Ruined talent: why the author of "Young Guard" Alexander Fadeev committed suicide

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the mid-1940s. Alexander Fadeev was one of the most famous writers, laureate of the Stalin Prize, received for novel "Young Guard", a member of the CPSU Central Committee, general secretary of the USSR Writers' Union. And after Khrushchev came to power, Fadeev was removed from office, removed from the Central Committee of the party and declared a "shadow of Stalin" who approved death sentences for writers during the repressions. In 1956, Fadeev committed suicide, then alcoholism was called the reason for this, but in reality everything was much more complicated and dramatic.

In fact, the decision of the "writer's minister", as Fadeev was called, was not rash and momentary. Some contemporaries of the writer claim that he prepared for this step in advance, visiting friends and saying goodbye to loved ones, and that suicide could not have been committed under the influence of alcohol, since, according to their testimony, he had not drunk in the last three months. And some are sure: before leaving this life, Fadeev committed literary suicide, and it was the fact of his literary inconsistency, which was then confirmed, and became the main reason for what happened.

The total circulation of the novel "Young Guard" was about 25 million copies. The idea of its creation came to Fadeev after he read a newspaper article about the heroic death in Krasnodon of young underground workers executed by the Nazis. When the novel was published in 1946, it was sharply criticized by the authorities for the fact that the work did not pay enough attention to the leading role of the party. Fadeev had to rewrite the novel, and Stalin liked its final version in 1951. True, many did not approve of the second edition of the novel - for example, Simonov called it "a waste of time."

In fact, there were much more significant deviations from the truth of life in the novel than the role of the party in these events. In the work, Oleg Koshevoy is depicted as the head of the organization, although in fact he was an ordinary member of it. The fact is that during his trip to Krasnodon, the writer stopped at the house of Koshevoy's mother, and she became the main source of information and an interpreter of events. In addition, the real leader of the underground, Commissar Viktor Tretyakevich, was slandered and declared a traitor. In the novel, the writer brought him out under a fictitious name, but the locals recognized him as Tretyakevich. Some residents of Krasnodon, undeservedly accused of having connections with the invaders, were also innocently injured.

After Stalin's death and Khrushchev's rise to power, hard times began for Fadeev. At the XX Congress of the CPSU in 1956, the personality cult of Stalin was condemned, and Mikhail Sholokhov criticized Fadeev's activities in the Writers' Union. He was named one of the perpetrators of repression among writers and accused of involvement in the persecution of Zoshchenko, Akhmatova, Platonov and Pasternak. But in reality, this was only half the truth. In an atmosphere of total criticism and condemnation, they forgot to mention that Fadeev in 1948 allocated a significant amount from the funds of the Writers' Union for Zoshchenko, transferred money for Platonov's treatment to his wife, and protected Olga Berggolts from deportation.

After that, Fadeev was removed from the Central Committee of the CPSU and removed from office. It was a complete ruin for him. He never finished his last novel, Ferrous Metallurgy, as he learned that the materials he used turned out to be fake, and the facts were unreliable. The writer fell into depression, began to drink, suffered from insomnia. Everyone turned away from him. Fadeev confessed to his friend, writer Yuri Libedinsky: “Conscience torments me. It's hard to live, Yura, with bloody hands."

On May 13, 1956, Alexander Fadeev shot himself at his dacha in Peredelkino. According to the official conclusion of the medical commission, the suicide was committed as a result of a nervous system disorder provoked by chronic alcoholism. This version was made public.

His suicide note was confiscated by the special services and published only in 1990. It shed light on many of the circumstances of this tragedy: "".

The members of the youth organization, immortalized in Fadeev's novel, were later written repeatedly, for example, about the life and death of the most famous underground worker of the "Young Guard" Lyuba Shevtsova.