Boris Pilnyak
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Boris Andreyevich Pilnyak (''
The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...
'' Vogau ; – April 21, 1938) was a Russian and Soviet writer who was executed by the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
on false claims of plotting to kill
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
and Nikolay Yezhov.


Biography

He was born Boris Andreyevich Vogau () in
Mozhaysk MozhayskAlternative transliterations include ''Mozhaisk'', ''Mozhajsk'', ''Mozhaĭsk'', and ''Možajsk''. (, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, town and the administrative center of Mozhaysky District, Moscow Oblast, Mozhaysky Distri ...
. His father was a doctor, descended from German farmers who settled on the banks of the Volga during the reign of
Catherine the Great Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter I ...
. His mother came from an old merchant family from
Saratov Saratov ( , ; , ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River. Saratov had a population of 901,361, making it the List of cities and tow ...
. Boris first became interested in writing at the age of nine. Among his early influences were
Andrei Bely Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (, ; – 8 January 1934), better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely, was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. Hi ...
,
Aleksey Remizov Aleksey Mikhailovich Remizov (; in Moscow – 26 November 1957 in Paris) was a Russian modernist writer whose creative imagination veered to the fantastic and bizarre. Apart from literary works, Remizov was an expert calligrapher who sought to ...
, and
Yevgeny Zamyatin Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin ( rus, Евге́ний Ива́нович Замя́тин, p=jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ zɐˈmʲætʲɪn; – 10 March 1937), sometimes anglicized as Eugene Zamyatin, was a Russian author of science fictio ...
. Pilnyak achieved fame very quickly at the age of 25 through his novel '' The Naked Year'' (Голый год, 1922; translated into English 1928), one of the first fictional accounts of the Russian civil war. He was a major supporter of anti-urbanism and a critic of mechanized society, views which brought him into disfavor with
Communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...
critics. The poet Demyan Bedny denounced him in ''Pravda'' on 16 October 1923 as a 'stinking' member of the 'horde of clueless fellow travellers'. The Old Bolshevik, Aleksandr Voronsky, founding editor of the journal ''Krasnaya nov'' (Red Virgin Soil), was offended by the remark, made by a character, that the Russian revolution "smells of sexual organs", but acknowledged Pilnyak's talent, and published his next work ''Materials for a Novel.'' Pilnyak followed this with a strange short story ''The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon'', published in the literary journal ''
Novy Mir ''Novy Mir'' (, ) is a Russian-language monthly literary magazine. History ''Novy Mir'' has been published in Moscow since January 1925. It was supposed to be modelled on the popular pre-Soviet literary magazine ''Mir Bozhy'' ("God's World"), w ...
'' ('New World') in May 1926. In the story, a Red Army commander is ordered by 'the three who lead' to undergo a medical operation, which he does reluctantly. He dies on the operating table, the implication being that the 'three who lead' had wanted him dead. In October 1925,
Mikhail Frunze Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze (; ; 2 February 1885 – 31 October 1925) was a Soviet revolutionary, politician, army officer and military theory, military theorist. Born to a Bessarabian father and a Russian mother in Russian Turkestan, Frunze at ...
, who had replaced Trotsky at the head of the Red Army, died after being advised by the Politburo, then dominated by the triumvirate of
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
,
Grigory Zinoviev Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev (born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky; – 25 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A prominent Old Bolsheviks, Old Bolshevik, Zinoviev was a close associate of Vladimir Lenin prior to ...
and
Lev Kamenev Lev Borisovich Kamenev. ( Rozenfeld; – 25 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A prominent Old Bolsheviks, Old Bolshevik, Kamenev was a leading figure in the early Soviet government and served as a Deputy Premier ...
, to undergo an operation. There is no evidence that Stalin wanted Frunze dead, and Pilnyak tried to cover himself against the charge of slandering the leadership by adding a note at the end of his story, dated 28 January 1926, saying that he hardly knew Frunze and that the reader should not look for 'genuine facts and living persons' in the story. Nonetheless, the story created a scandal. Voronsky was shocked and embarrassed that the story was dedicated to him and declared that "I reject this dedication with disgust." The offending edition of ''Novy Mir'' was banned and the
OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate ( rus, Объединённое государственное политическое управление, p=ɐbjɪdʲɪˈnʲɵn(ː)əjə ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əjə pəlʲɪˈtʲitɕɪskəjə ʊprɐˈv ...
visited all known subscribers to confiscate their copies. They were later sent a substitute edition with a different story in place of Pilnyak's. The magazine issued a public apology. He was in China, on a tour of the Far East when the storm broke, and could have defected, but instead hurried back to defend himself. Despite showing no enthusiasm for the Bolshevik revolution, he knew several high ranking communists, and turned for protection to the chief editor of ''Izvestya'',
Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov-Stepanov (; 8 March O.S. 24 February">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 24 February1870 – 8 October 1928) was a prominent Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Sovie ...
who introduced him to the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (or prime minister)
Alexei Rykov Alexei Ivanovich Rykov (25 February 188115 March 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician and statesman, most prominent as premier of Russia and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Soviet Union from 1924 to 1929 and 1924 t ...
. At Rykov's urging, he wrote a letter expressing remorse, which was published in ''Novy Mir'' in January 1927. By now Pilnyak was second only to
Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (;  – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (; ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an aut ...
