Simonov, Konstantin Mikhailovich

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SIMONOV, KONSTANTIN MIKHAILOVICH

(1915–1979), Russian writer and Writers' Union official who specialized in describing the Great Patriotic War.

Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov was born in Petrograd, the son of a military schoolteacher. He entered a factory school and began working in various factories while he began writing poetry. He published his first poems in 1934 and enrolled in the Gorky Literary Institute. After graduation in 1938, he worked as a journalist and served as a correspondent for Red Star (Krasnaya zvezda ) during the war.

During the war, he began to write plays and fiction about his experiences and became quite popular during the 1940s and 1950s. The novel Days and Nights described the battle of Stalingrad in a realistic, natural manner. His other work was noted for its adherence to dictates of Socialist Realism. He won numerous awards, including six Stalin prizes, a Lenin prize, and the Hero of Socialist Labor medal.

Simonov served in many editorial and administrative positions during his career. He was editor-in-chief of Literaturnaia Gazeta (1950–1953), a secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers (1946–1950, 1967–1969), a member of Central Committee of Communist Party (1952–1956), and a deputy to the Supreme Soviet. Most interestingly, he was editor-in-chief of Novyi mir from 1954–1958, where he presided over the publication of Vladimir Dudintsev's Not by Bread Alone (Ne khlebom edinim ). Under attack, he soon retreated from this liberal position and thereafter remained within the official bounds of propriety.

In his posthumous memoirs, Through the Eyes of a Man from My Generation (Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia ), Simonov provides great insight into the world of Soviet literary politics under Stalin and after. His life and work demonstrate the compromises some writers chose as they negotiated the contours of official Soviet culture.

See also: journalism; novy mir; world war ii