Simonov Konstantin. Biography of the writer. Literary and historical notes of a young technician The Great Patriotic War

Konstantin Simonov's biography briefly of the Soviet prose writer and poet is set out in this article.

Konstantin Simonov short biography

Konstantin (Kirill) Simonov was born on November 15 (28), 1915 in Petrograd. His father went missing at the front in the First World War. He was raised by his stepfather, a teacher at a military school.

Konstantin's childhood passed in Ryazan and Saratov, in commander's dormitories. The family was not rich, so the boy had to go to the factory school (FZU) after finishing seven classes and work as a metal turner, first in Saratov, and then in Moscow, where the family moved in 1931. So he earned his seniority and continued to work for two more years after he entered the Literary Institute. A. M. Gorky.

In 1938 Konstantin Simonov graduated from the Literary Institute. By this time, his first poems were first published in 1936 in the magazines Young Guard and October.

And already in 1938 Simonov was admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR, entered the graduate school of the IFLI (Institute of History, Philosophy, Literature), published the poem "Pavel Cherny".

In 1940 he wrote his first play, The Story of a Love, and in 1941, his second, A Boy from Our City.

During the Second World War, the poet worked as a war correspondent on all fronts. Simonov was in Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland and Germany, witnessed the last battles for Berlin. Because of this, the theme of war, life and death has firmly entered his work.

During the war years, he wrote the play "Russian People", the story "Days and Nights".

The lyrics of the war years brought him popularity - the poems "Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region ..." and "Wait for me" (1941), as well as the collection "With you and without you" (1942).

After the war, he was on business trips - in Japan, the USA, France, China.

In 1952, his first novel Comrades in Arms was published. In 1959 the book The Living and the Dead (1959) was published. In 1963-1964 he wrote the novel "Soldiers Are Not Born", in 1970-1971 its sequel - "Last Summer".

He led a great public activity, from 1954 to 1958 he was the editor-in-chief of the Novy Mir magazine, and in 1950-1953 he was the editor-in-chief of the Literaturnaya Gazeta.

Konstantin Simonov died of lung cancer on August 28, 1979 in Moscow. According to the will, the ashes of Simonov were scattered over the Buinichsky field near Mogilev.

Simonov Konstantin. His biography in this article will begin with an indication of the place of his birth. And that place is Petrograd.

So, on November 15 (or the 28th according to the new style), Konstantin (although his name is actually Kirill) Mikhailovich was born. He was brought up by his stepfather, who taught at a military school. And where did the famous writer Simonov Konstantin live in his childhood? His biography tells us that he then lived in Saratov and Ryazan.

In 1930, Simonov graduated from the seven-year plan, after which he went to learn the profession of a turner. The following year, his family moves to (the biography described here is as brief as possible, so many details may be missed) begins working at the factory, and works there until 1935. And in 1931, Simonov began to write poetry.

In 1936, for the first time, the now-famous Konstantin Simonov "lit up" in magazines (the biography also reports their names - "Young Guard" and "October"). These journals published his first poems. In 1938, the writer completes his studies in them. M. Gorky and IFLI. However, the following year he was sent to Mongolia to Khalkin Gol. He works there. After this trip, Simonov never returned to the institute.

The first play, as the biography of Konstantin Simonov tells us, was written by him in 1940, and after that it was staged at the Lenin Komsomol Theater. Its name is "The Story of a Love". The second play was written by Konstantin Simonov the following year, and was called "The Guy from Our City". Throughout the year, Konstantin did not waste time - he went to courses intended for war correspondents who were at the Military-Political Academy, and, in addition, received the military rank of quartermaster of the second rank.

Konstantin Simonov was an amazing person. His brief biography is not at all an indicator of a boring life. You can tell the world a lot about him.

As soon as it began, he was drafted into the army, and began work in a newspaper called "Battle Flag". Already in 1942, he became a senior battalion commissar, and in 1943, a lieutenant colonel. After the end of the war, Simonov completely moved to the ranks of colonels. Almost all of his military materials were published in Krasnaya Zvezda. During the war years, Konstantin wrote several plays, a story, and two books of poetry.

As a war correspondent, Simonov managed to visit all fronts, ran around the Romanian, Bulgarian, Yugoslav, Polish and personally saw the last battles for Berlin. After the end of the war, his collections of essays were published.

In the post-war years, he traveled on many foreign business trips. For three years he traveled to Japan, the USA and China. As a correspondent for Pravda, he lived in Tashkent (1958-1960).

His first novel, Comrades in Arms, was released in 1952, followed by The Living and the Dead (1959). In 1961 Konstantin Simonov's play "The Fourth" was staged. Staged by the Sovremennik Theatre. From 1963 to 1964, Konstantin wrote the novel "Soldiers Are Not Born", to which a sequel was written in 1970-1971, called "Last Summer".

Films were made based on many of Simonov's novels and, in addition, the writer led a very active social life.

Konstantin Simonov passed away on the 28th of August, the year 1979.

Konstantin (Kirill) Mikhailovich Simonov - poet, prose writer, playwright, publicist - was born November 15 (28), 1915 in Petrograd.

In his autobiography, he recalls: “He lived his childhood and youth in Ryazan and Saratov. My father (stepfather - Ed.) was a military man, and many of my memories of that time are connected with the life and life of military camps and commander's hostels ”(Three Notebooks. M., 1964. P. 584). A participant in the Japanese and First World Wars, his stepfather became a devoted father to the future poet, in the poem "Father" Simonov addressed him with words of heartfelt gratitude. Mother loved poetry, knew by heart the poems of Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev; passed on her love of literature to her son. In 1930 Simonov graduated from seven classes of a labor school, then studied at the FZU (factory school) of metalworkers and became a metal turner.

In 1931 the family moved to Moscow; Simonov graduated from the Faculty of Fine Mechanics and worked as a turner at an aircraft factory, then in the machine shop of the Mezhrabpomfilm film factory, and as a turner at the Mosfilm film studio. He combined work in production with studies at the Literary Institute. M. Gorky.

In 1938 published as a separate book the poem "Pavel Cherny" and the collection of poems "Real People". The first works "Winner" ( 1937 ) - about N. Ostrovsky, "Battle on the Ice" ( 1938 ), "Suvorov" ( 1939 ) draw attention to themselves with their multi-darkness, but in these poems the young author wrote, as it were, about one thing - about courage, about human dignity, about readiness for a feat. This is what the poem "Murmansk diaries" ( 1938 ), which sang "the impudent world of great desires and passions", and poems about Amundsen, about the Spanish Republican. Simonov became the personification of the young poetry of the pre-war years, having earned recognition for his versatility, energy, perseverance, ability to work, and clarity of thought.

poems late 1930s"Battle on the Ice", "Winner", "Suvorov" not only marked the arrival of a large-scale thinking poet in literature, but also expressed a sense of a military threat, the approach of war. Her breath is heard from the fronts of Spain fighting against fascism - and Simonov writes the poem "The General" and other poems about Spain.

