Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky
Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky was a prominent Russian literary critic and editor active in the 1920s, known for his contributions to Soviet literature and culture. Born in 1884 in the Tambov province, Voronsky emerged as a politically engaged figure early in his life, participating in revolutionary activities that led to multiple arrests and exiles. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he took on significant political roles in Odessa and Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where he also established a reputation as an influential editor, particularly for the cultural journal Krasnaia nov'. His writings often advocated for a more educated proletariat and debated the relationship between art and communism, aligning with more progressive Bolshevik thinkers like Leon Trotsky.
However, Voronsky's fortunes changed dramatically during Stalin's regime. He faced increasing pressure from rival factions, ultimately leading to his expulsion from the Communist Party and arrest in 1929. After a brief return to Moscow, he focused on his own literary works until he was executed during the Great Purge in 1937. Despite the long suppression of his legacy, Voronsky's contributions were gradually recognized, particularly through the efforts of his daughter, who worked to rehabilitate his name starting in the late 1950s. His writings, which were not translated into English until 1998, continue to offer insight into the complexities of Soviet literature and the intellectual struggles of the time.
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Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky
Writer
- Born: August 27, 1884
- Birthplace: Khoroshavka, Tambov, Russia
- Died: August 13, 1937
- Place of death: Moscow, Russia
Biography
Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky was a leading Russian literary critic and editor during the 1920’s. He was purged under the regime of Joseph Stalin in the 1930’s and his books were banned, but he was slowly rehabilitated from the late 1950’s to the present time, thanks to the efforts of his daughter and grand-daughter.
Voronsky was born in 1884 in the village of Khoroshavka in the Russian province of Tambov. His father, Konstantin Osipovich, was the village priest; his mother, Feodosiia Gavrilovna, moved the family to Dobrinka, and then to the city of Tambov, after her husband’s death in 1887. Voronsky enrolled at the Tambov Seminary in 1904 but was expelled for leading a student rebellion. Already politicized, he moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined in the abortive 1905 revolution. As a result of his participation in the revolt, he spent four years in prison and in exile. He was a delegate to the Communist Party’s Prague Conference of 1912, for which he was again arrested and sent into exile for three more years.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik Party gave him political responsibility for the city of Odessa, and then for the city of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where he became head of the city council in 1919. He also edited the city’s newspaper, writing more than 370 articles on a variety of topics and drawing a band of talented writers as journalists. The quality of the newspaper was noticed in Moscow, and in 1921 he was invited to join Soviet leader Vladimir Illich Lenin and writer Maxim Gorky in planning a serious cultural journal to be called Krasnaia nov’, with the first edition appearing in the June of that year. Voronsky was editor of the newspaper’s literary section, publishing some seventy articles between 1921 and 1927 and inviting other talented writers to contribute. Many of these writers were sympathetic to the Russian Revolution but critical of certain of its aspects. Voronsky soon became embroiled in a debate over the possibility of a purely proletarian art. His position, close to that of Leon Trotsky and the more culturally minded Bolsheviks, was that the proletariat first needed to be educated and that some of the classic books, as well as newer proletariat works, continued to hold significance for working people.
Beginning in 1922, Voronsky headed Krug, a cooperative publishing house, and led a writers group. In 1925, he published an article that explored the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, maintaining that they were not entirely incompatible with Communist dogma. However, attacks on him by other writers’ groups and the death of three close supporters left him vulnerable in the developing political maelstrom. He had to denounce an article critical of Stalin that he had published in 1926. In 1927, he signed a document of support for the Trotskyities, who were finally defeated at the Communist Party congress that year. He lost his jobs and in 1928 was expelled from the Communist Party. In 1929, he was arrested by the secret police and sent into exile in Lipesk. In 1930, he was allowed back into Moscow on medical grounds and given a minor job as editor in the State Publishing House.
In the few years between his move to Moscow and his execution, Voronsky concentrated on his own writing, publishing four anthologies of stories and reminiscences. He already had published an autobiography, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi (1927; Waters of Life and Death, 1927), recounting his life until 1912. He started writing a sequel, describing events through 1921, but this book was not published and the manuscript has never been recovered. The secret police kept a dossier of his activities and during Stalin’s 1937 purge of the intelligentsia, Voronsky was summarily arrested, tried, and shot. His wife, Sima Solomonovna, was also arrested and spent six years in prison camps until she died of cancer in Tashkent in 1943. His daughter, Galina Aleksandrovna, managed to have her father’s name rehabilitated in 1957. However, his works were not translated into English until 1998, when a selection of his most important writings was published in the United States.