The directory «Plots»

Kozhevnikov (Кожевников) Vadim Mikhailovich
(1909—1984)

Russian writer. Vadim Kozhevnikov was born in the Siberian town of Narym, Tomsk Province, to the family of a political exile in 1909. He came to Moscow in 1925, where he published his first collection of short stories and graduated from Moscow University, majoring in literature.

Like many other Soviet (and not only Soviet) writers, Kozhevnikov began his literary career as a journalist. In strict accordance with what the Soviet authorities prescribed for the writers' craft, he repeatedly made trips to major construction sites and industrial plants. His stories and essays described work at construction sites and factories as creative efforts or heroic feats. This was the main idea underlying Socialist Realism, the official doctrine in literature and the arts under the Soviet regime.

During the Second World War Kozhevnikov was a frontline journalist and later a war correspondent for the daily Pravda, the Communist Party mouthpiece.

While excitement was definitely lacking in industrial themes, the war provided plenty of thrilling events to write about.

Kozhevnikov first came to be widely known for his short story March-April (1942) about paratroopers operating in the enemy rear. The piece also included a rather naive love story. However, most of his works about the war were not thrillers, but described the day-to-day efforts of soldiers toiling towards achieving victory.

In 1949 Kozhevnikov became editor-in-chief of the so-called "stout" monthly Znamya, a major literary journal, which he would head for the rest of his life. Under his leadership, the literary monthly became one of the dullest periodicals in a time when other "stout" monthlies, such as Novy Mir, published new and refreshingly exciting authors. Kozhevnikov displayed extraordinary vigilance; in particular, in 1960, he sent a manuscript by the brilliant writer Vasily Grossman, who wrote the truth about the war, to the Central Committee with a warning that it was ideologically dangerous. As a result, Grossman was persecuted, typescript copies of the novel seized, and the book was eventually published abroad.

Meanwhile, Kozhevnikov continued to publish his own fairly mediocre stuff. His best-known novels were Introducing Baluyev (1960) and The Shield and the Sword (1965). The former was about a construction site chief, and the latter about an undercover agent of the NKVD in Germany posing as a high-ranking German military but actually loyally serving his beloved homeland, the Soviet Union.

The writer also penned a number of plays and screenplays. Movies after his works were relatively popular among the mass viewer (mostly owing to the fact that the actors in them were first-rate).

Kozhevnikov relentlessly fought against every manifestation of freedom during the Thaw and continued to advocate a socialism that had a distinctly Stalinist ring to it. He churned out a steady stream of critical and other articles in which he defended his views.

With the demise of the Thaw, Kozhevnikov came into his own. He was awarded the State Prize and the title of Hero of Socialist Labor in the 1970s.

His collected works were published in a handsome nine-volume edition posthumously, but his death could not have been more timely. He died in Moscow in 1984. Mikhail Gorbachev was about to take over and initiate momentous changes in the country. Everything Kozhevnikov stood for would be called into question, and Socialist Realism above all would be discarded as a bankrupt doctrine.

USSR, 1989, Vadim Kozhevnikov