Mikhail Alekseyev (writer)

Mikhail Alekseyev
Born	(1918-05-06)May 6, 1918 Saratov Governorate, Russia
Died	May 21, 2007(2007-05-21) (aged 94) Moscow, Russian Federation
Genre	fiction, memoirs
Subject	War, Soviet village

Mikhail Nikolayevich Alekseyev (Russian: Михаил Николаевич Алексеев, May 6, 1918, Monastyrskoye village, Saratov Governorate, Soviet Russia, - May 21, 2007, Moscow, Russian Federation) was a Russian Soviet writer and editor, best known for his epic novels about the Great Patriotic War (Soldiers, 1951, 1959; My Stalingrad, 1993-1998, the Fatherland and Mikhail Sholokhov Prizes) and the life of Soviet peasantry (Unweeping Willow, 1970-1974, the USSR State Prize in 1976). His controversial Fighters (1981) novel was one of the few non-dissident works of the time to bring about the issue of the 1933 Soviet famine. In 1969-1990 Alekseyev edited Moskva magazine.^[1][2]

Biography

Mikhail Alekseyev was born in Monastyrskoye village of the Saratov Governorate, in a relatively well-off peasant family. In 1933 his mother died of hunger, a year later his father, a victim of political repressions, died in GULAG. After graduating the secondary school in 1936 Mikhail enrolled into the pedagogical college, from it he was mobilized into the Red Army and went to serve to Irkutsk. In 1940, not long before the demobilization he was sent to the 2-months young politruk's courses.^[1]

As the Great Patriotic War broke out, Alekseyev was sent to the frontline. "I came in on the War on July 3, 1941, and the Victory was waiting for me at the gates of Golden Prague on May 9, 1945," he wrote later. In 1942 he became the member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Also in 1942 he started to write articles, essays and short stories for regional frontline papers. Up until 1950 Alekseyev stayed with his Army unit in Europe. In 1950-1955 he worked as an editor in a Military publishing house in Moscow. In 1955 he demobilized in the rank of polkovnik.^[1]

Career

Mikhail Alekseyev started to write fiction in the late 1940s: simple war-time thrillers like The End of the Marked Wolf, Ghost of an Ancient Castle, Brown Shadows came and went unnoticed. His first major work was the War epic Soldiers (1951-1953, Sibirskiye Ogni magazine), the second part of it, Puti-Dorogi (Ways and Roads) came out in 1953.^[3] It was followed by two short-story collections (Our Lieutenant, 1955, There Were Two Friends, 1958) a short novel (The Inheritors, 1957) and Divizionka (a documentary, 1959). His 1961 novel The Cherry-Сoloured Pool, dealing for the first time with the life of Russian village, received a warm welcome from Mikhail Sholokhov, the writer Alekseyev was greatly influenced by. In 1966 this book brought him the RSFSR Maxim Gorky State Prize.^[1]

Successful were his next two novels, Bread is a Noun (1964) and Karyukha (1967), the latter, telling the tragic story of s Soviet peasant family struggling through the 1930s, is regarded as one of Alekseyev's all-time best. The two-part novel Unweeping Willow (1970, 1974), painting a broad panorama of rural life in Soviet Privolzhye from the 1930s to the 1960s, brought him the USSR State Prize in 1976. Six films were made after Alekseyev's novels, among them director Nikolai Moskalenko's Zhuravushka (1968, based upon Bread Is a Noun) and Russian Field (1971, Unweeping Willow).^[1]

In his 1981 novel Fighters Alekseyev for the first time spoke out about the 1933 famine. "The subject was a taboo. But it lived inside of and tormented me. Me, who published so many books, have failed to tell the truth about the thing that had such an importance for my countrymen, about the greatest catastrophe. 1933 was a genocide and the exact figure of its victims has not yet been named," he later wrote. In 1991 another autobiographical novel Ryzhonka came out, seen as part of the autobiographical trilogy, started by Karyukha and Fighters. In 1993 Alekseyev received the Fatherland Prize for his autobiographical war-time novel My Stalingrad (1993); the second part of it came out in 1998 and brought him the Mikhail Sholokhov Prize. "I've made my mind to tell only of the things I myself witnessed while fighting in the Autumn 1942 and Winter 1943 between Don and Volga, without making anything up," he wrote.^[4]

Alekseyev was a staunch Communist and in bitter ideological feuds between literary 'liberal' and 'patriotic' factions supported the latter. In 1969 he was one of those who signed the infamous Ogonyok-published open letter condemning Novy Mir, and never repented. In a capacity of Moskva magazine editor-in-chief he published the full text of Nikolai Karamzin's History of the Russian State which at the time was seen as a direct challenge to academician Alexander Yakovlev, Perestroyka's main ideologist. In the early 1990s Alekseyev criticized Boris Yeltsin and his team of reformists. Outraged by the demolition of the Russian Duma in October 1993, he reacted with the serious of angry articles published by Zavtra, Sovetskaya Rossiya and Pravda. Alekseyev's last novels was a sequel to My Stalingrad called The Occupants.^[3]

Mikhail Alekseyev died on May 21, 2007, in Moscow. He was buried at the Peredelkino Cemetery.^[1]

References