Leonid Dobychin
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Leonid Ivanovich Dobychin () (,
Ludza Ludza (; , , , , ''Ludza'') is a town in the Latgale region of eastern Latvia. Ludza is the oldest town in Latvia and this is commemorated by a key in its coat of arms. Ludza is the administrative centre of Ludza Municipality that is located near ...
,
Vitebsk Governorate Vitebsk Governorate (, ) was an administrative-territorial unit ('' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire, with the seat of governorship in Vitebsk. It was established in 1802 by splitting Belarusian Governorate and existed until 1924. Today most ...
— March 28, 1936 was a Russian and Soviet writer.


Early life

The author's father was Ivan Andrianovich Dobychin (1855—1902), who in 1896 moved the family to Dvinsk (now
Daugavpils Daugavpils (see also other names) is a state city in southeastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city derives its name. The parts of the city to the north of the river belong to the historical Latvian region ...
); his mother, Anna Aleksandrovna, was a well-known midwife in Dvinsk. Leonid had two younger brothers and two sisters. He studied in the Dvinsk Modern School (a non-classical high school), and in 1911 entered
Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, abbreviated as SPbPU, is a public technical university located in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Over the decades, it established itself as a cornerstone of technical education and research, ulti ...
, graduating in 1916. In 1918 he moved to
Bryansk Bryansk (, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Bryansk Oblast, Russia, situated on the Desna (river), Desna River, southwest of Moscow. It has a population of 379,152 at the 2021 census. Bryans ...
, where he worked as a teacher and
statistician A statistician is a person who works with Theory, theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private sector, private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, a ...
.


Career

His first stories were published in 1924 in the Leningrad journal ''Russkii sovremennik''. In the autumn of 1925 Dobychin made his first, unsuccessful, attempt to relocate to Leningrad. At this time he came to know the Chukovskys; later he became acquainted with a wide circle of authors, including
Mikhail Slonimsky Mikhail Leonidovich Slonimsky (; – 8 October 1972) was a Soviet writer, member of the Serapion Brothers group, and a memoirist. Biography Mikhail was born in Saint Petersburg to the family of Intelligentsia. His grandfather, father and aunt ...
,
Veniamin Kaverin Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin (; Вениами́н А́белевич Зи́льбер (Veniamin Abelevich Zilber); – May 2, 1989) was a Soviet and Russian writer, dramatist and screenwriter associated with the early 1920s movement of th ...
,
Yury Tynyanov Yury Nikolaevich Tynyanov ( rus, Ю́рий Никола́евич Тыня́нов, p=ˈjʉrʲɪj nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ tɨˈnʲænəf; October 18, 1894 – December 20, 1943) was a Soviet writer, literary critic, translator, scholar and scre ...
,
Evgeny Shvarts Evgeny Lvovich Schwartz (, , Kazan, Russian Empire, January 15, 1958, Leningrad, Soviet Union) was a Soviet writer and playwright, whose works include twenty-five plays, and screenplays for three films (in collaboration with Nikolai Erdman). L ...
, Gennady Gor, and Leonid Rakhmanov. His story collections ''Vstrechi s Liz'' (Encounters with Lise, 1927) and ''Portret'' (The Portrait, 1931) portray the clash of the former Russian world with the new Soviet reality; they exemplify a lyrical "antipsychologism." In his only novel, '' The Town of N'' (1935), a boy recalls his family, school, and romances and the
Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire. The major land battles of the war were fought on the ...
; his village is modeled on "the town of N" from Gogol's ''
Dead Souls ''Dead Souls'' ( , pre-reform spelling: ) is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov ...
''. When the novel was published, it did not attract the attention of the censors, but the following year it was the object of vicious criticism in an attack on formalism among Leningrad writers. After the stormy meeting of the Leningrad Writers' Union on March 25, 1936, Dobychin disappeared; he is presumed to have committed suicide, and his body was fished out of the
Neva River The Neva ( , ; , ) is a river in northwestern Russia flowing from Lake Ladoga through the western part of Leningrad Oblast (historical region of Ingria) to the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland. Despite its modest length of , it is the fourth-l ...
months later.
Solomon Volkov Solomon Moiseyevich Volkov (; born 17 April 1944) is a Russian journalist and musicologist. He is best known for ''Testimony'', which was published in 1979 following his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1976. According to him, the book was the ...
wrote:
A writer who surpassed Zoshchenko in a desire for simplicity and laconic writing was Leonid Dobychin, a remote and lonely man who managed to produce three small books before vanishing in 1936... Dobychin's works, which were greatly esteemed among Leningrad writers, were met with hostility by the critics as collections of "man-in-the-street gossip, foul anecdotes and operetta episodes." A critic reviewing Dobychin's book fumed, "The streets of Leningrad are filled with various people, most of whom are healthy, life-loving and energetic builders of socialism, but the author writes: 'Gnats bustled.'" ... Dobychin's work was an extreme expression of the attempts by some masters of the new Petersburg prose to achieve simplicity and a laconic tone.
The same author said, "In Leningrad, people compared him to Joyce and Proust, although he wrote microscopic stories." Kaverin wrote, "The author — indignant, ironic, pained by the vulgarity of some and the unconscious cruelty of others — is clearly visible on every page." And, according to Boris Lanin, "Dobychin's experimentalism was not understood by his contemporaries, as it adhered neither to the dictates of socialist realism nor imitated the ornamental prose of Pil'niak and Zamiatin, and he remained on the periphery of Russian literary life."Cornwell and Christian (eds.), ''Reference Guide to Russian Literature'', p. 53. Dobychin's work was not republished in Russia until 1989.


Notes


Translations

* Richard Chandler Borden and Natalia Belova (tr.), ''The Town of N'' (Northwestern University Press, 1998), * Richard Chandler Borden and Natalia Belova (tr.), ''Encounters with Lise and other stories'' (Northwestern University Press, 2005),


External links


Selection of works
(in Russian, with photo) {{DEFAULTSORT:Dobychin, Leonid Ivanovich 1894 births 1936 deaths People from Ludza People from Lyutsinsky Uyezd Soviet novelists Soviet male writers 20th-century Russian male writers Soviet short story writers Modernist writers 1936 suicides Suicides by drowning Suicides in the Soviet Union