[Pochinkovsky District, Smolensk Oblast|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.<ref name="Soviet">{{cite book |title=A History of Soviet Literature |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofsovietl00alex |url-access=registration |last=Alexandrova |first=Vera |year=1963 |publisher=Doubleday |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofsovietl00alex/page/284 284–294]}}</ref>

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.<ref name="Soviet"/>
[[File:Tvardovsky 1940.jpg|thumb|left|150px|Tvardovsky in 1940]]
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.<ref name="Terras"/> 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. His poem ''The Land of Muravia'' was written in 1934–36 and was favorably received by the critics.<ref name="Soviet"/> 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''.<ref name="Terras"/> 

Tvardovsky's father was accused of being a [[kulak]] during the period of [[collectivisation in the Soviet Union]]. In 1930, after Aleksandr had moved to Smolensk, his father ran away from the family home fearing arrest. 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.<ref name="Whisperers">{{cite book|last1=Figes|first1=Orlando|title=The Whisperers|date=2008|publisher=Penguin|location=UK|isbn=978-0-141-01351-0|pages=132–134}}</ref> [[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.<ref>{{cite book|author=Robert W. Davies|title=Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b9ivCwAAQBAJ&q=Aleksandr+Tvardovsky&pg=PA51|page=51|year=2015|publisher=Springer|isbn= 978-1-538-10221-3}}</ref> In August 1931, when his father and brother arrived unexpectedly in Smolensk at his work, Aleksandr called the police and his father was arrested.<ref name="Whisperers"/> 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.

Tvardovsky acknowledged the guilt he felt about his father in his late poem, "By Right of Memory" (1968).<ref name="Terras">{{cite book |title=A History of Russian Literature |last=Terras |first=Victor |year=1991 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |isbn=0-300-04971-4 |pages=546–547}}</ref>

In 1939, he participated in the [[soviet invasion of Poland]], and also in the [[Winter War]], where he was part of a "writers' brigade" composing patriotic verse.<ref name="Soviet"/> 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 ''{{Not translated|Vasili Tyorkin|fr|Vassili Tiorkine}}''.<ref name="Soviet"/> 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.<ref name="Soviet"/>
[[File:Russia-2000-stamp-Aleksandr Tvardovsky.jpg|thumb|250px|right]]
Tvardovsky fought hard to maintain the traditional independence ''Novy Mir'' had, even against official disapproval. During his editorship, the magazine published [[Ilya Ehrenburg|Ilya Ehrenburg's]] ''[[The Thaw (Ehrenburg novel)|Thaw]]'' in 1954, ''The Vologda Wedding'' by [[Alexander Yashin]] in 1962, and ''[[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]'' by [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] in 1962.<ref name=boy72>''1972 Britannica Book of the Year'' (covering events of 1971), "Obituaries 1971" article, page 532, "Tvardovski, Aleksandr Trifonovich" item</ref> During those years, the ''Oktyabr{{'}}'' magazine, with the editor in chief [[Vsevolod Kochetov]], was the pro-Soviet, anti-Western and anti-liberal counterpart of Tvardovsky's ''Novy Mir''.

In January 1963, Tvardovsky was attacked in ''[[Izvestia]]'' for publishing Yashin's story, which was considered too pessimistic. The chief editor of ''Izvestia'', Alexei Adzhubey, was a son-in-law of the Soviet leader, [[Nikita Khrushchev]], but the editorial appears to have been organised behind their backs while Khrushchev and Adzhubey were visiting Poland and East Germany. Attacks on Tvardovsky persisted for three months, but he did not issue any apology or retraction.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tatu |first1=Michel |title=Power in the Kremlin |date=1969 |publisher=Collins |location=London |pages=301, 310, 319}}</ref> On 18 August 1963, ''Izvestia'' published Tvardovsky's poem ''Tyorkin in the Other World'', a satire in which the hero continued to meet bureaucratic obstruction even if the afterlife, with an introduction praising the work, signed by Adzhubey. Tvardovsky wrote this poem in 1954, but it was banned for nine years, and was one of the reasons that he was temporarily dismissed from the editorship of ''Novy mir''.<ref>{{cite web |title="…Потому как на тот свет Не придешь повторно»: 55 лет назад 18 августа 1963 года впервые была напечатана поэма Александра Твардовского «Теркин на том свете" |url=https://www.vounb.ru/?option=view_post&id=187 |publisher=Волгоградская Универсальная Наычная Библиотека им. М. Горского |access-date=29 November 2022}}</ref> A few days before it was finally published, Tvardovsky was accorded the honour of being invited to recite the poem to Khrushchev and a group of foreign writers in [[Gagra]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tatu |title=Power in the Kremlin |page=356}}</ref>

