The poet's daughter: dad was very offended that the people altered his "Dugout"
There are poems that seem to have always existed. So natural and just splashing into the songs. It was as if someone had spotted them in heaven. And then just recorded at the right time.
War is the very time, on the edge, four steps from death, when the lines come by themselves.
“... And the accordion sings to me in the dugout about your smile and eyes,” is a personal letter from a husband to his wife, which no one else should have read. And which became a legend. The main song of the war.
Natalya Surkova, daughter of the poet Alexei Surkov, talks about her mother, father, the Zemlyanka, the Song Museum, the Oscar and unquenchable love...
Front Editorial Board.
"To you, my sun," is written on the back of a simple soldier's triangle. This letter, consisting of four quatrains, of 16 lines, was addressed to his beloved wife, to the deep rear, to the evacuation. The wife with whom he has lived for two decades. “Fire is beating in a cramped stove ...”
The author is almost an elderly man, the same age as the century, he is in his fifth decade, he fought in the Civil, in the Polish campaign, in the Finnish, has military awards. Writer, poet, journalist. He went through a lot and experienced a lot, and his life has already exceeded its peak. On the very day, November 27, 1941, when he could have died. But he remained alive. To write "Dugout".
Natalya Alekseevna Surkova sorts through old photographs. He chooses the words set out, probably, in numerous interviews hundreds of times.
- Father, a war correspondent for a front-line newspaper, came near Istra to collect another material. German tanks broke through to Moscow not where they were expected - along Volokolamka, but precisely here, along an unprotected road. Ours, several people, including my father, got stuck in a dugout surrounded by the Nazis. Three machine guns fired at them point-blank. One of those who were then with his father managed to suppress machine guns with grenades. They began to get out to ours, one of the young helped their father, it was difficult for him because of his age ...
In the year of the Battle of Moscow, winter fell suddenly, covering the blood and scraps of twisted metal with snow. They made their way through the transparent forest along the minefield. At a distance of four steps from one another. Such was the rule that if one blows up, the other has a chance to survive. “Father then said:“ To death - four steps. His entire overcoat was cut with fragments. Some events in life cannot be told in prose. How to describe the endless machine-gun fire? Homesickness? The agony of the November battle? Only love is always stronger than death. It does not contain the pathos of heroic articles and the falsity of official propaganda. Only love. And this letter flew to the distant Tatar Chistopol, where at that moment the family of Alexei Surkov, his wife and two children were. “I am warm in a cold dugout from MY unquenchable love” - this was written in the original.
Repressed song
Green eyes and curly hair, half-Latvian Sonechka Krevs. “Dugout” had already been heard, and some well-wisher approached her and sarcastically remarked: “Do you know, Sofya Antonovna, that your husband dedicated this poem to a certain Krevs?” Mom, laughing, answered: “Let him initiate, I know her.” But that was all later. “... On the eve of the new year, 1942, the composer Konstantin Listov came to visit, stuck - give me new poems. “I don’t have any poems,” said the father. In the end, he remembered that somewhere a draft of his letter to his wife was preserved, and with clear conscience I rewrote this personal poem for a friend, as I was sure that it would not fit anywhere anyway. Listov composed an unpretentious melody. Blanter later wrote another, absolutely marvelous "Dugout". But for some reason she didn't remember. Everyone sang Listov.”
Sonechka Krevs. Alexey Surkov dedicated this song to his beloved wife.
The film "The Defeat of the Nazi Troops near Moscow", in which Surkov's "Song of the Defenders of Moscow" sounded, was awarded the Oscar. It was the first Soviet film awarded by the American Film Academy, Bondarchuk's "War and Peace", which is also about war and also about love, will be filmed only twenty years later. Directly, the very song "Dugout" was first recorded by Lidia Ruslanova, on a disc at a speed of 76 rpm./sec. In the second voice to the militant and patriotic “Get up, huge country” - a quiet whisper of prayer through the frozen fields near Moscow ...