In 1938 Simonov graduated from the Literary Institute. M. Gorky.

In 1939 by order of the Political Directorate of the Red Army, he left for Khalkhin Gol in connection with the Japanese aggression in Mongolia as a war correspondent for the newspaper Heroic Red Army. He writes the poem "Letters Home", the poem "Far in the East", etc.

In 1940 wrote his first play "The Story of a Love", at the end of the same year it was staged at the Moscow Theater. Lenin Komsomol. Widespread popularity fell to the share of his next play - "A guy from our city", staged in the same theater on the eve of the war, in March 1941. In the image of its hero Sergei Lukonin, the author embodied the honesty and courage of his generation, his disinterestedness and patriotism. Mid June 1941 Simonov graduated from the courses of war correspondents at the Military-Political Academy.

June 24, 1941 Simonov went to work in the newspaper "Battle Banner" of the 3rd Army in the Grodno region. Then he was appointed to the editorial office of the Western Front newspaper Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda, at the same time sent military correspondence to Izvestia. At the end of July for the entire period of the war he became a war correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, where he sent poems, essays, articles from Murmansk, Odessa, from the Don and Karelian fronts. He worked on the Western and Southern fronts, in the Primorsky Army (Odessa), in the Special Crimean Army, in the Black Sea Fleet, in the Murmansk direction of the Karelian Front, in the Northern Fleet, then again on the Western Front. Simonov wrote the essay “Off the coast of Romania” after a trip from besieged Odessa in a submarine, where he spent 10 days among people who had to “either survive together or die together.” Then Simonov landed behind enemy lines beyond the Arctic Circle, came under bombardment in Feodosia, recaptured by the landing of sailors, worked on the Transcaucasian, Bryansk, Stalingrad fronts.

The fame of the poet already at the beginning of the war grew into people's love for him, Simonov's poems not only taught to fight, but literally helped to live. The poem "Wait for me, and I will return ..." ( 1941 ) has been rewritten millions of times. The high emotional intensity of the verse expressed the pathos of the time, the idea of ​​loyalty to the motherland arose behind the poeticization of female fidelity. "Wait for me..." has become an indispensable part of the country's spiritual life. Many composers wrote music for it, among them A. Novikov, V. Solovyov-Sedoy, M. Blanter, M. Koval, V. Muradeli.

Simonov's poems of the first war years "Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region ...", "Motherland", "The major brought the boy on a gun carriage ...", "I don't remember, a day or ten ...", "Attack" and others continued the best traditions of Russian classical poetry. They were addressed not to an abstract generalized reader, but to the responsive heart of everyone. The most striking example is Simonov's poem "Kill him!", calling for a rebuff to the enemy. July 18, 1942 it appeared in the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, the next day in Komsomolskaya Pravda, July 20 in "Windows TASS", it was broadcast on the radio, dropped from aircraft printed on leaflets. As S. Baruzdin recalls, everyone both at the front and in the rear was shocked by Simonov's poem-ballad "The Son of an Artilleryman" ( 1941 ). A wide reader response was caused by the "Open Letter" ( 1943 ) Simonova - a rebuke to a woman who betrayed a soldier on the day when he stood on the front line with his platoon to death.

Simonov also refers to the events of the war in the play "Russian People" ( 1942 ), which was one of the most significant works of Soviet drama during the war. Pravda published the play Russian People during the dramatic retreat of our troops in the summer of 1942, next to the most important military materials. This play was published in besieged Leningrad. In the 1970s under the title "Captain Safonov" it was staged in Vietnam.

Simonov acted as a kind of scout for new topics: he was the first to raise the topic “Russian people” in the theater, he was the first to write a story about the Battle of Stalingrad “Days and Nights” ( 1943-44 ). The story was created quickly, but with forced breaks and in a special nervous tension - between four trips to the front. The author's intention was not to give a pathetic outcome of the Battle of Stalingrad, but a harsh picture of the battles of those days.

Victorious 1945 Simonov met in the ranks of the fighters of the 4th Ukrainian Front, fought through Transcarpathian Ukraine, Southern Poland, Slovakia, and worked in parts of the Czechoslovak Corps. In the last days of the battles for Berlin, he was in parts of the 1st Ukrainian and 1st Belorussian fronts. He was present at the signing on May 8, 1945 of the Act of unconditional surrender of Germany in Berlin (Karls-Horst).

In 1944 Simonov visited Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Italy. After the war he visited Japan, China, the USA and other countries. As a result of these trips, the plays Under the Chestnut Trees of Prague appeared ( 1945 ) and The Russian Question ( 1946 ), a book of poems "Friends and Enemies" ( 1946-49 ), book of essays "Fighting China"; in China, Simonov was a correspondent for Pravda at the 4th Field Chinese Army. Simonov's story "Smoke of the Fatherland" ( 1946-56 ), which caused controversy in criticism, and the lyrical story "The Case with Polynin" ( 1969 ) revealed new facets of Simonov's skill.

In 1950-53 Simonov was the editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta, in 1946-50 and in 1954-58- Editor-in-Chief of the Novy Mir magazine.

From 1958 to 1960 lived in Tashkent, worked as a correspondent for Pravda in the republics of Central Asia, traveled to the Pamirs, Tien Shan, the Hungry Steppe, the Karakum, along the routes of gas pipelines under construction.

In 1963-67 as a correspondent for Pravda, he visited Mongolia, Taimyr, Yakutia, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Irkutsk Region, the Kola Peninsula, etc.

In 1970 was in Vietnam, published the book "Vietnam, the winter of the seventieth ..." ( 1970-71 ). In the dramatic poems about the Vietnam War "Bombing in the Squares", "Over Laos", "Duty Office" and others, comparisons with the Great Patriotic War arise.

In the 1950s and 60s Simonov continues to work in prose on the theme of the Great Patriotic War. In 1959 the novel "The Living and the Dead" was published, followed by the novels "Soldiers Are Not Born" ( 1964 ) and "Last Summer" ( 1971 ). These works made up the trilogy "The Living and the Dead", which is dedicated to three different stages of the Great Patriotic War: the first book - the first weeks of the war, the retreat, in the second book - the decisive battle on the Volga, in the third - 1944, the battles for the liberation of Belarus. Simonov's constant attention and passion for strong people, wonderful in their courage and purposefulness.

Depicting the decisive stages of the war, the battles near Moscow and Stalingrad, the author creates an artistic history of the entire war. The trilogy was well received by readers; based on the novel "The Living and the Dead" a 2-episode film was made.