as the most read living Russian writer, in the Soviet Union and abroad. To protect his copyright, Pilnyak had an arrangement under which all his works were published simultaneously in Moscow and Berlin. His best known novel, ''Mahogany'' (Кра́сное де́рево, 1927, translated 1965), was banned in Russia, but—like his other work—was published in Berlin. This gave Pilnyak's enemy,
Leopold Averbakh Leopold Leonidovich Averbakh (Russian: Леопо́льд Леони́дович Аверба́х; 8 March 1903 – 14 August 1937) was a Soviet literary critic, who was the head of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) in the 1 ...
, head of the
Russian Association of Proletarian Writers The Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, also known under its transliterated abbreviation RAPP () was an official creative union in the Soviet Union established in January 1925. and both pro and anti-Bolshevik writers were targeted, notab ...
the pretext to launch an attack that was carried through four successive weekly editions of the 'Literary Gazette', which Averbakh controlled, and which headlines such as 'A Hostile Network of Agents in the Ranks of Soviet Writers' and 'Boris Pilnyak, Special Correspondent for the White Guard'. The poet
Vladimir Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...
joined in, claiming that "at the present time of darkening storm clouds this is the same as treachery at the front" and Maxim Gorky wrote to one of the secretaries of the Communist Party, Andrey Andreyev complaining about how "Pilnyak has been forgiven for his story about the death of Comrade Frunze". Unlike
Yevgeny Zamyatin Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin ( rus, Евге́ний Ива́нович Замя́тин, p=jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ zɐˈmʲætʲɪn; – 10 March 1937), sometimes anglicized as Eugene Zamyatin, was a Russian author of science fictio ...
, who was subjected to a similar attack at the same time and refused to apologise or back down, Pilnyak capitulated and agreed to comply with the regime's requirements. He found a new protector in
Nikolai Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Николай Иванович Ежов, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet Chekism, secret police official under Joseph Stalin who ...
, the future murderous head of the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
, who acted as his personal censor during the composition of his next novel, ''The Volga Flows into the Caspian Sea'' (Волга впадает в Каспийское море, 1930; translated 1931), which described the forced industrialisation drive in glowing language.
Victor Serge Victor Serge (; born Viktor Lvovich Kibalchich, ; 30 December 1890 – 17 November 1947) was a Belgian-born Russian revolutionary, novelist, poet, historian, journalist, and translator. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks in Janu ...
visited Pilnyak while this work was in progress. "Pilnyak would twist his great mouth. 'He has given me a list of 50 passages to change outright! Ah!' he would exclaim, 'if only I could write freely!' At other times I found him in the throes of depression. 'They'll end up by throwing me in jail, don't you think?' I gave him heart by explaining that his fame in Europe and America safeguarded him." In ''Artists in Uniform'', published in 1934
Max Eastman Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy, and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radica ...
wrote a chapter entitled "The Humiliation of Boris Pilnyak." After he had debased himself, he was allowed to resume his place in the elite, and to travel to Paris, New York and Tokyo. Another of his well-known works is ''Okay! An American Novel'', (О’кей! Американский роман, 1931; translated 1932), an unflattering travelogue of his 1931 visit to the United States. He used the visit to Japan to write ''A story about how stories come to be written''. He was also allocated a private dacha on an estate reserved for privileged writers, where his neighbour was Boris Pasternak, one of the few who had defended him in 1929. In 1936, they were visited by the French novelist
André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French writer and author whose writings spanned a wide variety of styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gide's career ranged from his begi ...
, who was seeking an honest opinion about life in the Soviet Union. A police informer told the NKVD that Pilnyak and Pasternak had several secret meetings with André Gide, and supplied him with information about the situation in the USSR. There is no doubt that Gide used this information in his book attacking the USSR. A report by Aleksandr Arosev at
VOKS VOKS (an acronym for the Russian ''Vsesoiuznoe Obshchestvo Kul'turnoi Sviazi s zagranitsei'' — Всесоюзное общество культурной связи с заграницей, All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign C ...
described Pinyak and Pasternak's influence on Gide as "not very favorable" («не очень благоприятным»). Despite his public debasement, Pilnyak acted courageously in secret. When he heard that
Karl Radek Karl Berngardovich Radek (; 31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a revolutionary and writer active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before World War I and a Communist International leader in the Soviet Union after the Russian ...
, a prominent member of the left wing opposition, was living in hardship after being exiled to Tomsk, Pilnyak sent him money. He also corresponded with the Spanish communist, Andres Nin, who broke with Stalin in 1927 and founded the
POUM The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (, POUM; , POUM) was a Spanish communist party formed during the Second Spanish Republic, Second Republic and mainly active around the Spanish Civil War. It was formed by the fusion of the Trotskyism, Tro ...
(the party George Orwell supported during the Spanish civil war). When Victor Serge was arrested in Moscow, Pilnyak urged Nin to generate international pressure to secure his release. This correspondence was discovered when the NKVD kidnapped Nin in Barcelona. On 28 October 1937, Pasternak dropped by to congratulate Pilnyak and his Georgian wife, Kira Andronikashvili, on their son's third birthday. That evening, Pilnyak was arrested. He was accused of plotting to kill Stalin and Yezhov, and of being a Japanese spy. He was tried on 21 April 1938, pleaded guilty, and was shot the same day. A small yellow slip of paper attached to his file read: "Sentence carried out." He was executed with a bullet to the back of the head at the
Kommunarka shooting ground The Kommunarka firing range (), former dacha of secret police chief Genrikh Yagoda, was used as a burial ground from 1937 to 1941. Executions may have been carried out there by the NKVD during the Great Terror and until the war started; altern ...
. Pilnyak began to be rehabilitated and appreciated again in the USSR in the late 1960s and 1970s.