I will still go through these four steps to reach you. Reach out, come back... Sake. Decay song. An unexpected verdict was announced. Treacherous four steps. Yes, you should be shot for that! How can you think about the woman you love when the country is in danger?
How can you not think about the woman you love when the country is on fire? Of course, you can ban poetry, but you can't ban the thoughts of ordinary soldiers in dugouts cut by shrapnel... And the whole country sang the song. The circulation of the record was urgently destroyed. Its authors were saved only by the fact that both were at the front. “Who gave the order is unknown,” says Natalya Surkova. “But non-professionals did the work - the source of the recording remained.” Sources do not burn. Although the main character herself did not save that historical letter of her husband. “Mom was a careful person. You never know ... We returned from the evacuation in 1943, brother Alyosha heard his father's song on the radio, and my mother admitted to us that these lines were dedicated to her.
“I’ll look into your eyes, as if into the green of the sea ...”
“The story of parental love is in father's lyrics,” says Natalya Alekseevna Surkova. - Everything that he wanted to tell his mother, he told her in his poetry. Dad was very offended that the listeners changed the words of his song: “In a cold dugout, I am warm from YOUR unquenchable love.” After all, initially it was about his feelings. They helped him survive. But my mother laughed: “These are the people, Alyosha, I corrected you.”
Someday, the history of countless and inhuman wars of the 20th century will be written in love stories. Not battles and battles, not dotted lines of troop movement on maps, not signatures on surrender agreements, but piercing poems.
About fidelity and faith, about the hope of meeting soon.
- My father had a straightforward Russian character. Very solid and as if descended from Russian fairy tales. A hero who overcame impossible obstacles, loyal, loving. Hungry - he still releases the pike into the water to save her life. This is about my father. Mom was different. More capricious, wayward, spoiled. And her green eyes are exactly like those of Scarlett. Oh, Hara! Oh, she was a real writer's wife. You need to be able to do this - to take place as the poet's wife. Not everyone succeeds, the same fatal relationship between Simonov and Serova rather confirms the rule. Read Simonov's poem "If God sends us to paradise after death with his power" - and you will understand a lot. They were our neighbors, and Serov's black Buick loomed in the yard all the time like a black beetle. But Simonov was a whole generation younger than dad, and it was a completely different generation, different relationships, different lyrics. My father is from an era of idealistic realists who tried to build a heaven on earth, a society of justice, equality and love. Mom and dad lived together for 60 years and all this time they were closed only to each other. Now, at 73, I understand that I was probably not the most beloved child. They didn't tease me. Dad needed mom. Mom allowed everything. We had a housekeeper, a simple village woman was hired at the dacha for this purpose. A beautician and a manicurist came to the house - to mom, dad opened the door for them and shouted deep into the apartment: “Sonechka, they came to you from the society to fight the inexorable mother nature!”
They returned from the evacuation in the 43rd. There was nothing left in the old apartment - the marauders opened the door, took everything out, they could not drag only the old piano through the openings. So he stood in the middle of an empty room. Batteries burst, the corridor was covered with ice. We slept in the kitchen - where there is gas and heat. The whole apartment was filled with books. The iron bed was covered with plywood and everyone lay down together, side by side. My father still wrote to my mother from the front. People's love finally rehabilitated the "Dugout". Surkov became accepted at the top. He was appointed editor-in-chief of Ogonyok. They gave expensive coated paper to publish an international-level magazine. Gathered at home by the entire editorial board. They argued in the evenings and nights, watched the foreign press - to match. “On the anniversary of Akhmatova, no one remembered her father, and it was he who first published it after a long break. After that, he was summoned by Stalin. Father told how the leader of the peoples asked: “Do you, as the editor-in-chief, really think that this poet is worth publishing?” (I was surprised that Stalin called Akhmatova a poet, which means he knew for sure that Anna Andreevna could not stand the word “poetess”) . To which my dad replied: “Yes, I think it’s necessary.” Sometimes directness is better than cunning. Stalin did not object to him. Later, her father, as an editor, published her first little book, so green. But he could not persuade anyone to write introduction everyone was afraid. And he himself, as the compiler of it, could not write it. Therefore, in this thin collection there is no preface at all. Only the final word of the father.