1970s were also fruitful. In addition to "The Last Summer", readers and viewers received the novels "Twenty Days Without War" and "We Will Not See You", the film "Twenty Days Without War", two volumes of diaries "Different Days of War", a book of speeches about literature "Today and Long Ago »; to this we must add articles, essays, television appearances. The activity of Simonov as a translator deserves special attention, the broadest sphere of his attention included M. Vagif, M. Vidadi, S. Vurgun, B. Shinkuba, G. Gulyam, H. Alimjan, A. Mukhtar, M. Karim, K. Kaladze, F. Khalvashi, R. Gamzatov, E. Mezhelaitis, V. Nezval, V. Tavlai, N. Hikmet, I. Taufer, D. Methodiev, Zulfiya, R. Kipling.

Konstantin (Kirill) Mikhailovich Simonov. Born November 28, 1915, Petrograd - died August 28, 1979, Moscow. Russian Soviet prose writer, poet, screenwriter, journalist and public figure. Hero of Socialist Labor (1974). Laureate of Lenin (1974) and six Stalin Prizes (1942, 1943, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1950).

Konstantin Simonov was born on November 15 (28), 1915 in Petrograd in the family of Major General Mikhail Simonov and Princess Alexandra Obolenskaya.

Mother: Princess Obolenskaya Alexandra Leonidovna (1890, St. Petersburg - 1975).

Father: Mikhail Agafangelovich Simonov (husband of A. L. Obolenskaya since 1912). According to some sources, he is of Armenian origin. Major General, participant in the First World War, Cavalier of various orders, educated in the Oryol Bakhtinsk Cadet Corps. He entered the service on September 1, 1889. Graduate (1897) of the Imperial Nikolaev Military Academy. 1909 - Colonel of the Separate Corps of the Border Guards. In March 1915 - commander of the 12th Velikolutsky Infantry Regiment. Awarded with the St. George's weapon. Chief of Staff of the 43rd Army Corps (July 8, 1915 - October 19, 1917). The latest data about him date back to 1920-1922 and report on his emigration to Poland.

Stepfather: Alexander Grigoryevich Ivanishev (husband of A. L. Obolenskaya since 1919).

He never saw his father: he went missing at the front in the First World War (as the writer noted in his official biography, according to his son A.K. Simonov, traces of his grandfather are lost in Poland in 1922).

In 1919, the mother and son moved to Ryazan, where she married a military specialist, a teacher of military affairs, a former colonel of the Russian Imperial Army, A. G. Ivanishev. The boy was raised by his stepfather, who taught tactics in military schools, and then became the commander of the Red Army.

Konstantin's childhood passed in military camps and commander's dormitories. After finishing seven classes, he entered the factory school (FZU), worked as a metal turner, first in Saratov, and then in Moscow, where the family moved in 1931. So he, earning seniority, continued to work for another two years after he entered the Literary Institute named after A. M. Gorky.

In 1938, Konstantin Simonov graduated from the A. M. Gorky Literary Institute. By this time, he had already written several works - in 1936, Simonov's first poems were published in the magazines Young Guard and October.

In the same year, Simonov was admitted to the USSR Writers' Union, entered the IFLI graduate school, published the poem "Pavel Cherny".

In 1939 he was sent as a war correspondent to Khalkhin Gol, but did not return to graduate school.

Shortly before leaving for the front, he finally changes his name and instead of his native Kirill takes the pseudonym Konstantin Simonov. The reason is in the peculiarities of Simonov's diction and articulation: without pronouncing "p" and a hard "l", it was difficult for him to pronounce his own name. The pseudonym becomes a literary fact, and soon the poet Konstantin Simonov gains all-Union popularity. The poet's mother did not recognize the new name and until the end of her life she called her son Kiryusha.

In 1940, he wrote his first play, The Story of One Love, staged at the Theater. Lenin Komsomol; in 1941 - the second - "A guy from our city." During the year he studied at the courses of war correspondents at the VPA named after V. I. Lenin, on June 15, 1941 he received the military rank of quartermaster of the second rank.

With the outbreak of war, he was drafted into the Red Army, as a correspondent from the Active Army he published in Izvestia, worked in the front-line newspaper Battle Banner.

In the summer of 1941, as a special correspondent for the Red Star, he was in besieged Odessa.

In 1942 he was awarded the rank of senior battalion commissar, in 1943 - the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the war - colonel. During the war years, he wrote the plays "Russian People", "Wait for Me", "So It Will Be", the story "Days and Nights", two books of poems "With You and Without You" and "War".

Konstantin Simonov during the war

By order of the Armed Forces of the Western Front No: 482 dated: 05/03/1942, the senior battalion commissar Simonov Kirill Mikhailovich was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Most of his military correspondence was published in the Red Star.

11/04/1944 Lieutenant Colonel Simonov Kirill Mikhailovich, special. Correspondent of the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, awarded the medal "For the Defense of the Caucasus".

As a war correspondent, he visited all fronts, passed through the lands of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland and Germany, and witnessed the last battles for Berlin.

By order of the Armed Forces of the 4th Ukrainian Front No.: 132 / n dated: 05/30/1945, the correspondent of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, Lieutenant Colonel Simonov, was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree for writing a series of essays about the soldiers of the 4th Ukrainian Front and the 1st of the Czechoslovak corps, the presence of the commanders of the 101st and 126th corps units during the fighting on the NP and the presence in the units of the 1st Czechoslovak corps during the offensive battles.

By order of the GlavPU of the Red Army dated: 07/19/1945, Lieutenant Colonel Kirill Mikhailovich Simonov was awarded the medal "For the Defense of Moscow".

After the war, his collections of essays “Letters from Czechoslovakia”, “Slavic Friendship”, “Yugoslavian Notebook”, “From the Black Sea to the Barents Sea. Notes of a war correspondent.

For three years he spent on numerous business trips abroad (Japan, USA, China), worked as the editor-in-chief of the Novy Mir magazine.

In 1958-1960 he lived and worked in Tashkent as his own correspondent for Pravda in the republics of Central Asia. As a special correspondent for Pravda, he covered the events on Damansky Island (1969).

footage from the film "Star of the era"

Last wife (1957) - Larisa Alekseevna Zhadova(1927-1981), daughter of the Hero of the Soviet Union, General A. S. Zhadov, widow of front-line comrade Simonov, poet S. P. Gudzenko. Zhadova graduated from the Faculty of Art History of Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov, a well-known Soviet art critic, a specialist in the Russian avant-garde, the author of several monographs and many articles. Simonov adopted Larisa's daughter Ekaterina, then their daughter Alexandra was born.