These political ups and downs in Tvardovsky's reputation were part of the power struggle between Khrushchev and hard line communists seeking to protect the legacy of the dictator, [[Joseph Stalin]], whose crimes Khrushchev denounced. In his memoirs, Khrushchev wrote that "Tvardovsky's books - especially his epic poem about Vasili Tyorkin - were a source of strength to us all in World War II ... Tvardovsky gave us some great art, but he ended without recognition and without honour."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Khrushchev |first1=Nikita |title=Khrushchev Remembers, The Last Testament |date=1974 |publisher=Little, Brown |location=Boston, Mass. |page=82}}</ref>
[[File:Александр Твардовский в кабинете в 1960 г.jpg|thumb|Tvardovsky in 1960]]
In January 1965, a few month after Khrushchev had been ousted, Tvardovsky wrote an article commemorating 40 years of ''Novy Mir'', in which he singled out several new young writers for praise, including [[Andrei Sinyavsky]]. ON 15 April, ''Izvestia'' - under a new chief editor - commissioned a piece accusing Tvardovsky of 'losing his sense of proportion' when he criticised Stalinist literature, and of being too much of an admirer of Solzhenitsyn.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tatu |title=Power in the Kremlin |page=470}}</ref> Five months later, Sinyavsky was arrested. According to rumour, the authorities then intended to sack Tvardovsky and appoint [[Konstantin Simonov]] in his place, but Simonov refused the position, and Tvardovsky's staff threatened to strike.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tatu |title=Power in the Kremlin |page=475}}</ref> 

In February 1970, Tvardovsky was dismissed from ''Novy Mir''. In May, [[Zhores Medvedev]], a contributor to ''Novy Mir'' was arrested and interned in a psychiatric hospital in [[Kaluga]]. It was common practice in the USSR to [[Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union|abuse psychiatry]] to silence critics. Tvardovsky and the writer [[Vladimir Tendryakov]] visited Medvedev on 6 June, when according to Medvedev, "the doctors were deeply affected by their conversation" and agreed to release Medvedev. On the day he was released, on 17 June, Tvardovsky was summoned before a communist party official, rebuked for interfering in the case and told "we were going to give you a very different award."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Medvedev |first1=Zhores and Roy |title=A Question of Madness |date=1974 |publisher=Penguin |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex |pages=139, 145–46}}</ref> This was a reference to his 60th birthday, when he was awarded the [[Order of the Red Banner]] "for services to the development of Soviet poetry"<ref>[[Joseph Pearce]], ''Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile'', Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2011, p. 213.</ref> - implying that he would have received a more prestigious award if he had not intervened.

Devastated at losing the editorship of ''Novy Mir'', Tvardovsky's health collapsed, and he died in December 1971. On hearing of his death, Solzhenitsyn wrote:

{{quote|There are many ways of killing a poet. The method chosen for Tvardovsky was to take away his off-spring, his passion, his journal. The sixteen years of insults meekly endured by this hero were little, so long as his journal survived, so long as literature was not stopped, so long as people were printed in it and people read it. Too little! So they heaped the coals of disbandment, destruction and injustice upon him. Within six months, these coals had consumed him. Six months later, he took to his death-bed.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Solzhenitsyn |first1=Alexander |title=Obituary |journal=A Chronicle of Current Events |date=5 January 1972 |issue=23 |pages=99–100 |url=https://chronicle-of-current-events.com/2016/03/30/23-10-obituary-alexander-tvardovsky-1910-1971/ |access-date=29 November 2022}}</ref>|}}

Tvardovsky received the [[State Stalin Prize|Stalin Prize]] (1941, 1946, 1947), the [[USSR State Prize]]  (1971), and the [[Lenin Prize]] (1961) for the large poem, ''Distance After Distance'' (''За далью – даль'' 1950–60), a collection of poetic impressions and meditations on Russian life first conceived during a trip on the [[Trans-Siberian Railway]].<ref name="Terras"/>