Surkov lured Isakovsky and Tvardovsky to Vnukovo, to the new writers' dachas. Igor Ilyinsky opened an American tennis court. Elegantly caroused. They did not want to go to Peredelkino, to the classic writers' places, noticing that all squabbles there are passed on in the third generation. “Father and his friends fled from all the squabbles to a clean forest. But these were not government dachas. They even built the road there with their own money. I remember those times when an antediluvian steam train still went to Vnukovo. Then, in the 70s, eminent Soviet poets were already very old, sat on diets according to the prescriptions of doctors, but still arranged periodically “zigzags”. It was called the Sabbath. When you can eat everything. Most often they gathered with us, Orlova and Alexandrov came, a feast rolled up in a mountain, in New Year sledding. And they jokingly came up with all sorts of offensive songs about Peredelkino. By the way, they also composed about themselves, to the motive “Where are you, where are you, brown eyes” - “And under the Shchipachev tree we sometimes remember Isakovsky, Tvardovsky and Surkov places.”
After Surkov's death, his wife Sofya Antonovna secretly sold the dacha. She began to give up very quickly, not physically, physically, perhaps, she would have reached a hundred ...
“We learned about the sale of the dacha by my mother six months later, when it was no longer possible to do anything ... Dad was buried, opposite was Obraztsov's dacha, the musicians were the guards on it, and our whole house was visible from their windows. We asked them to look after my mother. And one day they called me at work and said that my mother had made a fire in the garden and was burning documents, my father's archive, which he sorted out shortly before his death ... Such cardboard folders with strings. In which his whole life was kept - except for that letter from the front, which she destroyed during the war. By the time we arrived at Vnukovo, only a piece of scorched earth remained from the archive. Mom couldn't be left alone anymore. Age..."
Heiress
Father's office - his ottoman, huge bookcases with books up to the ceiling, the table at which the most eminent Soviet poets sat at tea, Natalya Alekseevna Surkova gave to the Nekrasov Museum in Karabikha, near Yaroslavl.
“This is my father’s small homeland, here he got married, here his first-born Alexei was born, in Karabikha until old age he led Nekrasov holidays. On my father's anniversary, museum workers took everything from me. I'm 73 already, I still couldn't handle it." This is property. And there are still intangible things, which, of course, can also be presented, but they will still live in the heart.
“Seven festivals of front-line poetry and songs have already taken place in the Moscow region, which we hold in memory of all the soldiers who fought and won. This is a competition for the entire Moscow region, applications came from forty places. Afghans, veterans of Chechnya…” “…Resin on the logs, like a tear.”
By the centenary of the poet, a memorial sign with the words of the main song about love in that war and a musical line appeared in the Istra region, in the village of Kashino, where that legendary dugout was. It was installed by the guys from the Istrian club of film lovers "ISTOK". It has been led by Sergey Lavrenko on a voluntary basis for many years. Natalya Alekseevna Surkova handed over personal belongings, books, photographs of her father to the club. The construction of the Song Museum begins right in Kashin. Next to her mother is Sasha Surkova, the youngest granddaughter of the poet...
Natalya Alekseevna Surkova became a mother at the age of 57. Entered the Guinness Book of Records.
Then, sixteen years ago, the story of Sasha's birth was described by all the newspapers: the daughter of the famous poet is the oldest mother in Russia, why not be proud? It can be seen that this is hereditary, originally incorporated in the genes - and great love, which has come in a very adulthood, and the dream of a child, suddenly embodied in reality. It can be seen that children - like poems - are waiting for their parents somewhere in heaven, so that one day they will spill out into our world.