Poems and poems by Konstantin Simonov:

"Glory";
"The Winner" (1937, a poem about Nikolai Ostrovsky);
"Pavel Cherny" (M., 1938, a poem glorifying the builders of the White Sea-Baltic Canal);
"Battle on the Ice" (poem). Moscow, Pravda, 1938;
Real people. M., 1938;
Road poems. - M., Soviet writer, 1939;
Poems of the thirty-ninth year. M., 1940;
Suvorov. Poem. M., 1940;
Winner. M., Military Publishing, 1941;
Son of an artilleryman. M., 1941;
Poems of the 41st year. M., Pravda, 1942;
Front lines. M., 1942;
War. Poems 1937-1943. M., Soviet writer, 1944;
Friends and Enemies. M., Goslitizdat, 1952;
Poems of 1954. M., 1955;
Ivan and Marya. Poem. M., 1958;
25 poems and one poem. M., 1968;
Vietnam, winter 70th. M., 1971;
If your house is dear to you ...;
"With you and without you" (collection of poems). M., Pravda, 1942;
"Days and Nights" (about the Battle of Stalingrad);
I know you ran in battle...;
"Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region...";
"The major brought the boy on a gun carriage..."

Novels and short stories by Konstantin Simonov:

Days and nights. Tale. M., Military Publishing, 1944;
Proud man. Tale. 1945;
Comrades in Arms (novel, 1952; new edition - 1971);
The Living and the Dead (novel, 1959);
"Soldiers are not born" (1963-1964, novel; 2nd part of the trilogy "The Living and the Dead");
"The Last Summer" (novel, 1971 3rd (final) part of the trilogy "The Living and the Dead");
"Smoke of the Fatherland" (1947, story);
"Southern Tales" (1956-1961);
"The so-called personal life (From the notes of Lopatin)" (1965, a cycle of stories);
Twenty days without war. M., 1973;
Sofia Leonidovna. M., 1985

Plays by Konstantin Simonov:

"The Story of One Love" (1940, premiere - Lenin Komsomol Theater, 1940) (new edition - 1954);
“A guy from our city” (1941, play; premiere of the play - Lenin Komsomol Theater, 1941 (the play was staged in 1955 and 1977); in 1942 - the film of the same name);
"Russian People" (1942, published in the Pravda newspaper; at the end of 1942 the premiere of the play was successfully held in New York; in 1943 - the film "In the Name of the Motherland", directors - Vsevolod Pudovkin, Dmitry Vasiliev; in 1979 - the television play of the same name , directors - Maya Markova, Boris Ravenskikh);
Wait for me (play). 1943;
"So it will be" (1944, premiere - Lenin Komsomol Theater);
"Under the chestnut trees of Prague" (1945. Premiere - Lenin Komsomol Theater;
"Alien Shadow" (1949);
"Good name" (1951) (new edition - 1954);
"The Fourth" (1961, premiere - Theater "Sovremennik", 1972 - film of the same name);
Friends remain friends. (1965, co-authored with V. Dykhovichny);
From the notes of Lopatin. (1974)

Scripts by Konstantin Simonov:

"Wait for me" (together with Alexander Stolper, 1943, director - Alexander Stolper);
"Days and Nights" (1944, director - Alexander Stolper);
The Second Caravan (1950, together with Zakhar Agranenko, directors - Amo Bek-Nazarov and Ruben Simonov);
"The Life of Andrey Shvetsov" (1952, together with Zakhar Agranenko);
"The Immortal Garrison" (1956, director - Eduard Tisse);
"Normandie - Neman" (co-authors - Charles Spaak, Elsa Triolet, 1960, directors Jean Dreville, Damir Vyatich-Berezhnykh);
"Levashov" (1963, teleplay, director - Leonid Pcholkin);
"The Living and the Dead" (together with Alexander Stolper, director - Alexander Stolper, 1964);
"Retribution" 1967, (together with Alexander Stolper, feature film, based on the II part of the novel "The Living and the Dead" - "Soldiers are not born");
“If your home is dear to you” (1967, script and text of a documentary film, director Vasily Ordynsky);
“Grenada, Grenada, My Grenada” (1968, documentary film, director - Roman Karmen, film poem; All-Union Film Festival Prize);
"The Case with Polynin" (together with Alexei Sakharov, 1971, director - Alexei Sakharov);
"There is no other person's grief" (1973, a documentary about the Vietnam War);
A Soldier Was Walking (1975, documentary);
"Soldier's Memoirs" (1976, TV movie);
"Ordinary Arctic" (1976, Lenfilm, director - Alexei Simonov, introductory word from the author of the screenplay and episodic role);
"Konstantin Simonov: I remain a military writer" (1975, documentary film);
"Twenty Days Without War" (according to the story (1972), director - Alexei German, 1976), text from the author;
"We will not see you" (1981, TV show, directors - Maya Markova, Valery Fokin);
"The Road to Berlin" (2015, feature film, Mosfilm - directed by Sergei Popov. Based on the novel "Two in the Steppe" by Emmanuil Kazakevich and war diaries by Konstantin Simonov).

Diaries, memoirs and essays of Konstantin Simonov:

Simonov K. M. Different days of the war. Writer's diary. - M.: Fiction, 1982;
Simonov K. M. Different days of the war. Writer's diary. - M.: Fiction, 1982;
Through the eyes of a man of my generation. Reflections on I.V. Stalin” (1979, published in 1988);
Far to the east. Khalkhingol notes. M., 1969;
"Japan. 46" (travel diary);
"Letters from Czechoslovakia" (collection of essays);
"Slavic Friendship" (collection of essays);
"Yugoslav Notebook" (collection of essays), M., 1945;
From the Black to the Barents Sea. Notes of a War Correspondent” (collection of essays);
During these years. Publicism 1941-1950. M., 1951;
Norwegian diary. M., 1956;
In this difficult world. M., 1974

Translations by Konstantin Simonov:

Rudyard Kipling in Simonov's translations;
Nasimi, Lyrica. Translation by Naum Grebnev and Konstantin Simonov from Azeri and Farsi. Fiction, Moscow, 1973;
Kahkhar A., ​​Tales of the past. Translation by Kamron Khakimov and Konstantin Simonov from Uzbek. Soviet writer, Moscow, 1970;
Azerbaijani folk songs “Hey look, look here!”, “Beauty”, “Well in Yerevan”. Soviet writer, Leningrad, 1978

In the minds of living people, the name of Konstantin Simonov is strongly associated with works about the Great Patriotic War, with the lines of the poem “The Son of an Artilleryman” familiar from the school bench (“Major Deev had Comrade Major Petrov ...”), and even with serial versions about his romance with famous actress Valentina Serova. During the years of the Khrushchev “thaw”, the suddenly “thawed” anti-Stalinists did not want to forgive the Soviet “general” from literature for either his lightning success, or high positions in the Union of Writers of the USSR, or loyal plays, articles and poems written in the late 1940s - early 50s -s. Post-perestroika "scribes" of national history even ranked K. Simonov - the winner of the Lenin and six Stalin Prizes, one of the most famous and (I'm not afraid of this word) talented writers of the 20th century - among the "anti-heroes". His works were unequivocally put on a par with the "official" works of Fadeev, Gorbatov, Tvardovsky and other Soviet authors, completely lost to the current generation behind the big names of Bulgakov, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Nabokov, etc. Such “uniqueness” in the assessment of historical events, as well as poets, writers and their literary works, has more than once played a cruel joke on those who today seek to preach it from the political platform, in the media or school textbooks.

