Vadim Kozhevnikov is a writer and journalist of the Soviet era. In those days there were a lot of films about the war, this topic was number one in the cinema. Writers created their masterpieces one by one and received state awards for it. The plots really touched for the living and brought up courage and patriotism among the younger generation. One of such famous Soviet writers and journalists is the USSR State Prize laureate and Hero of Socialist Labor Vadim Kozhevnikov (his photo is presented below). In his arsenal there are many beautiful works that are collected in 9 volumes. In literary circles, this writer is certainly a very talented and famous person.
Vadim Kozhevnikov: biography
He was born in the remote Russian pre-revolutionary Siberia - in the Tomsk province of the Narym Territory in the village of Togur - April 9, 1909 in a family of exiled social democrats. He spent almost all his childhood and youth in Tomsk with his parents. But the time came, he fluttered out of his parental nest and in 1925 went to conquer Moscow. There he entered the Moscow State University at the literary department of the ethnological faculty, which he graduated in 1933.
The first professional steps of the beginning writer Vadim Kozhevnikov made in 1930, publishing his first story “Port”. In 1933, he got a job as a journalist in the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, then worked in the popular social and political magazines Smena, Ogonyok, and Our Achievements. Having gained invaluable experience, six years later, in 1939, he released the compilation Night Talk. A year later, Kozhevnikov was already a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR.
War
However, in 1941, peacetime ended after fascist Germany began to bomb the borders of the Soviet Union. The Great Patriotic War began, and people who could fight not only with weapons, but also with feathers, were called up to the army so that they would promptly and professionally transmit the hot news from the forefront, because people were waiting for them with great impatience.
After some time, Vadim Kozhevnikov appeared on the battle line as a war correspondent for one of the front-line newspapers. In 1943, he became a correspondent for the Pravda publishing house. But the most important event in his military journalistic life, as for any Soviet person, and even more so a front-line soldier, was the capture of Berlin, when he transmitted many hot reports from the center of events.
After the war, life gradually began to go its way, and Vadim Kozhevnikov from 1947 to 1948 began to work as editor of the department of literature and art in the newspaper Pravda. And from 1949, and until his death, Kozhevnikov will occupy the post of chief editor of the Znamya magazine.
Since 1967 he was secretary of the board of the joint venture of the USSR and the RSFSR, a delegate to the XXVI Congress of the CPSU (1981), and a deputy of the USSR Armed Forces.
He died on October 20, 1984. His body was buried in Peredelkino cemetery.
Vadim Kozhevnikov: interesting facts
A lot of hype and gossip was caused by the news that Kozhevnikov, as editor of Znamen, handed over to the KGB (according to other sources - the Central Committee of the CPSU) the manuscript of V. Grossman’s novel Life and Fate. Most likely, the manuscript was requested from the editorial office by one of these bodies. Kozhevnikov's daughter in every way denies this information. She believes that her father could not transfer the manuscript to “punitive organs”, because it was filled with rather dangerous insights, where the parallels of Hitler-Stalin and fascism-communism were traced. Most likely, they could send her to the ideological center of the Central Committee. There were people who supported this point of view, because nevertheless there was no evidence or documents in this regard. But Solzhenitsyn wrote in one of his books that he remembered how Grossman’s novel was removed from the safe of the New World publishing house.
Kozhevnikov's works
The main work of Vadim Kozhevnikov was occupied by stories and novels, his front-line prose, which he created throughout the Great Patriotic War, was even more successful. However, several novels came out from under his pen. The most famous among them are “Shield and Sword” and “Meet Baluev” (it was based on them that the feature films of the same name were shot), as well as the novels “Dawn Towards” (1956), “Roots and Crown” (1983) , "At noon on the sunny side" (1973), at one time so adored by millions of Soviet people. The most popular among readers are the stories: “The Great Call” (1940), “Flying Day” (1963), “Special Unit” (1969), “Military Happiness” (1977), “So was "(1980)," Polyushko-pole "(1982); the stories Port (1930), Night Talk (1939), Heavy Hand (1941), Tales of War (1942), The Roads of War (1955) , "The Tree of Life" (1979), "March - April" (1942), which also made a great feature film of the same name.
The novel “Shield and Sword”
In order to have an idea of ​​what Vadim Kozhevnikov wrote, we will dwell in more detail on the work “Shield and Sword”, which became a tribute to such a deadly and heroic work as Soviet intelligence of the Second World War. In the story, the young and trained Russian intelligence officer Alexander Belov was abandoned from Riga to Germany in 1940, just before the war, under the guise of a German repatriate Johann Weiss. He started uncertainly and at first worked as an ordinary truck driver, gradually getting used to the Germans and studying their work style and behavior. He had a friend - Heinrich Schwarzkopf. By 1944, while serving in the intelligence of the Third Reich, Weiss made a dizzying military career and rose to the rank of SS Hauptsturmfuhrer. He was then transferred to Berlin to the SS Reichsfuhrer Security Service. From that moment he gained access to the most valuable securities and information.
Alexander Belov
There are several hypotheses from which the Kozhevnikov wrote off his legendary hero. One points to the scout Rudolf Abel, and the other to Alexander Svyatogorov. But be that as it may, the novel is very interesting, although its structure is not at all similar to the usual style of such masters as Julian Semenov. In this work, deep psychology predominates, based on the experiences of Sasha Belov, who is trying to get used to the skin of a purebred Aryan devoted to the National Socialist cause.
Continuation
Belov learned to be absolutely calm, no matter what happened, as well as the ability not to impersonate, not to be annoyed, and to move confidently towards his goal. And he was able to overcome his first "I".
In the second part, thirty percent is devoted to the slowly developing near-political environment. Weiss gets acquainted with a huge number of Nazis and ordinary Germans. And only twenty percent of the plot is devoted to the action component, which is observed by other famous authors, in general, to what they love this genre: operations, chases, setups, interrogations, etc.
As a result, the romantic idealist will turn into a cold-blooded professional.
There is one more curious moment: according to Stanislav Lyubshin, the leading actor in the film “Shield and Sword”, this picture made a very strong impression on Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and influenced his choice of the profession of intelligence officer.
A family
Many readers are interested in Vadim Kozhevnikov. His personal life is no exception. Although the writer’s daughter Nadezhda Kozhevnikova helped a little to open the curtain in this matter. She recalled that her father had large bright green eyes with long eyelashes. He was not just handsome, but a destroyer of women's hearts. And he conquered a lot of women's hearts, but the last conquest ended on her mother Victoria. Suddenly an inveterate bachelor surrendered. When they got married, he was thirty-six, and his beloved was twenty-six.
Victoria had this already her second marriage, before that her husband was a polar pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union Ilya Mazuruk. With her daughter Irina from her first marriage, she went to Vadim. Although it was said about him that he was henpecked, but he was not a weak person in this matter, rather he was cunning, everything that concerned home, life and upbringing lay on Victoria, since this sphere practically did not interest him.