Text/Ma Jiajun
July 11 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of the famous Soviet writer Pavlenko. Pavlenko is a writer who is very familiar to the people of the mainland. His films "The Oath", "Conquering Berlin" and his novel "Happiness" were loved by us. The spirit of struggle of ordinary Soviets and the wise leadership of the Communist Party, as expressed in them, aroused our deep respect and educated us. Pavlenko's life of working for the prosperity of socialist culture is worth learning from, and his quality of diligent and creative labor for the party and the people is also worth learning.
Peter Andreevich Pavlenko was born in 1899 in a family of railway employees. The writer's childhood and adolescence were spent in Tbilisi. In 1918 Pavlenko entered the agricultural discipline of the Baku General Technical School, and in 1920 the 21-year-old joined the Red Army and joined the Communist Party in the same year. In the years of the Soviet Civil War, in the revolutionary struggle led by the Party, a number of future Party writers were tempered, namely Fadeyev, Fuermanov, Ostrovsky, and so on. Pavlenko was one of them, fighting the white bandits on many fronts. Soon after, he was sent to the Party School to study, and after graduation, he worked as a political commissar and party worker. From 1924 to 1927 he worked in the Soviet Commercial Representative Office in Turkey. Battlefield and state work tempered Pavlenko and taught him how to treat life.
In 1924, the newspaper Aurora orientalis published a number of features by Pavlenko, later published under the title Istanbul and Turkey. This feature collection shows the writer's experience in Turkey, which exposes the essence of the Kimal government's service to the bourgeoisie and imperialism, and satirizes the shameless behavior of the European colonists. After this, the writer also published the Collected Stories of Asia Minor. In these works, the principle of the party spirit of the writer observing life is displayed, and at the same time, the "infantile disease" of the young writer who is intoxicated with formalism in art is also expressed.
Pavlenko was not only able to understand life according to the Party's point of view. And can actively respond to the party's call to go deep into life. In the spring of 1930, he obeyed the demands of the party and the people to Turkmenistan, and soon wrote the novel "Desert" and the feature collection "Turkmen Chronicles". The writer shows the great creative work of the Turkmen people under the leadership of the Party and expresses the revolutionary spirit of the proletariat.
Pavlenko's large-scale work depicting the revolutionary spirit of the proletariat was the first novel "Barricades" written in 1932. In this book, the writer describes the exploits of the heroes of the Paris Commune with a broad epic generalization, and he was the first to create the artistic image of the great proletarian leader Karl Marx in Soviet prose.
The party and Gorky helped Pavlenko grow further. From the Party's teachings, he more deeply understood the role of art in social life. As the writer truly and sharply reflects pressing real problems, so does his artistic skills. Pavlenko eventually broke away from formalism and created excellent works.
In 1936 Pavlenko's novel "In the East" came out. This is an excellent work of national defense literature. It depicts the construction of the Far East and the conspiratorial activities of Japanese and American imperialism. The great significance of the novel is to call on people to be vigilant and defend the motherland. The image of a Communist Party member occupies the most important place in the novel. What is significant is that the novel shows the activities of the Chinese anti-Japanese guerrillas, shapes the image of Comrade Tang, the head of the northeast region of the Communist Party of China, Comrade Xiao, the party's propagandist, and the representative of the Chinese workers' and peasants' government, and expresses the spirit of friendship and internationalism of the Chinese and Soviet people.
In addition to his prose writing, he wrote the screenplays for the films "On the Frontier", "Alexander Nevsky" and "Sverdlov" before the war. For Pavlenko's contribution, the government awarded him the Order of Lenin.
When the Great Patriotic War broke out in 1942, Pavlenko, like other Soviet writers, went to the forefront of the anti-fascist struggle. He wrote numerous essays, features, short stories, and novellas, as well as the film script Oath. It was only in 1945 that the writer left the army.
Pavlenko's finest work was the post-war novel Happiness. This novel was deeply loved by the people of the Soviet Union and the world. Through the story of the Communist Party member Vorobayev who guided and overcame the difficulties of life after the war, the work shows the great perseverance of the Soviet people to heal the wounds of war, and shows the flesh-and-blood relationship between the Communist Party leading the people and being inseparable from the people. Pavlenko pointed out that true happiness consists in dedicating one's strength, knowledge and life to the party and the people; the combination of the fate of the individual and the cause of socialism is the source of happiness. In Vorobayev, the ideology of the Communists, the spirit of serving the people, the strong tenacity and perseverance to fight against difficulties, the vitality of life that always looks forward... These are all things we should seriously study.
Pavlenko received several awards, but as a member of the Communist Party, he was not satisfied with his achievements. After writing the novel "Happiness", he wrote the screenplay "Happiness", the novella "The Sun of the Steppe", the film script "Conquering Berlin", the feature "Impression of America", "Impression of Italy", "Young Germany" The first part of the novel "Soldier for Peace" and a large number of short stories, in addition to creative activities, he also tirelessly engaged in social activities. Pavlenko is a member of the Party Committee of the City of Yalda and a member of the Party Committee of the Crimean Province, an editor of the crimea magazine, a representative of the Supreme Soviet, and has attended several international conferences on the defence of world peace. Unfortunately, he was in a good year of service to his homeland, but he fell ill and died in 1951.
In his later years, pavlenko's depiction of Stalin, who embodied the party's wise leadership, somewhat exaggerated Stalin's personal role, but his historical exploits in the victory of ordinary Soviets over fascism under the leadership of the Communist Party were brilliant Soviet revisionists who tried to reduce the significance of Pavlenko's creations in vain. Because the people love Pavlenko's creations, they are willing to learn from the spirit of this Communist writer who fought for human justice and the cause of communism all his life.
(Published in Xi'an Daily on July 11, 1959)
(Note: The author of this article has authorized this headline)
(Ma Jiajun, a native of Qingyuan, Hebei, born on October 5, 1929, is currently a professor at the College of Literature of Shaanxi Normal University, a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a member of the Chinese Dramatists Association, a member of the Chinese Filmmakers Association, an honorary president (former president) of the Shaanxi Foreign Literature Society, a principle of the Chinese Foreign Literature Society, a principle of the Chinese Russian Literature Research Society, a former president of the Shaanxi Provincial Higher Education Drama Research Society, a former consultant of the Shaanxi Poetry Society, and a former executive director of the Shaanxi Provincial Federation of Social Science Societies. Shaanxi Province to build socialist spiritual civilization advanced individuals, Shaanxi Province to teach and educate advanced teachers, etc., enjoy special allowances from the State Council.
He is the author of 12 kinds of "Nineteenth Century Russian Literature", "The New Stage of Aesthetic History", "Poetry Exploration", "Exploration of World Literature", etc.; 4 kinds of "The Essence of World Literature" and "History of Western Drama" co-authored with his daughter Ma Xiaoyi; 9 kinds of "History of World Literature" (3 volumes) and "Research on Gorky's Creation"; edited 4 kinds of "30 Lectures on European and American Modernist Literature"; co-edited and co-authored "100 Topics of Marxism-Leninism", "Cultural Research Methods", "50 Lectures on Oriental Literature", "Western Literature in the Twentieth Century", etc. and more than 40 kinds.
It has been listed in more than 40 kinds, such as the Dictionary of Chinese Writers, the Dictionary of Chinese Poets, the Dictionary of Chinese Social Science Scholars, the Cambridge Dictionary of International Biographies (27th Edition in English), the Directory of Experts in Russian Studies Abroad (Russian Edition) of the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Classics of Shaanxi Century of Literature and Art. ）