Neither the Stalinist repressions nor the great victory in the Patriotic War can be deleted from the history of the country. It is impossible to delete or “remove” truly talented works from Russian literature, even if you call their authors unprincipled “Soviet functionaries”, Stalinist sycophants, “custom-made” socialist realist writers. Looking from the heights of past years, it is much easier to demand manifestations of civic courage from others than to show it yourself in real life. Today's critics should not forget this.

And even if we ignore the above "stamps" formed by public opinion in recent decades, there is simply no one to read the works of K. M. Simonov today. The theme of the war has long exhausted itself, and for all the time that has passed in conditions of absolute literary freedom, not a single work really loved by the people has appeared in the Russian-language literature of the post-Soviet space. The Russian literary market, in the form in which it exists now, is focused solely on the needs of lovers of "light reading" - base detective stories, all sorts of fantasy and ladies' novels.

K.M. Simonov got another, more severe era. His spell-poem "Wait for me" was read like a prayer. The plays "A Guy from Our City", "Russian People", "So It Will Be" became heroic examples for a whole generation of Soviet people. A far from unambiguous, too frank cycle of lyrical poems dedicated to V. Serova (“With You and Without You”, 1942), marked a short period of “lyrical thaw” in Soviet military literature and brought its author truly national fame. Reading these lines, it is impossible, impossible not to understand that Konstantin Simonov wrote about the Great Patriotic War not out of duty, but out of a deep inner need, which from a young age until the end of his days determined the main theme of his work. Throughout his life, the poet, playwright, thinker Simonov continued to think and write about human destinies associated with the war. He was a warrior and a poet, able to ignite in the hearts of millions of people not only hatred for the enemy, but also to raise the nation to defend their homeland, inspire hope and faith in the inevitable victory of good over evil, love over hate, life over death. Being a direct eyewitness and participant in many events, Simonov, as a journalist, writer, screenwriter, artist of the word, made a significant contribution to his work in shaping the attitude to the events of the Great Patriotic War among all subsequent generations. The novel "The Living and the Dead" - the largest work of the writer - is a deep understanding of the past war, as a huge, universal tragedy. More than one generation of readers read to them: both those who went through and remembered that war, and those who knew about it from the stories of their elders and Soviet films.

Family and early years

Kirill Mikhailovich Simonov was born in Petrograd, in a military family. His real father Mikhail Agafangelovich Simonov (1871-?) is a nobleman, a graduate of the Imperial Nikolaev Military Academy (1897), major general. In his official biographies, K.M. Simonov pointed out that "the father died or went missing" at the front. However, during the First World War, the generals did not go missing at the front. From 1914 to 1915 M.A. Simonov commanded the 12th Velikolutsky Infantry Regiment, from July 1915 to October 1917 he was chief of staff of the 43rd Army Corps. After the revolution, the general emigrated to Poland, from where Kirill's mother, Alexandra Leonidovna (nee Princess Obolenskaya), received letters from him in the early 1920s. The father called his wife and son to him, but Alexandra Leonidovna did not want to emigrate. By that time, another man had already appeared in her life - Alexander Grigoryevich Ivanishev, a former colonel in the tsarist army, a teacher at a military school. He adopted and raised Cyril. True, the mother kept the surname and patronymic of her son: after all, everyone considered M.A. Simonov dead. She herself took the name Ivanisheva.

Cyril's childhood years were spent in Ryazan and Saratov. He was brought up by his stepfather, to whom he retained sincere affection and good feelings for the rest of his life. The family did not live well, so in 1930, after finishing the seven-year plan in Saratov, Kirill Simonov went to study as a turner. In 1931, together with his parents, he moved to Moscow. After graduating from the faculty of precision mechanics, Simonov goes to work at an aircraft factory, where he worked until 1935. In Autobiography, Simonov explained his choice for two reasons: “The first and main one is the five-year plan, a tractor factory that has just been built not far from us, in Stalingrad, and the general atmosphere of the romance of construction, which captured me already in the sixth grade of school. The second reason is the desire to earn money on your own.” For some time, Simonov also worked as a technician at Mezhrabpomfilm.

In the same years, the young man begins to write poetry. The first works of Simonov appeared in print in 1934 (some sources indicate that the first poems were published in 1936 in the magazines Young Guard and October). From 1934 to 1938 he studied at the Literary Institute. M. Gorky, then entered the graduate school of MIFLI (Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History named after N.G. Chernyshevsky).

In 1938 Simonov's first poem "Pavel Cherny" appeared, glorifying the builders of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. In the "Autobiography" of the writer, the poem is mentioned as the first difficult experience, crowned with literary success. It was published in the poetry collection Review of Forces. At the same time, the historical poem "Battle on the Ice" was written. Turning to historical topics was considered mandatory, even "programmatic" for a novice author in the 1930s. Simonov, as expected, introduces a military-patriotic content into the historical poem. At a meeting in the journal "Literary Studies", dedicated to the analysis of his work, K. Simonov said: "I had a desire to write this poem in connection with the feeling of an approaching war. I wanted those who read the poem to feel the proximity of the war ... that behind our shoulders, behind the shoulders of the Russian people, there is a centuries-old struggle for their independence ... "

war correspondent

In 1939, Simonov, as a promising author of military subjects, was sent as a war correspondent to Khalkin Gol. In a letter to S.Ya. Fradkina dated May 6, 1965, K. Simonov recalled how he first got to the front: “I went to Khalkhin Gol very simply. At first, no one was going to send me there, I was, as they say, too young and green, and I had to go not there, but to Kamchatka to join the troops, but then the editor of the Heroic Red Army newspaper, which was published there, in Mongolia, in our group of troops, - sent a telegram to the Political Directorate of the army: "Urgently send a poet." He needed a poet. Obviously, at that moment in Moscow there was no one more solid in terms of his poetic baggage than me, I was summoned to the PUR something like that at one or two in the afternoon, and at five o’clock I left in a Vladivostok ambulance for Chita, and from there it was already to Mongolia...

The poet never returned to the Institute. Shortly before leaving for Mongolia, he finally changed his name - instead of his native Cyril, he took the pseudonym Konstantin Simonov. Almost all biographers agree that the reason for this change lies in the peculiarities of Simonov's diction and articulation: he did not pronounce "r" and the hard sound "l". It was always difficult for him to pronounce his own name.

The war for Simonov began not in the forty-first, but in the thirty-ninth year at Khalkhin Gol, and it was from that time that many new accents of his work were determined. In addition to essays and reports, a correspondent brings a cycle of poems from the theater of military operations, which soon gains all-Union fame. The most poignant poem “The Doll” in its mood and theme involuntarily echoes Simonov’s subsequent military lyrics (“Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region”, “Nameless field”, etc.), which raises the problem of the warrior’s duty to the Motherland and his people.

