Grigory Baklanov
| Grigory Baklanov | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Grigory Yakovlevich Friedman September 11, 1923 Voronezh, Russian SFSR, USSR |
| Died | December 23, 2009 (aged 86) Moscow, Russia |
| Nationality | Russian |
Grigory Yakovlevich Baklanov (Russian: Григо́рий Я́ковлевич Бакла́нов) (September 11, 1923 – December 23, 2009) was a Russian writer, well known for his novels about World War II, and as the editor of the literary magazine Znamya. Becoming the editor in 1986, during Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, Baklanov published the works that were previously banned by Soviet censors; his drive for glasnost boosted the magazine’s circulation to 1 million copies.
Baklanov was born Grigory Yakovlevich Friedman in Voronezh. In 1941, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, Baklanov was 17. He volunteered for the front, becoming the youngest soldier in his regiment. Later, as an artillery lieutenant, Baklanov commanded a platoon that fought in Ukraine, Moldova, Hungary, Romania, and Austria. In 1943, he was badly injured and left partly disabled. Despite this, Baklanov rejoined his regiment and fought at the front until the end of the war. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star and the Order of the Great Patriotic War, first class.
Baklanov’s early (unpublished) fiction related his World War II experiences. In 1951, he graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. His first published novel about the war, South of the Main Offensive (1957), describes fierce battles in which he had participated in Hungary. It was dedicated to the memory of his two older brothers, who were killed in the war.
According to Baklanov, his true literary debut was in 1959, with publication of his second novel, The Foothold (in Russian––Pyadʹ zemli, or Five Inches of Land). It was relentlessly criticized at home, but brought international fame to the writer: The Foothold was published in 36 countries. Soviet critics attacked Baklanov for describing events from an ordinary soldier’s perspective, a depiction that conflicted with the propagandist official version of the war.
In his 1964 novel July 1941, Baklanov was among the first to reveal that Stalin’s purge of the Red Army during the 1930s was responsible for Soviet unpreparedness for war, which resulted in millions dying and being captured. The purge destroyed the army’s command and was chiefly responsible for the disproportionately high Soviet losses in 1941. Upon publication, July 1941 was banned in the USSR for 12 years. In 2003, the writer elucidated on his message in the novel: “I wrote about the people’s tragedy, and about the greatest crime, which caused the year 1941, with millions killed, millions captured prisoner, of whom the main criminal Stalin had said: ‘We have no prisoners, we have only traitors.’”
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