“It was very difficult for me, postpartum depression, which knocked me off my feet ... The older children helped. My son literally never left my side after giving birth. And acquaintances only twisted their fingers at the temple. Yes, and the doctors at first did not advise taking risks, and then they were amazed at my endurance. I didn’t want to live, wake up, get up, do something, eat, drink ... The world was black, and it seemed that it would always remain so.
Then she, too, lived in a dugout besieged by pain, and her soul seemed to be fired upon from four sides by enemy machine guns.
But I had to get up and go, with the last of my strength - there, to my own, to the people. For yourself. And Sasha. She arrived. “My family, my childhood, despite the war, remained for me that very unattainable ideal, the ultimate goal that I had to reach for.”
Now Sasha Surkova is sixteen. A grown up girl. It is a pity that grandfather did not live ...
This story should be looped, I thought. "Dugout" was a long time ago.
But today, great songs, like great love stories, are born less and less.
“I thought so too, but it all depends on us, on people,” says Natalia Surkova. Yes, here's the plot. Once I asked the composer Yuri Biryukov, my old friend, to go near Rybinsk to perform on my father's anniversary. On this holiday he met a woman. He's in his sixties, and so is she. For two - four heart attacks. For a while they looked at each other, then got married. Yura asked me for my father's last poems, dedicated to a very old mother: “Look into my eyes, without lowering your eyes, they are still the same as a wave of the sea,” he thought for a long time about a song for this woman. Soon he had another heart attack, he was taken to intensive care, and on the way in one of the wards in the hospital he saw a piano, and suddenly an amazing melody came to his mind - he asked the doctor to give him, almost dying, to play it so that not forget..."
Look into my eyes, without lowering your eyes - sing, harmonica, in spite of the blizzard ...
In Yaroslavl, a survey was conducted on whether residents know the famous song "In the dugout." People different ages They picked up the text with pleasure, almost without mistakes in words. But not everyone could name the author. Alexey Surkov, whose biography is forever connected with the Yaroslavl region, is the author of famous lines that came out from under his pen at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. What is known about this outstanding person?
"In people"
Born before the revolution (10/1/1899) in small village Serednevo (Rybinsk district, Yaroslavl province) in a peasant family, Alexei Surkov began studying at a local school, absorbing the beauty of nature and the simplicity of rural life. Having shown a craving for learning, at the age of 12 he goes to St. Petersburg, where he has to live in the master's house and earn extra money. Such living was called "in people", but it allowed the teenager to read newspapers and develop. The working biography began with work as an apprentice in a printing house, a furniture store, and carpentry workshops. He met the revolution in a trading port, where he worked as a weigher.
In 1918, Krasnaya Gazeta published poems by a certain A. Gutuevsky. Alexei Surkov initially chose such a pseudonym for himself, whose photo in these years can be seen in the article. It was his first attempt at writing. At the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the Red Army, serving as a machine gunner and mounted scout until 1922.
"Sing"
AT Peaceful time future poet returns to small homeland, where he does light work. Until 1924, in a neighboring village, he worked in a reading room, became a village correspondent for the local county newspaper. The profession of a journalist soon becomes the main one for A. Surkov. Already in 1924, his new poems were published in the Pravda newspaper, and in 1925 he became a participant in the congress of writers of the province. In the same year, having joined the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Alexei Surkov was at Komsomol work, at the same time being a correspondent for the newly created newspaper Severny Komsomolets in the province. For three years (1926-1928) he headed it as chief editor, doubling the circulation and creating a "Literary Corner" where beginning poets and prose writers could publish.
In May 1928, he was delegated to Moscow for the 1st Congress of Writers, after which he did not return to the Yaroslavl Region, having been elected to the RAPP. The beginning of real poetic creativity was laid by the first collection, published in 1930. It was called "Zapev". The poems were distinguished by political poignancy and a sense of patriotism, which was in great demand. During these years, the poet Alexei Surkov was truly born.