Immediately before the Patriotic War, Simonov twice studied at the courses of war correspondents at the Military Academy named after M.V. Frunze (1939-1940) and the Military-Political Academy (1940-1941). He received the military rank of quartermaster of the second rank.

From the first days of the war, Konstantin Simonov was in the army: he was his own correspondent for the newspapers Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda, Krasnaya Zvezda, Pravda, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Battle Banner, and others.

As a correspondent, K. Simonov could move around in the frontline zone with freedom that was fantastic even for any general. Sometimes, in his car, he literally slipped away from the pincers of the encirclement, remaining almost the only surviving eyewitness to the death of an entire regiment or division.

It is well known, confirmed by eyewitnesses and documented that in July 1941, K. Simonov was near Mogilev, in parts of the 172nd Infantry Division, which fought heavy defensive battles and broke through from the encirclement. When Izvestia correspondents Pavel Troshkin and Konstantin Simonov arrived at the command post of the 172nd Infantry Division, they were detained, threatened to put them on the ground and kept until dawn, and taken to headquarters under escort. However, Simonov's correspondent was even pleased. He immediately felt discipline, order, confidence, he understood that the war was going far from what the enemy intended. K. Simonov finds in the courage and firm discipline of the regiments defending the city a certain “foothold”, which allows him to write to the newspaper “not a lie for salvation”, not a half-truth, forgivable in those dramatic days, but something that would serve others fulcrum, would inspire confidence.

Even before the war, correspondent Simonov was compared with a harvester for his fantastic "efficiency" and creative fertility: literary essays and front-line reports fell from his pen like from a cornucopia. Simonov's favorite genre is the essay. His articles (very few), in essence, are also a series of essay sketches connected by journalistic or lyrical digressions. During the war, the poet K. Simonov first appeared as a prose writer, but the writer's desire to expand the genres in which he worked, to find new, brighter and more intelligible forms of presenting material very soon allowed him to develop his own individual style.

K. Simonov's essays, as a rule, reflect what he saw with his own eyes, what he himself experienced, or the fate of another specific person with whom the war brought the author. In his essays there is always a narrative plot, and often his essays resemble a short story. In them you can find a psychological portrait of the Hero - an ordinary soldier or officer of the front line; life circumstances that shaped the character of this person are necessarily reflected; the battle and, in fact, the feat are described in detail. When K. Simonov's essays were based on the material of a conversation with participants in the battle, they actually turned into a dialogue between the author and the hero, which is sometimes interrupted by the author's narration ("Soldier's Glory", "Commander's Honor", etc.).

In the first period of the Great Patriotic War - from June 1941 to November 1942 - Simonov sought to cover as many events as possible, visit various sectors of the front, depict representatives of various military professions in his essays and works of art, and emphasize the difficulties of the usual front-line situation.

In 1942, Konstantin Simonov was awarded the rank of senior battalion commissar, in 1943 - the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the war - colonel. As a war correspondent, he traveled to all fronts. During the fighting in the Crimea, Konstantin Simonov was directly in the chains of counterattacking infantrymen, went with a reconnaissance group behind the front line, and participated in the military campaign of a submarine that mined the Romanian port. He also had to be among the defenders of Odessa, Stalingrad, the Yugoslav partisans, in the advanced units: during the Battle of Kursk, the Belarusian operation, in the final operations to liberate Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Simonov was present at the first trial of war criminals in Kharkov, was also in the newly liberated, unimaginably terrible Auschwitz and in many other places where decisive events took place. In 1945, Simonov witnessed the last battles for Berlin. He was present at the signing of Hitler's surrender in Karlshorst. Awarded four military orders.

The hard, sometimes heroic work of front-line correspondents, who not only collected material for essays and articles, but also took part in battles, saved others and died themselves, was subsequently reflected in the works of the writer K. Simonov. After the war, his collections of essays appeared: Letters from Czechoslovakia, Slavic Friendship, Yugoslav Notebook, From the Black Sea to the Barents Sea. Notes of a war correspondent. Simonov is the author of the popularly beloved "Song of War Correspondents", which for many years became the anthem of journalists working in the "hot spots" of the planet:

"Wait for me": a novel of an actress and a poet

On July 27, 1941, K. Simonov returned to Moscow, having spent at least a week on the Western Front - in Vyazma, near Yelnya, near the burning Dorogobuzh. He was preparing for a new trip to the front - from the editors of the Red Star, but it took a week to prepare the car for this trip.

“During these seven days,” Simonov recalled, “in addition to front-line ballads for the newspaper, I suddenly wrote “Wait for me”, “The major brought the boy on a gun carriage” and “Don't be angry, for the best” in one sitting. I spent the night at Lev Kassil's dacha in Peredelkino and stayed there in the morning, I didn't go anywhere. He sat alone in the country and wrote poetry. All around were tall pines, lots of wild strawberries, green grass. It was a hot summer day. And silence.<...>For a few hours I even wanted to forget that there is a war in the world.<...>Probably, on that day more than on others, I thought not so much about the war, but about my own fate in it ... "

Subsequently, highly authoritative critics and literary scholars assured that “Wait for me” was Simonov’s most general poem, that in one lyric poem the poet was able to convey the features of the time, managed to guess the most important thing, the most necessary for people, and thereby help millions of his compatriots in a difficult time of war . But he succeeded not at all because he tried to "guess" what is most needed now. Simonov did not conceive anything of the kind! On that hot summer day at the dacha of L. Kassil, he wrote what was vitally necessary for him. Turning in his thoughts to the only addressee of his love lyrics - actress Valentina Serova, the poet expressed what was most important and desirable for him at that moment. And only for this reason, precisely for this reason, poems written by one person and addressed to one single woman in the world have become universal, necessary for millions of people in the most difficult time for them.

With a rising star of Russian cinema, prima of the Moscow Theater. Lenin Komsomol V. V. Serova (nee Polovikova) Konstantin Mikhailovich met in 1940. His first play, “The Story of a Love,” was staged on the stage of the theater. Valentina, by that time already the widow of the famous pilot, hero of the Soviet Union Anatoly Serov, played one of the main roles in it. Prior to that, in the 1939-40 season, she shone in the play "Zykovs", and the young, then still aspiring poet and playwright, did not miss a single performance. According to Serova, Simonov, who was in love, prevented her from playing: he always sat with a bouquet of flowers in the front row and followed her every movement with a searching gaze.

However, Simonov's love for Vaska (the poet did not pronounce the letters "l" and "r" and that is how he called his muse) was not mutual. Valentina accepted his courtship, was close to him, but she could not forget Serov. She preferred to remain the widow of a hero-pilot, rather than become the wife of a still little-known young writer. Moreover, Simonov was already married to E.S. Laskina (cousin of B. Laskin), in 1939 their son Alexei was born.

