The directory «Plots»
Chukovsky (×óêîâñêèé) Korney Ivanovich
(1882—1969)
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky is probably the most popular poet for children in the Russian language. His poems «Doctor Aybolit», «Giant Roach», «Crocodile» and «Wash'em'clean» have been favourites with many generations of Russophone children. He also was an influential literature critic and essayist.
His real name was Nikolay Vasilyevich Korneychukov, which he humorously reworked into his now familiar pen-name while working as a journalist in Odessa News in 1901. He was an illegitimate son of Ekaterina Osipovna Korneychukova by Emmanuil Solomonovich Levinson (grandfather of mathematician Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin). He studied in Odessa gymnasium, with Zeev Jabotinsky as a classmate. Later Nikolay was expelled from his gymnasium for his "low origin". He had to get his secondary school and university diplomas by correspondence.
In 1903-05, he lived as a correspondent in London, where he learnt to admire the verses of Walt Whitman, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Back in Russia, Chukovsky started translating from English and published several analyses of contemporary European authors, which brought him in touch with leading personalities of Russian literature and secured the friendship of Alexander Blok. His influence on Russian literary society of 1890s is immortalized by satirical verses of Sasha Cherny Korney Belinsky (allusion on the famous critic Vissarion Belinsky). Later the publications of the time was published in the books «From Chekhov to Our Days» (1908), «Critique stories» (1911), «Faces and masks» (1914). He also published a satirical magazine «Signal» (1905-1906) and was arrested for six months for anti-government publications.
It was at that period that Chukovsky produced his first fantasies for children. As the 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica put it, "their clockwork rhythms and air of mischief and lightness in effect dispelled the plodding stodginess that had characterized prerevolutionary children's poetry". Subsequently, they were adapted for theatre and animated films, with Chukovsky as one of collaborators. Sergei Prokofiev and other composers even adapted some of his poems for opera and ballet. His works were popular with the emigre children as well, as Vladimir Nabokov's complimentary letter to Chukovsky attests.
During the Soviet period, Chukovsky edited the complete works of Nikolay Nekrasov and published «From Two to Five» (1933), a popular guidebook to the language of children. As his invaluable diaries attest, Chukovsky used his popularity to help the authors persecuted by the regime including Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Alexander Galich and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He was the only Soviet writer who officially congratulated Boris Pasternak on his having been awarded of the Nobel Prize. His daughter Lydia Chukovskaya is remembered as a lifelong companion and secretary of the poet Anna Akhmatova.
For his life-time works on Nekrasov he got D.Sci in philology, Lenin Prize (1962, for his book, «Mastery of Nekrasov») and an honorary doctorate of Oxford University in 1962.
Russia, 1993, Wash'em'clean
Russia, 1993, Big Cockroach
Russia, 1993, The Buzzer Fly
Russia, 1993, Doctor Aybolit
Russia, 1993, Barmalei
USSR, 1982, Korney Chukovsky
Russia, 1993.02.25, 
Moskow. The Buzzer Fly and Crocodil
Russia, 2007.03.31, Moskow. 125th Birth Anniv of Korney Chukovsky
USSR, 1982.03.31, Moskow. Birth Centenary of Chukovsky
Russia, 2004, 
Actor Rolan Bikov, film «Aybolit-66»
Russia, 2007, 125th Birth Anniversary of Korney Chukovsky
USSR, 1960, 
Characters from children's book and pupil