Biography: family of the master of the word
Becoming a regular at literary meetings, the poet meets Sofia Antonovna Krevs, his future wife. The couple has two children: son Alexei, born in 1928. and daughter Natalia, born in 1938. During the war years, the family would be evacuated to Chistopol, where Alexei Surkov would write his letters from the front. In the future, the daughter will choose the profession of a journalist for herself, doing musicology. The son will become a military engineer-colonel of the Air Force.
The 30s were marked by the fact that A. Surkov had to make up for the lack of education: he would not only graduate from the Institute of Red Professors, but also defend his dissertation, becoming a teacher at the Literary Institute. He will not leave his editorial work either, collaborating with M. Gorky in Literary Education, a magazine of that time. While working at the Lokaf, he continues to write poems and songs about the heroes of the civil war: “Peers”, “Offensive”, “Homeland of the Courageous”. Some works become songs: "Chapaevskaya", "Konarmeyskaya".
war correspondent
"Combat Onslaught", "Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda", "Red Star" - those publications in which the military commander Alexei Surkov was published since 1939. The poet participated in two military conflicts on the eve of the Great Patriotic War: the Finnish campaign and the campaign in Western Belarus. Despite his indefensible age, from the first day of the war he went to the front, having risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1943. Here he will meet with many poets of war hard times. It is to him that Konstantin Simonov will dedicate the famous lines: "Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region ...".
As the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir, he publishes poems, feuilletons and songs of the heroic time. He will publish several poetry collections: “Poems about hatred”, “Offensive”, “Soldier's heart”. In 1942, he almost died near Rzhev, later writing poignant lines:
“And we are unharmed from bullets, and we don’t burn with heat,
I walk along the edge of the fire.
It can be seen that the mother with her exorbitant suffering
Bought me from death ... "
But the most popular in his work will be songs. Among them: "Song of the Brave", "Song of the Defenders of Moscow" and, of course, the famous "Dugout".
The history of the birth of "Dugout"
The song was born in November 1942 in the vicinity of Istra (the village of Kashino, Moscow region), where he had to leave the encirclement. Then he really felt that there were only a few steps to death. When the danger had passed, the entire overcoat was cut with shrapnel. Already in Moscow, he was born lines famous poem sent to Chistopol to his wife. When the composer Konstantin Listov appeared in the editorial office, Alexei Surkov handed him the handwritten lines, and a week later his friend Mikhail Savin performed the song for the first time.
With her first appearance, she immediately went to the front, becoming the favorite work of the soldiers. It was performed by Lidia Ruslanova, and at first they even released records with a recording. But then they were completely destroyed, because political workers saw decadence in the lines of the poem and demanded to change the words. But the song has already gone to the people. There is evidence that the soldiers went into battle, shouting: "Sing, harmonica, blizzard out of spite!" famous song a monument was erected near the village of Kashino. This is a real recognition to the author, who was awarded the State Prize for a cycle of works in 1946.
Last years
After the war, Alexei Surkov, whose biography became associated with party and state activities, as the editor-in-chief of Ogonyok and the rector, did a lot to discover new talents. He published Anna Akhmatova, defending her name before I. Stalin. At the same time, being a staunch communist, he does not recognize the work of B. Pasternak, he will oppose A. Solzhenitsyn and the Poet will head the Union of Writers of the USSR for several years.
In 1969, the government will mark his merits with the Star of the Hero for labor achievements. After the death of a man in 1983, for many, he will remain a wonderful poet who glorified the Yaroslavl land.
In one - front-line songs, Ruslanova's records and Stalin's father's awards ... In the other - anti-aging technologies, the Guinness Book of Records and a schoolgirl daughter Sasha, who dreams of entering the art design faculty.
How to separate history from the present, who settled together under the roof of this house, the highest on Prechistenka, in the center of Moscow? What are the main numbers here: 57 - how much did Natalya Surkova give birth to, immediately becoming a Russian record holder? Or 70? So many years ago, the “Dugout” was born, written by her father.
