Виктор Астафьев: Жизнь и творчество писателя

Russian Soviet writer

Viktor Petrovich Astafyev also spelled Astafiev or Astaf'ev (Ви́ктор Петро́вич Аста́фьев; 1 May 1924 – 29 November 2001), was a Soviet and Russian writer, playwright and screenwriter. He was recognized with the title Hero of Socialist Labour in 1989.

Viktor Astafyev was born in the village of Ovsyanka (then Krasnoyarsk Uyezd, Yeniseysk Governorate, Russian SFSR) on the bank of the Yenisey river. His father, Pyotr Pavlovich Astafyev, was a son of a relatively rich mill owner (a part time hunter who most of his time though spent at home), mother Lydia Ilyinichna Astafyeva (née Potylitsyna) came from a peasant family. In his 2000 autobiography Viktor Astafyev remembered his father's household as a place where men, led by grandfather Pavel Yakovlevich, were on continuous binge, while all the work was being organized and done by two women, Lydia and her mother in law, Maria Osipova, Pavel Yakovlevich's young second wife. In 1931 two tragedies struck. First Pyotr, Pavel and the latter's father (Astafyev grand grandfather) Yakov Maximovich were arrested as part of the Dekulakization campaign and sent to a Siberian labour camp. In July 1931 Lydia Ilyinichna, Viktor's mother drowned in the Yenisey as the boat which she was rowing, carrying food to the Krasnoyarsk prison where her arrested husband was kept, got upturned. That year Pyotr Astafyev received 5 years of prison as an "Enemy of the people" and was sent to the infamous Belomorkanal building site. Seven year old Viktor found himself in the house of Yekaterina Petrovna and Ilya Yevgrafovich Potylitsyns, his mother’s parents who gave the boy all their love and care. In 1932 he joined a local primary school. His life in the early 1930s Astafyev later described in his book of short stories The Last Respect (Posledny Poklon, 1968). and on 25 November received his first award, the For Courage medal. In January 1944 he returned to action and took part in the Korsun Shevchenko operation, then (in March and April) in the Kamenets Podolsky assault and on 25 April was awarded the Order of the Red Star. But I felt as if I had to tell about the everyday side of the war, of how the trenches smelt, of the way people there lived The first killed, one of us. The first one you've killed. I had to write of all the monstrous things I've seen," he said years later in an interview.

After his discharge in 1945 Astafyev settled for a while in his wife's parents' house in Chusovoy, then went to Krasnoyarsk, doing various jobs such as locksmith and smelter. In 1950 he started contributing to the Tchusovsky Rabochy (The Tchusovoy Worker) newspaper which in February 1951 published his debut short story "A Civil Man" (Grazhdansky tchelovek), which two years later was reprinted by the Perm based Zvesda newspaper. In 1954 Astafyev was for the first time published by a Moscow magazine (short story "Splinter", in Smena). In 1955 he left the newspaper and started working upon his first novel Snows are Melting (Tayut Snega) which was published in 1958, as was his first book of short stories Warm Rain (Tyoply Dozhd), dedicated mostly to the experience of Russian soldiers and civilians during recent war. Also in the late 1950s Astafyev joined the regional Perm radio. Working there provided relatively good wages but involved too much blatant propaganda. "I decided to quit after one and a half years, feeling that otherwise I'd just stop respecting myself altogether," he remembered. On 1 October 1958 Astafyev became the member of the RSFSR Union of Writers. Viktor Astafyev died on 29 November 2001, in Krasnoyarsk. He was buried in his native Ovsyanka. At the 8th USSR Writers Union Congress in the summer of 1986, Georgian delegates urged the author to apologize publicly for his insult to the Georgian nation; when he refused, they walked out in protest. In October 1993, he signed the Letter of Forty Two. In 1999, his novel Jolly Soldier, which portrayed the horrors of the Soviet Army was met with extremely adverse reaction, which may have brought about a heart failure.

In the years when many Soviet war literature authors (like Fyodor Parfyonov or Ivan Stadnyuk) were singing paeans to an idealized, invincible Soviet war hero, crushing the enemy under the Communist Party leadership, Viktor Astafyev became one of the first to rebel against the officially approved convention and reveal the darker, unglamorous side of what was happening in 1941–1945. He is credited with being one of the major proponents (alongside Viktor Nekrasov, Vasil Bykaŭ, Vladimir Bogomolov, Konstantin Vorobyov) of the so called The Truth from the Trenches (okopnaya pravda) movement (the term was used originally in a derogatory sense by detractors who argued that former soldiers could not be trusted to write about the Great war objectively, being ignorant of its greater 'truths') which brought authenticity and harsh realism to the Soviet war literature. David Gillespie summed up his career as follows:Astafyev has always been a highly individual writer who conforms to no movements or stereotypes He has always remained true to himself, and has retained a certain hard edged integrity. His novel Prokliaty i ubity [The Damned and the Dead] is a gritty, typically uncompromising picture of war, with many naturalistic descriptions in a style the author has developed since the cathartic Pechal'nyi detektiv. Astafyev remains very much a writer who refuses to be easily categorized: he is neither a Village Prose Writer, nor a writer of "war prose", nor a writer who explores the mistakes of the recent Soviet past. At the same time, he is all of these. Capable of surprising and even shocking his reader, Astafyev maintains a deep lyrical sense that has produced what Eidel'man called "the best descriptions of nature for decades". More than any other writer living in Russia today (with the possible exception of Solzhenitsyn), he is a writer who examines man as subjected to and moulded by the total Soviet experience.

The Horse with the Pink Mane, and Other Siberian Stories, Progress Publishers, 1970. Queen Fish: A Story in Two Parts and Twelve Episodes, Progress Publishers, 1982. To Live Your Life and Other Stories, Raduga Publishers, 1989.