Central European University Press
By Right of Memory: The Life of Aleksandr Tvardovskii
Key Metrics
- Geoffrey Hosking
- Central European University Press
- Hardcover
- 9789633867471
- -
- -
- Biography & Autobiography > Literary Figures
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Alexander Tvardovskii was not only one of the finest, most popular and most important poets of his epoch, but also the editor of Novy Mir, the most prominent Soviet literary journal of the post-war period until the 1970s. This book is a detailed biography of the writer and journal editor who probably changed the literary culture of the Soviet Union more than any other person in the two decades after Stalin's death. Geoffrey Hosking shows how Tvardovskii gradually evolved from being an ardent Stalinist who renounced his own so-called kulak family to becoming a convinced advocate of tolerance, an all-human morality, civil rights, and free literary creativity.
By giving a balanced account of his strengths and weaknesses, his achievements and failures, the author succeeds in giving the fullest picture available anywhere of a controversial man who turns out to be more complex than he has been portrayed so far. To understand him better is to understand why the Soviet intelligentsia changed so fundamentally in the USSR's final decades, a change that helps to explain the rise of Gorbachev twenty years later. The study - which includes an in-depth analysis of Tvardovskii's major works - also helps to better understand the fate of culture under an authoritarian regime and the intricacies of the struggle against censorship.
Author Bio
Geoffrey Hosking, one of the world’s preeminent scholars of Russian history, provides a unique perspective on the rapid changes the country experienced in the late 1980s. Other books have focused on the political changes that took place under Gorbachev; Hosking’s lively analysis illuminates the social, cultural, and historical developments that created the need—and openness—for sweeping political and economic change.
Los Angeles Times Historical Book Prize in 1986 was awarded to A History of the Soviet Union and History Book Prize U.S. Independent Publishers in 2002 was awarded to Russia and the Russians: A History.
Source: and Harvard University Press and The British Academy
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