“Fire beats in a cramped stove ...” 70 years ago, during the defense of Moscow, A. Surkov's poems were born, the song for which became an event. And the appearance of his granddaughter, born half a century later, was already a real miracle.
Both the girl and the song have their own story... However, both of them are about love.
"And there are four steps to death"
My father was the same age as the century, and I am almost the same age as the Zemlyanka, says Natalya Surkova, only 3 years older than her.
She is young, as a young mother should be. She is talkative and tongue-tied - “senile talkativeness has been with me since childhood”, - as it should be for a journalist. Precise and subtle - as befits a musicologist and his father's daughter.
Aleksey Surkov, a "hut", an employee of a rural reading room, reached the literary heights - in his career and in his work. Editor of Ogonyok and member of the World Peace Council. Member of the Supreme Council and 1st Secretary of the Writers' Union. Hero of Socialist Labor. He went through three wars - with military orders. And on the fourth, Great, he wrote "16 home lines" - they made up his posthumous glory ...
"The bushes whispered to me about you / In the snow-white fields near Moscow. / I want you to hear / How my living voice yearns" ...
It was November 27, 1941 - my father came as a correspondent near Istra and was surrounded at the command post. When, nevertheless, they were able to get out of the dugout and get to ours, the entire father's overcoat was cut by fragments. Only then did they realize that they had walked through their own minefield, miraculously surviving. The father then said: “He did not take a step further than the headquarters of the regiment. Not a single one ... And there are four steps to death. ”
It only remained to add: “It’s not easy for me to reach you ...”
Before you - this is up to Sonechka Krevs.
These famous lines went, sealed in a soldier's triangle, to the city of Chistopol, "writers' evacuation." There, together with Pasternak, Isakov-
Skim, Fadeev also saved the poet's wife and daughter Natasha. “To you, my sun,” is written on the back of the page ...
It was a troubled union of two completely opposite in spirit people, they had some kind of never-ending relationship. Dad, a man of art, was very easy-going, enthusiastic, cheerful, loved people, and at the same time he was a kind man, a real Russian village. And my mother did not like companies, she was a closed person with a complex character, very sober in spirit. She didn't keep that letter from her father...
After the letter to Sofya Krevs was set to music by the composer Listov, who begged Surkov for "at least some verses", "Dugout" was picked up by the front. The record was recorded by Nina Ruslanova. And - the entire circulation was destroyed! “They said that this is a decadent song that demagnetizes the Soviet people ...” From above it seemed that four steps was too close. “Yes, you write for them at least four thousand English miles,” the fighters were indignant, “we know how far it really is ...”
I remember that during one of the feasts, dad was indignant: “People sing: “I’m warm in a cold dugout / From your unquenchable love,” but I have it written “from mine!” To which his mother replied: “Here, Alyoshenka, the people corrected you” ...
Mom far outlived her father, who died of a heart attack in 1983. His death was a test for her. Everyone thought that he had spoiled his wife ... I remember how, before important Kremlin receptions, two friends, a beautician and a manicurist, came to my mother - dad opened the door for them, gallantly took off both coats and shouted deep into the apartment: “Sonyushka, they came to you from society according to fight against relentless mother nature!”
Mom couldn’t survive her father’s departure and her impotence, loneliness - she destroyed the entire father’s archive and cut down, taking an ax, all the roses in our apple orchard. Without his love, she suffocated. It seems to me that it was precisely because of this - the loss of my father and the behavior of my mother - that I “clung” to the father of my girl ...
“I am like the Lenin nuclear-powered ship”
She already had two children and one grandson, as a journalist of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company she traveled the whole world - from Rome to Kabul, when great love descended from the sky like a cloud. This love demanded continuation, drove me crazy ...
I saw an advertisement: we help childless couples. And the phone number was remembered by itself. I came to the reception - and they asked me to bring a certificate from the mental hospital ... I returned after 2 months. It wasn’t crazy, Sasha was just waiting for me somewhere, I spread such an emanation of motherhood around me ...
