Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Fadeev
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Fadeev was a significant figure in early 20th-century Russian literature and politics, born in 1901 near Timry, Russia. His childhood was tumultuous, characterized by family instability and the upheaval of the Russian Civil War, during which he became actively involved with the Bolshevik Party, fighting under the code name Bulyga. Following his military service and subsequent injuries, Fadeev transitioned into a political role and later pursued a literary career. His works, such as "Razliv" and "The Nineteen," highlighted the conflicts in Russian society and served as pro-Bolshevik propaganda, reflecting his alignment with the revolutionary ideals of his time.
In the late 1920s, he became a prominent literary figure, contributing to the Vsesoiuznaia Assotsiatsiia Proletarskikh Pisatelei and engaging in literary criticism. Fadeev's personal life included a marriage to actress Angelina Stepanova, with whom he had two sons. He later worked as a war correspondent during World War II. However, his perspectives shifted dramatically after the death of Joseph Stalin, leading him to reevaluate his former beliefs. Ultimately, Fadeev's life concluded tragically with his suicide in 1956, marking the end of a complex and influential journey through the intersections of literature and political ideology in Soviet Russia.
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Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Fadeev
Writer
- Born: December 24, 1901
- Birthplace: Near Kimry, Tver province, Russia
- Died: May 13, 1956
- Place of death: Moscow, Russia
Biography
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Fadeev was born in 1901 near Timry, Russia. When his father, who had risen up from poverty to become a teacher, and his mother divorced in 1905, she remarried, but Fadeev’s childhood was marked by nomadic migrations and uncertainty. In 1910, when he was admitted into the Vladivostok Commercial School, Fadeev lived with relatives for a time before the outbreak of the Russian Civil War in 1918.
In the war, Fadeev was very involved with the Bolshevik Party and fought in the North under the code name Bulyga. After he sustained battle wounds, Fadeev became a political figure and secured a spot in the Tenth Party Congress in Moscow. But after a failed mutiny and further battle injuries, Fadeev decided to join the Moscow Mining Academy in 1921. There he found his way back into politics as party secretary to a Moscow factory. In the mid 1920’s he published Razliv (the flood), a pro-Bolshevik depiction of the struggle between old and new in early twentieth century Russia. His second work, Protiv techeniia, concerned the war and the hard choices the Russian people had to make in order to perform their national duty and end civil strife. The year 1927 saw the publication of Fadeev’s most popular work, The Nineteen, which was loosely based on his military experiences and once again provided pro-Bolshevik propaganda.
In the late 1920’s Fadeev was elected to the literary association Vsesoiuznaia Assotsiatsiia Proletarskikh Pisatelei and shifted his focus to literary criticism and powerful, articulate orations. In 1937 he married Angelina Stepanova, an actress who bore him two sons. Fadeev later worked for several newspapers, covering World War II as a correspondent and attending numerous writing congresses. When Fadeev’s hero Joseph Stalin died and some politicians, such as Nikita Khrushchev, defamed Stalin, Fadeev came to see his former role model as a fraud. After rising to the pinnacle of Russian political writers of his era, Fadeev committed suicide in 1956.