Alexander Fadeev is the writer of the work. Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev

There are few writers in Soviet literature so hated by the liberal public as Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev. He was labeled as the satrap Stalin, the literary boss who carried out mass repressions. It is alleged that he committed suicide due to remorse. Let's consider life path our hero.

Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev was born in 1901 in the village of Kimry, Tver province, into a family of revolutionary intellectuals. His father was a Narodnaya Volya member. In 1908, the family moved to the Primorsky Territory. Little Sasha Fadeev showed amazing abilities. He was about four years old when he independently mastered reading and writing - he watched from the side as his sister Tanya was taught, and learned the entire alphabet. At the age of four he began reading books. Despite the fact that the family lived poorly, they managed to get the talented boy into the Vladivostok Commercial School. However, training was interrupted by the revolution and civil war. Vladivostok is occupied by interventionists. The city is filled with countless Japanese, Americans, Czechs and British. It is not difficult to predict the choice of the son of a Narodnaya Volya member. At the age of 16, Alexander Fadeev became an underground worker, and then a partisan. In 1918, he joined the Bolshevik Party and participated in the underground work of the city party organization. In 1919, fleeing arrest, he fled to the partisans in the Special Communist Detachment. Until 1921, he actively participated in battles with the interventionists and White Guards, held the posts of commissar of the 13th Amur Regiment and commissar of the 8th Amur Rifle Brigade, and was seriously wounded. In the course of his revolutionary activities, Fadeev becomes a close ally of the legendary coastal Bolshevik Lazo. In 1921, he was sent to the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b), and at that time he was not yet twenty years old.

In Petrograd to young Fadeev we'll have to fight again. The Kronstadt rebellion breaks out. The congress delegates participate in its suppression as simple infantry. They are in the front row. On the ice of the Gulf of Finland, Fadeev receives a second wound. In 1922, Alexander Alexandrovich was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. This award was extremely rare in those years and speaks of Fadeev’s great merits and personal courage.

At first, our hero is not attracted to the path of a writer. He enters the Moscow Mining Academy. But in 1926 his novel “Destruction” was published, which gained great popularity. This changes his life. Fadeev becomes a professional writer. His career is going uphill. He becomes one of the leaders of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP). In 1932, after the liquidation of the RAPP, he joined the Organizing Committee for the creation of the Union of Writers of the USSR; from 1934 to 1939 he was deputy of the Organizing Committee of the Union of Writers of the USSR. In 1939 he became a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1944, after the death of V.P. Stavsky at the front, it became a new Secretary General Union of Writers of the USSR. During the Great Patriotic War works as a war correspondent and often goes to the front.

In 1946 it was published new novel"Young Guard", which received the Stalin Prize. Subsequently, heated debates developed around the work, and by order from the very top, Fadeev was forced to rewrite the book. In 1951, a new version appeared, which was twice as large and inferior in artistic terms to its predecessor. Alexander Alexandrovich took this situation hard. At this time he began to drink a lot.

Here it is necessary to say about the repressions with which he is reproached today. In the 1930s he had no real power to repress writers. His biggest sin then was his public approval of the punitive measures of the Stalinist regime. However, who in the Writers' Union did not do this?

In the post-war period, which was relatively “vegetarian,” Alexander Fadeev, as the main literary boss, actually participated in the persecution of Akhmatova and Zoshchenko. It must be understood that criticism of these outstanding cultural figures entailed great trouble, but did not threaten them with arrest. Subsequently, Fadeev helped Zoshchenko get published, which saved him from poverty. A month before Fadeev’s suicide, Akhmatova gave him her book with an autograph: “To the great writer and good man" He helped the ill Platonov and stood up for Zabolotsky. So our hero did not have the most direct connection to repression in the literary community; there is a significant difference between a ban on publications and deprivation of liberty, and even more so of life.

After Stalin's death and Khrushchev's coming to power, Fadeev's hard times. Alexander Alexandrovich and Nikita Sergeevich really did not like each other. Our hero did not accept the thaw. In 1956, he was removed from the post of General Secretary of the USSR Writers' Union and removed from the Central Committee.