Hormone therapy allowed Sasha, a human cub, to get stuck in his mother's womb and sit there without frills for all 9 months. When she was brought into the world, the doctors shouted to the whole birth: “Hurrah! Hooray!"
After all, I, like the Lenin nuclear-powered icebreaker, smashed all theories ...
Friends fainted. The eldest son turned away. It was rumored that the child was adopted. No one could find an explanation - and to her herself, everything that happened seemed like a terrible dream ...
After the birth of Sanya, such a time came that I wanted to die more than live ... Her father "retired of his own free will" - he betrayed me, and my world collapsed. I thought the baby would be born in a big happy family, and was left completely alone under the sidelong glances of others ... It was the blackest, most terrible moment: there was no money, health began to fail. But Sasha and I managed. I got into the Russian Guinness Book of Records as the oldest mother in the country. We have spent all these years under one motto: “The best thing in the world is little children!” And the more of them, the better.
... “This is how the whole life is - sometimes troubles, sometimes wars. / And the days without wars, as before, are restless,” wrote Alexei Surkov in his last dedication to his wife ...
His daughter - mother-grandmother - is a record holder. For two times they live under the roof of her house. Two loves continue - in the song and in the granddaughter of the poet Sasha. Two stories are kept by one woman. And while no one knows which of them will last longer ...
Biography
Surkov Alexey Alexandrovich
A. A. Surkov was born on October 1 (13), 1899 in the village of Serednevo, Georgievskaya volost, Rybinsk district, Yaroslavl province (now the Rybinsk district of the Yaroslavl region) in peasant family, his ancestors were serfs of the nobles Mikhalkov. He studied at the Middle School. From the age of 12 he served "in the people" in St. Petersburg: he worked as an apprentice in a furniture store, in carpentry workshops, in a printing house, in an office and as a weigher in the Petrograd commercial port. He published his first poems in 1918 in the Petrograd Krasnaya Gazeta under the pseudonym A. Gutuevsky.
In 1918, he volunteered for the Red Army, a participant in the Civil War and the Polish campaign. He served until 1922 as a machine gunner and mounted scout.
After the end of the civil war, he returned to his native village. In 1924, his poems were published by the Pravda newspaper. October 11, 1925 was a delegate to the I Provincial Congress of Proletarian Writers. Since 1925, he was a selkor of the newly created provincial newspaper Severny Komsomolets, and in 1926-1928 - its editor-in-chief. Under him, the newspaper doubled its circulation, began to publish twice a week instead of one, junkors were actively involved in the work, on his initiative the heading “Literary Corner” appeared, which contained poems and stories of readers, a literary group was created at the editorial office.
In May 1928, Surkov was delegated to the First All-Union Congress of Proletarian Writers, after which he remained to work in Moscow. In 1928 he was elected to the leadership of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP).
In 1934-1939 he taught at the Editorial and Publishing Institute and the Literary Institute of the Union of Writers of the USSR; was deputy editor of the journal Literary Studies. In the magazine he acted as a critic and editor. Author of a number of articles on poetry and articles on song (mainly defensive). In the 1930s, collections of his poems "Zapev", " Last war”, “The Motherland of the Courageous”, “The Way of the Song” and “So We Grew Up”. He married Sofya Antonovna Krevs, whom he met in literary circles; a daughter and a son appeared.
Before the war, in 1940-1941, he worked as the editor-in-chief of the Novy Mir magazine.
In 1941-1945, Surkov was a war correspondent for the front-line newspaper Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda and a special correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, and also worked for the Combat Onslaught newspaper. During the war years, he published collections of poems “December near Moscow”, “Roads lead to the West”, “Soldier's heart”, “Offensive”, “Poems about hatred”, “Songs of an angry heart” and “Punishing Russia”. Based on the results of the business trip, in 1944 he published a book of essays “The Lights of the Greater Urals. Letters about the Soviet rear. In 1944-1946 he was the editor-in-chief of the Literaturnaya Gazeta. In June 1945 he visited Berlin, Leipzig and Radebeuse, and then Weimar; Based on the materials of the trip, he wrote a collection of poems “I sing Victory”. He graduated from the war with the rank of lieutenant colonel (1943).