Bibliography

* ''With the Last Steamboat'' (1918) последним пароходом* '' The Naked Year'' (1922) олый Год* ''Petersburg Story'' (1922) овесть Петербургская* ''Panicle'' (1923) етелинка* ''Sankt-Peter-Burgh'' (1922) анкт-Питер-бурх* ''Deadly Beckoning'' (1922) мертельное манит* ''Nikola-on-Posadiyah'' (1923) икола-на-Посадьях* ''Simple Tales'' (1923) ростые рассказы* ''Tales of Brown Bread'' (1923) овести о чёрном хлебе* ''The Third Chair'' (1923) ретья столица* English stories (1924) нглийские рассказы* ''Tales'' (1924) овести* Stories (1924) ассказы* ''Machines and Wolves'' (1925) ашины и волки* '' The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon'' (1926) овесть непогашенной луны* ''Blizzard'' (1926) етель* ''The Heirs and other stories'' (1926) астроени и др. рассказы* ''Stories of Shreds and Clay'' (1926) ассказы о клочах и глине* ''Russia in Flight'' (1926) оссия в полете* ''Ivan Moscow'' (1927) ван Москва* ''Regular stories'' (1927) чередные повести* ''Kataysky Diary'' (1927) атайскйи дневник* ''Combed Time'' (1927) асплёснутое время* '' The Roots of the Japanese Sun'' (1927) орни японского солнца* ''A Big Heart'' (1927) ольшое сердце* Stories (1927) ассказы* Stories from the East (1927) ассказы с востока* ''Katay story'' (1928) атайская повесть* ''Mahagony'' (1929) расное дерево* Stories (1929) ассказы* The Volga Flows into the Caspian Sea (1930) олга владает в Каспийское море* Stories (1932) ассказы* ''Okey!'' An American novel (1933) 'кэй* ''Stories'' (1933) ассказы* ''Stones and Roots'' (1934) амни и корни* ''Chosen stories'' (1935) забранные рассказы* ''Birth of Man'' (1935) ождение человека* ''Fruit ripening'' (1936) озревание плодов* ''Meat'' (1936) ясо


Influence

Pilnyak is generally considered the greatest Russian novelist of 1920s and was the second most read writer of that time, only behind
Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (;  – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (; ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an aut ...
. His modernist style of writing influenced a whole generation, not only Russian but also many Yugoslav writers, the most famous of them being
Danilo Kiš Danilo Kiš (; born Dániel Kiss; 22 February 1935 – 15 October 1989) was a Yugoslav and Serbian novelist, short story writer, essayist and translator. His best known works include ''Hourglass'', '' A Tomb for Boris Davidovich'' and '' The En ...
,
Dubravka Ugrešić Dubravka Ugrešić (; 27 March 1949 – 17 March 2023) was a Yugoslav- Croatian and Dutch writer. A graduate of University of Zagreb, she was based in Amsterdam from 1996 and continued to identify as a Yugoslav writer. Early life and education ...
and Miodrag Bulatovic among others. Kiš often cited Pilnyak as one of his main influences and one of his favourite Russian authors along with Yury Olesha and
Isaac Babel Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel ( – 27 January 1940) was a Soviet writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of ''Red Cavalry'' and ''Odessa Stories'', and has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose write ...
.


References


Further reading

*


External links

* *
Encyclopedia of Soviet Writers

"On Pilnyak" by Leon Trotsky
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pilnyak, Boris 1894 births 1938 deaths Soviet novelists Soviet male writers Soviet short story writers Russian people of Volga German descent Volga German people People executed by the Soviet Union by firearm Great Purge victims from Russia People from Mozhaysk Executed writers