From the first literary steps, the poet Simonov wrote "for the press", accurately guessing the path that would lead his work to the printed pages. This was one of the main secrets of his early and enduring success. His ability to translate the current semi-official point of view and offer it to the reader already in an emotionally lyrical package was forged from the first literary experiments. But “Wait for me” and other lyrical poems dedicated to relations with Serova were the only works of the poet that were not originally intended for publication. And who in those pre-war, jingoistic, ideologically sustained years would begin to print love lyrics full of erotic drama and suffering about unrequited love?

The war changed everything. Completely personal, necessary only for him, the poem "Wait for me" Simonov read more than once in a circle of literary friends; read to artillerymen on the Rybachy Peninsula, cut off from the rest of the front; read to scouts before a heavy raid behind enemy lines; read to sailors on a submarine. He was listened to with equal attention both in the soldiers' dugouts and in the staff dugouts. The features of the Russian Soviet reader, already fully formed, were such that he sought in literature - especially in the painful situation of the war - consolation, direct support. In providing such support, critics saw "one of the tasks of poetry." Simonov's poem went beyond this function, having received from the first moment of creation another, special function: "spell", "prayer", "cure for melancholy", "faith" and even, if you like, "superstition"...

Soon the lines of the beloved poem began to diverge in handwritten copies, memorized. Soldiers sent them in letters to their loved ones, conjuring separation and imminent death, glorifying the great power of love:

December 9, 1941 "Wait for me" was first heard on the radio. Simonov accidentally ended up in Moscow and read the poem himself, having managed to broadcast literally at the last minute. In January 1942 "Wait for me" was published in Pravda.

According to eyewitnesses, at post-war meetings with readers, Simonov never refused to read "Wait for me", but somehow his face darkened. And there was pain in his eyes. He seemed to fall again in his forty-first year.

In a conversation with Vasily Peskov, when asked about “Wait for me,” Simonov wearily replied: “If I hadn’t written, someone else would have written.” He believed that it just coincided: love, war, separation, and a few hours of loneliness that miraculously fell out. Besides, poetry was his work. Here are the verses through the paper. This is how blood bleeds through the bandages...

In April 1942, Simonov handed over to the publishing house "Young Guard" the manuscript of the lyric collection "With you and without you." All 14 poems of the collection were addressed and dedicated to V. Serova.

In the very first major article about this cycle, the critic V. Aleksandrov (V. B. Keller), known since the pre-war years, wrote:

The collection "With you and without you" actually marked a temporary rehabilitation of lyrics in Soviet literature. The best of his poems express the conflict between the two strongest driving forces of the poet's soul: love for Valentine and military duty to Russia.

In the days of the heaviest battles of 1942, the Soviet party leadership found it necessary to bring such verses to the mass reader, opposing the horrors of war with something eternal and unshakable, for which it is worth fighting and worth living:

However, Simonov's muse still did not dream that her longtime admirer would call her his wife. She also did not promise to wait faithfully and selflessly for her admirer from front-line business trips.

There is a version that in the spring of 1942, Valentina Serova was seriously carried away by Marshal K. Rokossovsky. This version was presented in Yu. Kara's sensational TV series "Star of the Epoch" and is firmly rooted in the minds of not only ordinary viewers, but also TV journalists, authors of various publications about Serova in the press and on Internet resources. All living relatives, both Serova and Simonov, and Rokossovsky, unanimously deny the military romance of the marshal and the actress. The personal life of Rokossovsky, who was, perhaps, an even more public person than Serov and Simonov, is quite well known. Serova with her love simply had no place in her.

Perhaps Valentina Vasilievna, for some reason during this period, really wanted to break off relations with Simonov. Being a direct and open person, she did not consider it necessary to pretend and lie in real life - she had enough playing on stage. Rumors spread around Moscow. The novel of the poet and actress was under threat.

It is possible that at that moment jealousy, resentment, a purely masculine desire to get his beloved at all costs spoke in the rejected Simonov. By publishing love lyrics dedicated to Serova, the poet actually went for broke: he agreed to use his personal feelings for ideological purposes in order to gain real, nationwide fame and thereby “squeeze” the intractable Valentina.

Written in 1942, the script for the propaganda film “Wait for me” made the personal relationship between Simonov and Serova the property of the whole country. The actress simply had no choice.

It is possible that it was during this period that their novel, largely invented by Simonov himself and “approved” by the authorities, gave the first serious crack. In 1943, Simonov and Serova entered into an official marriage, but, despite all the favorable circumstances and apparent external well-being, the crack in their relationship only grew:

Over time, the crack of misunderstanding and dislike turned into a “thousand-mile thick glass”, behind which “one cannot hear the beating of the heart”, then into a bottomless abyss. Simonov managed to get out of it and find new ground under his feet. Valentina Serova surrendered and died. The poet refused to extend a helping hand to his former, already unloved muse:

As their daughter Maria Simonova later wrote: “She died [V. Serova - E.Sh.] alone, in an empty apartment robbed by rogues who soldered her, from which they took out everything that could be carried by hand.

Simonov did not come to the funeral, sending only a bouquet of 58 blood-red carnations (in some memories there is information about a bouquet of pink roses). Shortly before his death, he confessed to his daughter: "... what I had with your mother was the greatest happiness in my life ... and the greatest grief ..."

After the war

At the end of the war for three years, K.M. Simonov was on numerous business trips abroad: in Japan (1945-1946), the USA, and China. In 1946-1950 he was the editor of one of the leading literary magazines, Novy Mir. In 1950-1954 he was the editor of the Literaturnaya Gazeta. From 1946 to 1959, and then from 1967 to 1979 - Secretary of the Writers' Union of the USSR. For the period from 1942 to 1950, K. Simonov received six Stalin Prizes - for the plays "A Guy from Our City", "Russian People", "The Russian Question", "An Alien Shadow", the novel "Days and Nights" and the collection of poems "Friends and enemies."

Simonov - the son of a tsarist general and a princess from an old Russian family - regularly served not just the Soviet government. During the war, he gave all his talent to the fighting people, his Motherland, that great and invincible country, which he wanted to see Russia. But once he got into the party “clip” (Simonov joined the party only in 1942), he immediately acquired the status of a “necessary” poet favored by the authorities. Most likely, he himself believed that he was doing everything right: the victory in the war and the position that Russia had taken in the world after 1945 only convinced Simonov that the chosen path was right.

His ascent up the party ladder was even more rapid than his entry into literature and gaining all-Russian fame. In 1946-1954, K. Simonov was a deputy of the USSR Supreme Council of the 2nd and 3rd convocations, from 1954 to 1956 he was a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee. In 1946-1954 - Deputy Secretary General of the Board of the Writers' Union of the USSR. In 1954-1959 and in 1967-1979 - Secretary of the Board of the Writers' Union of the USSR. Since 1949 - Member of the Presidium of the Soviet Peace Committee.