In 1945-1953 he was the editor-in-chief of the Ogonyok magazine. Since 1962, the editor-in-chief of the Brief Literary Encyclopedia.
A. A. Surkov died on June 14, 1983. He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery (site No. 10).
Published since 1918. The first poems by A. A. Surkov were published in the Petrograd Krasnaya Gazeta. The first book of poems "Zapev" was published in Moscow in 1930. The author of poems that have become folk songs, such as "Chapaevskaya", "It's not clouds, thunderclouds", "Early-early", "In the vastness of the wonderful Motherland", "Fire beats in a cramped stove ..." ("In the dugout") , "Konarmeiskaya", "Song of the Brave", "March of the Defenders of Moscow".
He published the collections "Peers" (1934), "Poems" (1931), "On the approaches to the song" (1931), "Offensive" (1932), "The Last War" (1933), "The Motherland of the Courageous" (1935), " The way of the song "(1936)," Soldiers of October", "So we grew up" (1938), "It was in the north" (1940), "December near Moscow" (1942), " big war"(1942), "Offensive" (1943), "Soldier's Heart" (1943), "Front Notebook", "Punishing Russia" (1944), "Heart of the World", "Road to Victory", "Selected Poems", " To the world - the world! (1950), "East and West" (1957), "Songs about Humanity" (1961), "What is happiness?" (1969), “After the war. Poems 1945-1970" (1972). His Selected Poems were published in 2 volumes (Moscow, 1974) and Collected Works in 4 volumes (Moscow, 1965-1966).
The poet's poems are marked by political sharpness, imbued with a sense of Soviet patriotism; they have been translated into dozens of languages. In addition to poetry, A. A. Surkov wrote critical articles, essays and journalism. He published a collection of articles and speeches on questions of literature "Voices of the Time" (1962).
Alexey Aleksandrovich Surkov was born into a peasant family on October 1, 1899, in the village of Serednevo, Yaroslavl province. He studied at the village school. And from the age of 12 he already worked - first as an apprentice in a furniture store, then in carpentry workshops, a printing house, an office, he was a weigher in the commercial port of Petrograd. The first poems were published under the pseudonym A. Gutuevsky in Krasnaya Gazeta in 1918. At the same time, the young man volunteered for the Red Army, participated in civil war, Polish campaign. And after the end of the war he returned to his homeland.
In 1924, his poems were published by the Pravda newspaper. And in 1925 the poet was sent as a delegate to the I Provincial Congress of Proletarian Writers. He began working as a correspondent in the provincial newspaper Severny Komsomolets, and from 1926 to 1928 he was its editor-in-chief.
In 1928, Surkov was delegated to the First All-Union Congress of Proletarian Writers in Moscow, after which he remains to work in the capital. Soon he was elected one of the leaders in Russian association proletarian writers. During 1934-1939. taught in different educational institutions, worked as deputy editor at the journal Literary Studies. In the 1930s, several collections of his poems saw the world, including "Zopev", "The Motherland of the Courageous", "So We Grew Up", etc.
He married S. A. Krevs, whom he met in literary circles. They had two children.
In 1940-1941. He was the editor-in-chief at Novy Mir. And during the war he served as a correspondent for the newspapers Krasnaya Zvezda, Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda and Combat Onslaught. At the same time, seven collections of his poems were published, where military themes prevail. From 1944 to 1946 he was the executive editor of Literaturnaya Gazeta. After the end of the war in June 1945, he visited Berlin and several other cities in Germany, which was reflected in the collection “I Sing Victory”.
From 1945 to 1953, Surkov was the editor-in-chief of the Ogonyok magazine, and since 1962 he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Brief Literary Encyclopedia. Alexey Alexandrovich died on 09/14/1983. Buried in Moscow.