The persecution of the writer lasted for three years. Fadeev begins to think about suicide. Subsequently, several versions of his suicide notes were found. In April 1954, he told close friends that he was quitting drinking. The tragic outcome was accelerated by people who sincerely wished the writer well. The few surviving Young Guards arranged a meeting between Fadeev and Khrushchev at the secretary general’s dacha near Moscow. However, there was no reconciliation. Nikita Sergeevich, who had been drinking, began to publicly scold the writer, then graciously offered to have a drink with him. There was a refusal. Khrushchev began to swear even more strongly. In response, the writer called the head of the country a “Trotskyist nit” and left the event. This happened on May 11, and on May 13, Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev shot himself at his dacha. His suicide letter was kept secret, and an offensive obituary was published in Pravda.

The life and work of the writer: myths and facts

60 years ago, on May 13, 1956, the silence of the writer’s village of Peredelkino near Moscow was broken by the roar of a shot - the famous Soviet writer, the former all-powerful chairman of the Union of Writers of the USSR, 54-year-old Alexander Aleksandrovich Fadeev, shot himself with a revolver at his dacha. The writers' plots there are large and none of the neighbors heard the shot. They didn’t even hear him in the house where he lived.

His young son Misha discovered his father who had shot himself when he went up to the writer’s office to call him for dinner. The writer lay on the sofa, covered with pillows, in a pool of blood. On the bedside table lay a letter addressed to the Central Committee of the CPSU. When an investigator from the Odintsovo prosecutor’s office wanted to pick up the letter, he was warned by a KGB officer: “This is not for you.”

Fadeev’s wife, actress Angelina Stepanova, who was in Yugoslavia on tour with the theater, was not told about what happened. She learned about the tragedy only in Kyiv, having bought a newspaper at the airport, which contained a portrait of her husband in a black frame and a message that he had committed suicide while intoxicated. Having later learned about her husband’s suicide letter, she turned to the authorities with a request to give her the opportunity to familiarize herself with it. But she was categorically refused. Stepanova was able to find out about its contents only in 1990, when the letter was published in one of the magazines.

Fadeev did not shoot himself because of drunkenness, as Pravda wrote, although at the end of his life he did drink heavily. However, during the autopsy, experts found no traces of alcohol in his blood. Writer in general last days before his death he was completely sober, which was noted by all his friends and relatives. Moreover, it is known that Fadeev prepared for a long time and carefully to take his own life. He traveled to memorable places, visited old friends, as if saying goodbye to what was dear to him...

His suicide letter addressed to the Central Committee of the CPSU said: “I see no way to continue living, since the art to which I gave my life has been ruined by the self-confident and ignorant leadership of the party, and now cannot be corrected.

The best cadres of literature - in numbers that the royal satraps could not even dream of - were physically exterminated or died thanks to the criminal connivance of those in power; the best people in literature died at a premature age; everything else that was more or less capable of creating true values died before reaching 40–50 years of age.

(...) My life, as a writer, loses all meaning, and with great joy, as a deliverance from this vile existence, where meanness, lies and slander fall upon you, I am leaving this life...”

Was gifted since childhood

Alexander Fadeev was born in the village of Kimry in the Tver region. Father and mother were paramedics. From childhood he grew up as a gifted child. At the age of four he independently mastered reading and writing. He amazed adults with his imagination, writing extraordinary stories and fairy tales. In 1908, the family moved to the South Ussuri region (now Primorsky), where Fadeev spent his childhood and youth. He studied at the Vladivostok Commercial School, but did not complete his studies, deciding to devote himself to revolutionary activities. He joined the RCP(b), became a party agitator, and then joined the Special Communist Detachment of Red Partisans. Participated in hostilities in the Far East and was wounded. His cousin, Vsevolod Sibirtsev, together with Sergei Lazo, was captured by the Japanese and handed over to the White Guards, who burned them alive in the furnace of a steam locomotive. In 1921, as a delegate to the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b), he took part in the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, receiving a second wound. After treatment and demobilization, Fadeev remained in Moscow.

He soon began writing, and after the success of his first novel, Mayhem, he decided to become a professional writer. Fadeev’s next novel, “The Last of Udege,” is also dedicated to the Civil War. Stalin noticed the talented writer and soon Fadeev became chairman of the USSR Writers' Union, a member of the Central Committee, and held many other important positions. He was called the “writers’ minister,” and for almost two decades he actually led literature in the USSR.

