Александр Бек: Жизнь и творчество советского писателя

Soviet novelist and writer

Alexander Alfredovich Bek (Алекса́ндр Альфре́дович Бек; 2 November 1972), sometimes transliterated from the Russian Cyrillic as Aleksandr Bek or Anglicized to Alexander Beck, was a Soviet novelist and writer.

Alexander Bek was born on 3 January 1903. The son of a physician employed by the Imperial Russian Army, Bek received an upbringing in his native city of Saratov, where he attended a Realschule. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the outbreak of the Russian Civil War between the Red and White movements, he joined the Bolsheviks' Red Army as a sixteen year old volunteer and began contributing articles to the army's divisional newspaper in 1919. His first novel, Kurako, completed in honor of the outstanding russian metallurgist Mikhail Kurako and set down following the impressions left on Bek after a visit to the town of Kuznetsk, was published in 1934. Several other works in the style of socialist realism were written during the 1930s. Bek returned for duty in the Red Army during World War II at Moscow as a volunteer in the 3rd Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment of the 8th (Krasnaya Presnya) Volunteer Rifle Division, known as "The Writers' Company". However, before entering combat he was reassigned to serve as a war correspondent, in which role he witnessed the Soviet defense of Moscow in 1941. He produced one of his life's most famous works, Volokolamsk Highway («Волоколамское шоссе»), in 1944, depicting the heroism of Moscow's defenders. Accordingly, The New Appointment first appeared in Frankfurt am Main in 1972. Bek died on 2 November 1972 in Moscow.

Volokolamsk Highway, Foreign Languages Publishing House, date unknown. And Not to Die: A Novel, SRT Publications, 1949. Berezhkov: The Story of an Inventor, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958.