Aleksandr Tvardovskii
Title
Aleksandr Tvardovskii
Subtitle
Memory and Truth in the Soviet Union
Price
€ 171,00 excl. VAT
ISBN
9789633867471
Format
Hardback
Number of pages
506
Language
English
Publication date
Dimensions
15.6 x 23.4 cm
Imprint
Table of Contents
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Figures
Preface
Introduction
Childhood and Youth
Aleksandr’s political beliefs
Aleksandr leaves home
Precarious Existence in Smolensk
Early struggles
The family crisis
Creativity and Danger
Strana Muraviia
The Literary Terror
A Correspondent at War
The German war
In Moscow
At the front again
Vasilii Tiorkin
After the War
The postwar Soviet Union
Tvardovskii’s integration into postwar society
Literary life after the war
Party control
Tvardovskii’s post-war experience
Novyi mir, 1950–54
Settling into his mission
Agricultural policy
Stalin’s death
Achievement and Humiliation: Grossman’s Stalingrad
The novel’s tortuous publication
The stormy aftermath
Tvardovskii’s First Resignation
Interregnum: Tvardovskii’s Personal and Public Crisis
Political changes
Simonov’s Novyi mir
Tvardovskii on course to return to Novyi mir
The Tragedy of Aleksandr Fadeev 233
Tvardovskii’s Return to Novyi mir
Why was Tvardovskii able to return?
The new atmosphere at Novyi mir
Tvardovskii’s program: Overcoming trauma and collecting memories
Tvardovskii’s own convictions

Geoffrey Hosking

Aleksandr Tvardovskii

Memory and Truth in the Soviet Union

Aleksandr Tvardovskii was not only one of the finest, most popular and most important poets of his epoch, but also the editor of Novyi mir, the most prominent Soviet literary journal of the postwar period until the 1970s. This book is a detailed biography of the writer and journal editor who probably changed the literary culture of the Soviet Union more than any other person in the two decades after Stalin's death. Geoffrey Hosking shows how Tvardovskii gradually evolved from being an ardent Stalinist who renounced his own so-called “kulak” family to becoming a convinced advocate of tolerance, an all-human morality, civil rights, and free literary creativity.
By giving a balanced account of his strengths and weaknesses, his achievements and failures, the author succeeds in giving the fullest picture available anywhere of a controversial man who turns out to be more complex than he has been portrayed so far. To understand him better is to understand why the Soviet intelligentsia changed so fundamentally in the USSR’s final decades, a change that helps to explain the rise of Gorbachev twenty years later. The study—which includes an in-depth analysis of Tvardovskii’s major works—also helps to better understand the fate of culture under an authoritarian regime and the intricacies of the struggle against censorship.
Author

Geoffrey Hosking

Geoffrey Hosking OBE, FR HistSoc, was Professor of Russian History, School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London from 1984–2007. He had previously taught at the Universities of Essex, Wisconsin (Madison), Cambridge and Cologne. He was BBC Reith Lecturer in 1988.