In mid-February 1943, after the liberation of Donetsk Krasnodon by Soviet troops, several dozen corpses of members of the underground organization “Young Guard”, tortured by the Nazis, were recovered from the pit of mine No. 5. A few months later, Fadeev’s article “Immortality” was published in Pravda, on the basis of which he later wrote his famous novel “The Young Guard”. He did this on the instructions of Stalin, who, immediately after the article appeared, declared that a book should be written about this feat.

Fuss around the Young Guard

Fadeev himself went to Krasnodon, and soon the novel was published. And then a bad fuss began around the Young Guard. The head of the MGB, Viktor Abakumov, prepared a note for Stalin, which stated that the novel was a falsification. According to St. Petersburg writer Nikolai Konyaev, who studied this topic, this was a provocation of the “authorities.” Of course, there were inaccuracies in the novel; relatives of the victims noticed them and complained. But the fact is that Fadeev did not write a documentary book, but work of art, and therefore he had to figure out a lot himself. However, such a demarche on the part of the state security agencies could be costly even for the influential chairman of the Writers' Union. And then, according to Konyaev, Fadeev was saved by Stalin.

He stated that the novel did not sufficiently reflect the role of the party and instructed Fadeev to rewrite it. Which he did, although in the course of his work he admitted that he was remaking the “Young Guard” into the “old one”. But then the novel received the Stalin Prize. More than one generation grew up and learned patriotism from this book. Soviet people. This was well understood abroad as well. The Parisian newspaper Lettre Française wrote:

"If the history of one civilization and one of its greatest moments are to be expressed by one literary work, then in the USSR “The Young Guard” by Alexander Fadeev could well serve as such a work.”

Bullying colleagues

In 1956, from the rostrum of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, the activities of the leader of Soviet writers were subjected to harsh criticism. Fadeev was removed from the post of chairman of the Union, was not elected a member, but only a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee. Fadeev was directly called one of the perpetrators of repression among Soviet writers. Colleagues began to fiercely persecute Stalin's former favorite. One of them organized an anonymous letter against Fadeev to the Central Audit Commission of the CPSU. The anonymous letter said: “The Central Committee embodies the wisdom and purity of our party. The people see in him their beloved collective leader, whom they will follow into any battle. Every member of the Central Committee must be worthy of this trust and respect of the people. And Fadeev, a member of the Central Committee, is unworthy. Fadeev's drunkenness became a proverb. In the village of Peredelkino, residents call the snack bar “Fadeevskaya”. There is a verse circulating in the Writers' Union:

"Then we see the general,

When he drinks mineral.

When will he take a sip of natural food,

Then we don’t see the general.”

They said about Fadeev that he was the one who “turned over” writers who suffered during the years of repression. However, these slander is refuted by numerous copies of those characteristics, letters and notes that Fadeev wrote to Molotov, Voroshilov, Beria, the USSR Prosecutor General Vyshinsky, to the Main Military Prosecutor's Office with requests to “consider” or “expedite the consideration of the case”, to take into account that the person was “unjustly convicted “or that there was an “excess” when considering the issue.
Letters have been preserved in which he defended writers who unfairly suffered from all kinds of “workings” of that time. He worked hard to allocate a significant amount from the funds of the Union of Writers of the USSR for Zoshchenko, who was left without a penny, showed sincere participation in the fate of many writers unloved by the authorities: Pasternak, Zabolotsky, Lev Gumilyov, and slowly transferred money for Platonov’s treatment to his wife.

Meanwhile, as chairman of the Writers' Union, Fadeev was forced to carry out the “party line” when Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova were persecuted, and therefore had a hard time with such a split, suffered from insomnia, and fell into depression.

Some believe that the direct reason for the shooting was the drama of the writer Ivan Makariev. He was allegedly one of those who was arrested on a warrant allegedly endorsed by Fadeev. When, after Stalin’s death, Makariev returned from the camp to Moscow, it is alleged that he publicly called Fadeev a scoundrel and almost spat in his face, and then hanged himself. However, in fact, Makariev committed suicide in 1958 (i.e., two years after Fadeev), and secondly, he did not hang himself, but opened his veins. And thirdly, the reason for his suicide, as L. Kopelev and R. Orlova testify, was generally different - he drank two thousand rubles of party contributions and was afraid of a “personal matter.”

Fadeev was acutely aware of the accusations and slander against him. He asked many times to be accepted by the party leadership, tried to justify himself, but they did not listen to him. On May 11, 1956, two days before his death, the disgraced writer was nevertheless called to the new leader. In addition to Fadeev, Khrushchev invited several surviving members of the Krasnodon group “Young Guard” to join him. According to V. Ogryzko, it seems that the leader wanted to clarify the role of Tretyakevich, whom Fadeev in his novel brought out under a different name as a traitor. Khrushchev’s interest in Tretyakevich was not accidental. They said that before the war Tretyakevich was friends with Khrushchev’s son. But, according to Valeria Borts, the conversation with Khrushchev did not work out. The temperamental Fadeev at some point lost his temper and called the General Secretary a former Trotskyist. It is clear that the vindictive Khrushchev never forgave the writer for such an attack...

In addition, Fadeev was experiencing an acute creative crisis. He could not finish his last novel, Ferrous Metallurgy, probably feeling that he could no longer create anything bright. Following his last wish to be buried next to his mother, Fadeev was buried in Moscow on Novodevichy Cemetery.

Slander after death

After the collapse of the USSR, Fadeev's novel The Young Guard again became the object of fierce attacks, this time from domestic liberals, as well as Ukrainian nationalists, who sought to destroy or slander all symbols of Soviet patriotism. They began to spit on the exploits of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Alexander Matrosov, and at the same time the Young Guards. And in Ukraine, Bandera’s followers tried to appropriate their immortal feat.

Alexander Fadeev's book was confiscated from stores there.

A falsehood was launched that the “Young Guard” was not a Komsomol, but a nationalist, Bandera organization and was allegedly headed by an OUN functionary, a certain Yevgeny Stakhiv.

In the newspaper Literaturna Ukraina, in an article by Vladimir Pokotylo “Fadeev and the truth. From the notes of a Ukrainian nationalist,” the following was literally written: “In the first days of the German occupation, Bandera marching groups moved to the eastern territories of Ukraine to create centers of struggle for the liberation of Ukraine from fascist hordes. Such a group arrived in Krasnodon. Stakhiv, an assertive and intelligent gang from this group, settled among the Krasnodon residents, found restive daredevils and created a rebel center from them with the slogan “Ukraine without Stalin and Hitler!”

Stakhiv himself, who fled to the United States, later came to Ukraine and announced that Oleg Koshevoy was him.

The provocation was convincingly refuted by Vladimir Minaev in the book “Young Guard”: betrayal again.” Stakhiv, he notes, implemented the instructions of his American patrons, who were interested in “so that in the subsequent war there would be no Young Guards, no Kosmodemyansk and Sailors.” In multinational Krasnodon there was not even the thinnest layer of soil capable of giving birth to Ukrainian nationalism. Thus, among the 72 most active underground workers, 43 people were from Russian families, 11 people were from the families of the former Don Cossack class, 8 had Ukrainian roots, the rest were Belarusians, Armenians, Jews, Moldovans and Azerbaijanis.

In addition, the American puppeteers did not clearly develop the legend for their emissary. And so Stakhiv was confused all the time, misinterpreted himself, and could not even clearly state the facts of his own biography. He insisted that Koshevoy had not died, but had allegedly escaped and was living in America. However, in fact, Stakhiv ended up in the USA, and Oleg Koshevoy did not kneel before the executioners and was executed by the Nazis. And the novel by Alexander Fadeev, on which generations of patriots in our country were raised, despite everything, continues to live...

Special for the Centenary

Russian Soviet writer and public figure, journalist, war correspondent

Alexander Fadeev

Brief biography

Youth

Alexander Fadeev born in the village of Kimry (now a city in the Tver region). He was baptized in the Kimri Intercession Cathedral. From childhood I grew up as a gifted child. He was about four years old when he independently mastered reading and writing - he watched from the side as his sister Tanya was taught, and learned the entire alphabet. From the age of four, he began reading books, amazing adults with his irrepressible imagination, composing the most extraordinary stories and fairy tales. His favorite writers since childhood were Jack London, Mine Reid, Fenimore Cooper.

In 1908, the family moved to the South Ussuri region (now Primorsky), and in 1912 settled in the village of Chuguevka, where Fadeev spent his childhood and youth.

From 1912 to 1918, Fadeev studied at the Vladivostok Commercial School, but did not complete his studies, deciding to devote himself to revolutionary activities.

Revolutionary activities

While still studying at the Vladivostok Commercial School, he carried out orders from the underground Bolshevik committee.

In 1918 he joined the RCP (b) and adopted a party pseudonym Bulyga. Became a party agitator.

In 1919 he joined the Special Communist Detachment of Red Partisans.

In 1919-1921 he took part in hostilities in the Far East and was wounded. Held positions: commissar of the 13th Amur Regiment and commissar of the 8th Amur Rifle Brigade.

In 1921-1922 he studied at the Moscow Mining Academy.

In 1921, as a delegate to the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b), he took part in the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, and was wounded for the second time. After treatment and demobilization, Fadeev remained in Moscow.

Creation

Beginning of literary activity

Alexander Fadeev wrote his first serious work, the story “Spill,” in 1922-1923. In 1925-1926, while working on the novel “Destruction,” he decided to become a professional writer. “Destruction” brought fame and recognition to the young writer, but after this work he could no longer pay attention to literature alone, becoming a prominent literary leader and public figure. One of the leaders of RAPP.

Further literary work

Action early works- the novels “Destruction” and “The Last of Udege” take place in the Ussuri region. The issues of “Destruction” relate to issues of party leadership; the novel shows the class struggle and the formation of Soviet power. The main characters are red partisans, communists (for example, Levinson). Fadeev’s next novel, “The Last of Udege” (parts 1-4, 1929-1941, unfinished), is also dedicated to the Civil War.

Fadeev is also known for a number of essays and articles devoted to the development of literature in the conditions of socialist realism.

The “Minister of Writers,” as Fadeev was called, actually led literature in the USSR for almost two decades. He had almost no time or energy left for creativity. The last novel, “Ferrous Metallurgy,” remained unfinished. The writer planned to create a fundamental work of 50-60 author's sheets. As a result, for posthumous publication in Ogonyok, it was possible to collect 8 chapters onto 3 printed sheets from the drafts.

Novel "The Young Guard". Truth and fiction

Fadeev took the idea for his book from the book “Hearts of the Brave” by V. G. Lyaskovsky and M. Kotov, published in 1944. In 1945, immediately after the end of the Great Patriotic War, Fadeev sat down to write a novel about the Krasnodon underground organization “Young Guard”, operating in territory occupied by Nazi Germany, many of whose members were killed by the Nazis.

In mid-February 1943, after the liberation of Donetsk Krasnodon by Soviet troops, several dozen corpses of teenagers tortured by the Nazis, who were members of the underground organization “Young Guard” during the occupation, were extracted from the pit of mine No. 5 located near the city. And a few months later in “Pravda” “Alexander Fadeev’s article “Immortality” was published, on the basis of which the novel “The Young Guard” was written a little later

The book was first published in 1946. Fadeev was sharply criticized for the fact that the “leading and directing” role of the Communist Party was not clearly expressed in the novel and received severe criticism in the newspaper Pravda, the organ of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in fact from Stalin himself.

Fadeev explained:

I was not writing a true history of the Young Guard, but a novel that not only allows, but even presupposes artistic fiction.

Nevertheless, the writer took into account the wishes, and in 1951 the second edition of the novel “The Young Guard” was released. In it, Fadeev, having seriously revised the book, paid more attention in the plot to the leadership of the underground organization by the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Fadeev joked bitterly at the time when he told his friends: “I’m remaking the Young Guard into the old one...”.

The film “The Young Guard” was shot according to the first edition, but completely remaking the film (which also underwent certain edits) was much more difficult than rewriting the book.

Until the end of the 1980s, the novel “The Young Guard” was perceived as the history of the organization ideologically approved by the party, and any other interpretation of events was impossible. The novel was included in the USSR curriculum and was well known to any schoolchild of the 1950-1980s.

Social and political activities

For many years, Fadeev led writers' organizations at various levels. In 1926-1932 he was one of the organizers and ideologists of RAPP.

In the Union of Writers of the USSR:

In 1932, he was a member of the Organizing Committee for the creation of the Union of Writers of the USSR after the liquidation of the RAPP;
1934-1939 - deputy chairman of the organizing committee;
1939-1944 - secretary;
1946-1954 - general secretary and chairman of the board;
1954-1956 - secretary of the board.

Vice-President of the World Peace Council (since 1950). Member of the CPSU Central Committee (1939-1956); At the 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956) he was elected a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee. Deputy of the USSR Supreme Council of the 2nd-4th convocations (since 1946) and the RSFSR Supreme Council of the 3rd convocation.

Colonel (1942), brigade commissar (1941).

In 1942-1944, Fadeev worked as editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta, was the organizer of the October magazine and was a member of its editorial board.

During the Great Patriotic War, Fadeev was a war correspondent for the newspaper Pravda and the Sovinformburo. In January 1942, the writer visited the Kalinin Front, collecting materials for a report in the most dangerous area. On January 14, 1942, Fadeev published an article in the newspaper Pravda, “Monster Destroyers and People-Creators,” where he described his impressions of what he saw during the war.

Public position. Recent years

Standing at the head of the Union of Writers of the USSR, Alexander Fadeev implemented the decisions of the party and government in relation to his colleagues: M. M. Zoshchenko, A. A. Akhmatova, A. P. Platonov. In 1946, after the report of A. A. Zhdanov, which actually destroyed Zoshchenko and Akhmatova as writers, Fadeev was among those who carried out this sentence.

In 1949, Alexander Fadeev became one of the authors of a programmatic editorial article in the Pravda newspaper entitled “About one anti-patriotic group of theater critics”(?), This article served as the beginning of a campaign that became known as “The Fight against Cosmopolitanism.” In the fall of 1949, he participated in the persecution in the press of Boris Eikhenbaum and other Leningrad State University employees.

But in 1948 he tried to allocate a significant amount from the funds of the Union of Writers of the USSR for M. M. Zoshchenko, who was left without a livelihood. Fadeev showed sincere participation in the fate of many writers disliked by the authorities: B. L. Pasternak, N. A. Zabolotsky, L. N. Gumilyov, several times donated money for the treatment of A. P. Platonov to his wife.

Having a hard time experiencing such a split, he suffered from insomnia and fell into depression. IN recent years Fadeev became addicted to alcohol and went into long binges. He underwent treatment at the Barvikha sanatorium.

Ilya Ehrenburg wrote about him:

Fadeev was a brave but disciplined soldier; he never forgot the prerogatives of the commander-in-chief.

Fadeev did not accept the Khrushchev thaw. In 1956, from the rostrum of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, the activities of the leader of Soviet writers were harshly criticized by M. A. Sholokhov. Fadeev was not elected a member, but only a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee. Fadeev was directly called one of the perpetrators of repression among Soviet writers.

After the XX Congress of the CPSU internal conflict Fadeev's situation escalated to the limit. He confessed to his old friend Yuri Libedinsky: “My conscience torments me. It’s hard to live, Yura, with bloody hands.”

Suicide

On May 13, 1956, Alexander Fadeev shot himself with a revolver at his dacha in Peredelkino. The obituary listed alcoholism as the official cause of suicide. In fact, two weeks before his suicide, A. A. Fadeev stopped drinking, “about a week before suicide he began to prepare for it, wrote letters to different people” (Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov). In accordance with the writer's last will (to be buried next to his mother), he was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery (site No. 1).

Fadeev’s suicide letter, addressed to the CPSU Central Committee, was seized by the KGB and published for the first time only in 1990:

I don’t see the opportunity to live any longer, since the art to which I gave my life has been ruined by the self-confident and ignorant leadership of the party and now cannot be corrected.<…>My life, as a writer, loses all meaning, and with great joy, as a deliverance from this vile existence, where meanness, lies and slander fall upon you, I am leaving this life. The last hope was to at least tell this to the people who rule the state, but for the past 3 years, despite my requests, they cannot even accept me. I ask you to bury me next to my mother.

A. A. Fadeev’s suicide letter to the CPSU Central Committee. May 13, 1956
(News of the Central Committee of the CPSU. - 1990. - No. 10. - P. 147-151)

Researchers point to the strange circumstances surrounding the writer's suicide.

Personal life

Fadeev's parents, paramedics by profession, were professional revolutionaries by lifestyle. Father - Alexander Ivanovich Fadeev (1862-1917), mother - Antonina Vladimirovna Kunz (1873-1954).

Fadeev's first wife was Valeria Anatolyevna Gerasimova, the second (since 1936) was Angelina Iosifovna Stepanova, People's Artist of the USSR, who raised two children with Fadeev: Alexander and Mikhail. In addition, in 1943, the common daughter of Fadeev and M.I. Aliger was born: Maria Aleksandrovna Fadeeva-Makarova-Enzensberger (committed suicide on 10/06/1992).

Awards

two Orders of Lenin (01/31/1939; 12/23/1951)
Order of the Red Banner (1922)
medals
Stalin Prize, first degree (1946) - for the novel “The Young Guard”,
Lenin Komsomol Prize (1970 - posthumously) - for the novel “The Young Guard”.

Memory

Memorial plaque on the building of the cultural monument “Big Siberian Hotel” (Bashkortostan, Ufa, Karl Marx Street, 14 / Kommunisticheskaya Street, 43), where Alexander Fadeev performed on April 12, 1932

They are named after Fadeev.

Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev- Russian Soviet writer and public figure.

Was born December 11 (24), 1901 in the village of Kimry. He was a talented child; from the age of 4 he read books and was distinguished by his indefatigable imagination, writing fairy tales and unusual stories. In 1908, his family moved to the Primorsky Territory, where Alexander spent his childhood and youth.

Since 1912, he studied at the Commercial School in Vladivostok, but left his studies for revolutionary activities. He became not just a member of the RCP(b), but also a party agitator. Since 1919, he took part in hostilities in the Far East. Having been wounded, he came to Moscow for treatment. A. Fadeev’s first serious work was the story “Spill,” written in the early 1920s. In 1925, while working on the novel "Destruction", he decided to seriously engage in literary activity. It was this novel that brought him fame and recognition.

The popular novel “The Young Guard”, dedicated to the underground organization of the same name. In 1946, the book was published and was immediately criticized for the lack of a clear leadership role of the Communist Party.

During the war years, Fadeev worked as a war correspondent for the Sovinformburo, as well as for the newspaper Pravda.

Due to the fact that A. Fadeev was the head of the Writers' Union, he had to carry out the decisions of the party in relation to objectionable writers. So, it was he who, on the orders of Zhdanov, actually destroyed the outstanding writers Zoshchenko and Akhmatova. Then he tried to help them somehow. Because of this dual situation, Fadeev often fell into depression, which he drowned out with alcohol.

Alexander Fadeev - talented writer, who gave the “Young Guard” to Russian-language literature. This novel about the feat of young communists became the most famous work writer, but Fadeev has several more worthy works. In addition, during his lifetime Fadeev was known as the head of the USSR Writers' Union and the editor-in-chief of a literary newspaper. Unfortunately, in the writer’s biography, despite the love and respect of readers, not everything went smoothly.

Childhood and youth

The future writer was born on December 24, 1901 in a city called Kimry (in the Tver region). Fadeev’s father, Alexander Ivanovich, became interested in revolutionary ideas in his youth, as a result of which he quickly came to the attention of the authorities and was forced to constantly hide and change his place of residence. So, one day he ended up in St. Petersburg, where, after a series of ordeals and imprisonment for a political article, he met Antonina Kunz, whom he later married.

Alexander Fadeev was a long-awaited and desired child. The parents worked on reading and writing with both their son and their eldest daughter Tatyana. Fadeev also had a younger brother, Vladimir. Little Sasha learned to read early and soon spent all his free time with volumes. And after some time, the boy was already impressing his parents with his first fairy tales and stories written independently.

Parents also tried to instill in their children respect for work. The children helped their mother with housework, knew how to sew on buttons and take care of the garden. Later, the writer will remember this time with warmth.

In 1910, Alexander’s parents sent him to Vladivostok to live with his aunt. There the young man entered a commercial school and soon became the best student on the course. It was there that Fadeev first published his own samples of writing in a student newspaper and even received awards for stories and poems. And in order to earn money for food and help his aunt, Alexander Fadeev worked as a tutor, helping lagging students in learning to read and write.

Despite his academic success, Fadeev never received a diploma: in 1918, the young man joined the party revolutionaries and became a member of the underground Bolshevik group. Alexander Fadeev even took part in skirmishes with the White Guards and was wounded during the uprising in Kronstadt. The revolutionary went to Moscow for treatment, where he remained to live.

Literature

Alexander Fadeev’s first serious story was called “Spill”. Although the work was published, it did not arouse the interest of readers. But Fadeev’s next attempt at writing - the story “Destruction” - became significant for Alexander Alexandrovich.

The plot of this work is built, of course, around the events civil war and the confrontation between “red” and “white”. The story was published in 1923 and immediately brought popularity to the aspiring writer. At the same time, Alexander Fadeev, inspired by his first glory, decided to devote his life to creativity and become a professional writer.

The next big thing literary work Alexandra Fadeeva will become the main work in the writer’s life. We are talking about the novel “The Young Guard,” which Alexander Alexandrovich began working on immediately after the end of the Great Patriotic War.

It is known that Alexander Alexandrovich was inspired by the work of journalists Vladimir Lyaskovsky and Mikhail Kotov entitled “Hearts of the Brave.” This book, like the subsequent novel “The Young Guard,” tells about the feat of Soviet teenagers who were not afraid to create an underground partisan organization and resist the occupying German army.

In 1946, The Young Guard was published. Readers greeted the novel with delight, but the party leadership remained dissatisfied with the book. The fact is that, in the opinion of the authorities, Alexander Fadeev in the pages of “The Young Guard” did not sufficiently emphasize the importance of the Communist Party in the life of the book’s heroes and in their feat. The writer was offended by such remarks; Fadeev emphasized that he was not writing a documentary work, but fiction novel in which fiction takes place.

However, the novel had to be remade. In 1951, the second version of The Young Guard was published, carefully edited and filled with communist slogans and outright propaganda of the regime. The second version of the book was considered ideologically correct, and The Young Guard was even included in the school curriculum.

In parallel with his creative activity, Alexander Fadeev worked in the Writers' Union, and since 1946 he headed it. In addition, over the years, the writer was a member of the CPSU Central Committee and a deputy of the USSR Supreme Council.

In 1946, Alexander Fadeev supported the well-known resolution, which in fact outlawed creativity. In addition, as chairman of the writers' union, Fadeev personally had to ensure that the texts of these writers were not published.

And two years later, Alexander Fadeev raised funds to help Mikhail Zoshchenko, who after that very decision was left penniless, and Andrei Platonov, who needed money for treatment. Such deals with conscience haunted the writer’s soul: Fadeev began to drink heavily, suffered from depression and insomnia, and was even treated “for a nervous illness” in one of the Soviet sanatoriums. Unfortunately, the writer’s bad addiction ultimately led to his death.

Personal life

Alexander Fadeev was married twice. The first choice of the writer was Valeria Gerasimova, also a writer. The personal life of Fadeev and Gerasimova did not work out, and this marriage soon broke up.

In 1936, Fadeev married for the second time. The writer’s second wife, artist Angelina Stepanova, gave Fadeev sons Alexander and Mikhail.

It is also known that the writer had a daughter, Maria, whose mother was the journalist and poetess Margarita Aliger.

Death

The writer's life ended tragically. On May 13, 1956, Alexander Alexandrovich shot himself. Fadeev was found in his country house in Peredelkino. The reason that pushed the writer to take a terrible step will unofficially be called alcohol addiction. It is also known that Alexander Fadeev began to prepare for his death a few days in advance: he put his papers in order, wrote his last letters.

One of them - a letter to the CPSU Central Committee - was made public only in 1990. In it, the writer accused the party leadership of the fact that art, in particular literature, was ruined by censorship, lies and window dressing. And this, according to Fadeev, deprives him of the meaning of life and self-respect as the leader of the writers' union.

In the same letter, Alexander Alexandrovich asked to be buried next to his mother’s grave. This request was fulfilled: the writer’s grave is located at the Moscow Novodevichy cemetery.

Subsequently, assumptions and speculation related to the death of Alexander Fadeev repeatedly appeared in the press. There were people who were sure that the writer was killed. However, not a single version has received official confirmation.

The novel "The Young Guard" was subsequently removed from school curriculum, however, this book still takes pride of place on the shelves of reading enthusiasts next to the works of other writers describing the realities of that time:, Mikhail Zoshchenko,.

Bibliography

1923 - “Spill”
1926 - “Destruction”
1929 - “The High Road of Proletarian Literature”
1929-1941 - “The Last of Udege”
1945 - “Young Guard”
“Ferrous Metallurgy” (the novel is not finished)