Alexander Fadeiev
(AA Bulyga; Kimry, 1901-Moscow, 1956) Russian novelist best known for his novel The Young Guard (1946) and for his good relations with the Soviet state.The son of poor peasants, he studied in Vladivostok among many hardships.At the age of seventeen, he entered the ranks of the revolutionary movement, took part in the civil war and fought against Admiral Kolchak alongside the Bolshevik guerrillas; in 1921 he participated in the assault on Kronstadt, defended by anarchist sailors.
In 1926 one of his most notable novels appeared, Defeat , a narrative of an episode of guerrilla warfare.In it, Fadeiev introduced for the first time characters who would later reappear in subsequent works; the heroes of this author are rough, enthusiastic and generous village boys who romantically fight and risk their lives in favor of a great ideal of justice, admitted without discussion and perhaps without a clear understanding of its scope.In the work cited, an intellectual, first by mistake and then consciously, betrays his companions; the guerrilla group is attacked by the enemy and annihilated; but such a defeat hints at the hope of the final victory.
The action of The Last of the Uhdegs , a novel longer than the previous one, takes place in the Far East; Along with the story of a bourgeois young man and girl attracted to communism, there is a naturalistic description of the life of the Uhdegs, a lineage currently almost extinct in the Ussur region and whose customs give rise to situations of contrast between the community.and the individual.
The Young Guard (1946) closely follows the theme of The defeat , whose episode takes us back to the time of the Second World War: the The same romantic, enthusiastic and immature boys are betrayed by a companion, a young intellectual, and, captive to the Germans, are sentenced to death.
Fadeiev became the regime's most prominent writer and enjoyed great popularity among the Russian Communists.A member of the Central Committee of the Party, he was general secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers between 1947 and 1954, and chaired the commission of the Stalin prizes for Art and Literature.However, he fell out of favor after the dictator's death.At the 20th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Scholochov attacked the authors of the Stalin era who had established themselves thanks to their political merits and not because of true genius or originality.Fadeiev, however, appeared again on the Central Committee, but only as a "delegate member", and was replaced as president of the Writers' Union: his fortune, then, was clearly coming to an end.Undermined by chronic alcoholism, he had long since abandoned his literary activity.
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