Yes, obeying the “general line of the party”, he participated in the campaign of persecution of Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, wrote “custom-made” plays about cosmopolitans (“Alien Shadow”) and ballad poems, tried to persuade I. Bunin, Teffi and other prominent white émigré writers to return to Soviet Russia. As editor-in-chief in 1956, Simonov signed a letter from the editorial board of the Novy Mir magazine refusing to publish Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago, and in 1973, a letter from a group of Soviet writers to the editors of the Pravda newspaper about Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov.

But at the same time, it is impossible not to admit that Simonov's activity in all his high literary posts was not so unambiguous. The return to the reader of the novels of Ilf and Petrov, the publication of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (1966, in an abbreviated magazine version) and Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, defense of L.O. Brik, which high-ranking "historians of literature" decided to delete from Mayakovsky's biography, the first complete translation of the plays by A. Miller and Eugene O'Neill, the publication of the first story by V. Kondratiev "Sashka" - this is not a complete list of K. Simonov's merits to the Soviet literature. There was also participation in the “breakthrough” of performances at Sovremennik and the Taganka Theater, the first posthumous exhibition of Tatlin, the restoration of the exhibition “XX Years of Work” by Mayakovsky, participation in the cinematic fate of Alexei German and dozens of other filmmakers, artists, writers. The dozens of volumes of Simonov’s day-to-day efforts stored today in the RGALI, called by him “Everything done”, contain thousands of his letters, notes, statements, petitions, requests, recommendations, reviews, analyzes and advice, prefaces, paving the way for “impenetrable” books and publications. There is not a single unanswered letter in the archives of the writer and the editorial offices of the journals he leads. Hundreds of people began to write military memoirs after reading Simonov and sympathetically assessed by him "tests of the pen."

In "disgrace"

Simonov belonged to that rare breed of people whom the authorities did not spoil. Neither the forced bowing in front of superiors, nor the ideological dogmas within which the path of Soviet literature of the late 1940s and early 1950s lay, killed in it a genuine, living beginning, characteristic only of a truly talented artist. Unlike many of his colleagues in the literary workshop, over the years of his "symphony" with the authorities, K. Simonov has not forgotten how to perform actions aimed at defending his views and principles.

Immediately after Stalin's death, he published an article in Literaturnaya Gazeta proclaiming that the main task of writers was to reflect the great historical role of Stalin. Khrushchev was extremely annoyed by this article. According to one version, he called the Writers' Union and demanded the immediate dismissal of Simonov from the post of editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta.

By and large, the editor Simonov did what he considered necessary to do at that moment. His honest nature as a soldier and poet resisted such forms of treatment of the values ​​of the past and present as "spitting and licking." With his article, Simonov was not afraid to express the opinion of that part of society that really considered Stalin the great leader of the nation and the winner of fascism. They, yesterday's veterans, who went through all the hardships of the past war, were disgusted by the hasty renunciations of the "Thaw" shifters from their recent past. It is not surprising that shortly after the XX Party Congress, the poet was severely reprimanded and was relieved of his high post in the Union of Writers of the USSR. In 1958, Simonov left to live and work in Tashkent as Pravda's own correspondent for the republics of Central Asia.

However, this forced "business trip"-exile Simonov did not break. On the contrary, the release from social and administrative work and the share of publicity that accompanied him almost all his life gave a new impetus to the writer's work. “When there is Tashkent,” Simonov joked gloomily, but with courageous dignity, “there is no need to leave for seven years in Croisset to write Madame Bovary.

"Alive and Dead"

Simonov's first novel "Comrades in Arms", dedicated to the events at Khalkin Gol, was published in 1952. According to the original intention of the author, it was supposed to be the first part of the trilogy he conceived about the war. However, it turned out differently. In order to fully reveal the initial stage of the war, other heroes were needed, a different scale of the events depicted. "Comrades in Arms" was destined to remain only a prologue to a monumental work about the war.

In 1955, while still in Moscow, Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov began work on the novel The Living and the Dead, but political intrigues after the 20th Party Congress, as well as attacks from the new party and literary leadership, prevented the writer from completely surrendering to creativity. In 1961, Simonov brought the completed novel to Moscow from Tashkent. It became the first part of a large truthful work about the Great Patriotic War. The author found heroes with whom the reader will go from the first days of the retreat to the defeat of the German army near Moscow. In 1965, Simonov completed his new book, Soldiers Are Not Born, which is a new meeting with the heroes of the novel The Living and the Dead. Stalingrad, the unadorned truth of life and war at a new stage - the overcoming of science to win. In the future, the writer intended to bring his heroes to 1945, to the end of the war, but in the process of work it became obvious that the action of the trilogy would end in the places where it began. Belarus in 1944, the offensive operation "Bagration" - these events formed the basis of the third book, which Simonov called "Last Summer". All three works are united by the author into a trilogy under the general title "The Living and the Dead".

In 1974, for the trilogy "The Living and the Dead" Simonov was awarded the Lenin Prize and the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

According to the scripts of K. Simonov, the films "A guy from our city" (1942), "Wait for me" (1943), "Days and Nights" (1943-1944), "The Immortal Garrison" (1956), "Normandie-Niemen" were staged (1960, together with S. Spaak and E. Triolet), The Living and the Dead (1964), Twenty Days Without War (1976).

In 1970, K.M.Simonov visited Vietnam, after which he published the book "Vietnam, the winter of the seventieth ..." (1970-71). In dramatic poems about the Vietnam War, "Bombing the Squares", "Over Laos", "Duty Office" and others, comparisons with the Great Patriotic War constantly arise:

"I'm not ashamed..."

Of great documentary value are Simonov's memoirs "Diaries of the War Years" and his last book - "Through the Eyes of a Man of My Generation. Reflections on Stalin” (1979, published in 1988). These are memories and reflections about the time of the 30s - early 50s, about meetings with Stalin, A.M. Vasilevsky, I.S. Konev, Admiral I.S. Isakov.

In the book “Through the Eyes of a Man of My Generation” K.M. Simonov partly reconsiders his former views, but does not renounce them at all. Unlike some fairly well-known publicists and memoirists of the "perestroika" period, Simonov is far from "sprinkling ashes on his head." Carrying out painstaking work on the inevitable mistakes and delusions of his generation, the writer does not stoop to unsubstantiated defamation of the historical past of his country. On the contrary, he invites posterity to listen to the facts, so as not to repeat previous mistakes:

Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov died on August 28, 1979 in Moscow. According to the will, the ashes of K.M. Simonov was scattered over the Buinichsky field near Mogilev, where in 1941 he managed to get out of the encirclement.

In conclusion, I would like to cite an excerpt from the book of memoirs of the philologist, writer and journalist Grigory Okun "Meetings on a distant meridian." The author knew Konstantin Mikhailovich during his stay in Tashkent and, in our opinion, most accurately described Simonov as one of the most controversial and controversial, but bright and interesting people of his time: