The biography of Demyan Poor is of great importance in the history of Russian literature. This is a famous Soviet writer and poet, public figure, publicist. The heyday of his work fell on the first years of the existence of Soviet power. In this article we will talk about his fate, creativity and personal life.
Childhood and youth
We will begin to talk about the biography of Demyan Poor in 1883, when he was born in the small village of Gubovka in the territory of the Kherson province. His real name is Yefim Alekseevich Pridvorov. The poet's father was a peasant who left for work in the city. The mother, left alone, led a loose life, practically did not care about her son.
Yefim graduated from four classes of a rural school, and then was drafted into the army. After the call, he studied at the military paramedic school in Kiev, and served in the infirmary in Elizavetgrad. He never returned to his village.
In 1904, Yefim received a certificate of maturity, with which he entered the historical and philological faculty of the university in St. Petersburg. He conscientiously studies, pays 25 rubles a year, earning private lessons.
During this period, changes in the personal life of Demian Poor come. In the poet's biography, a fateful meeting with Vera Kosinskaya, which was one of his students, happens. She became his first wife. In 1911, their daughter Tamara was born.
First publications
In 1899, Pridvorov published his first poems. These works were written in the spirit of romantic lyrics or monarchist patriotism.
At the university there are many future Bolsheviks. In the biography of Demian Bedny, acquaintance with Bonch-Bruevich is of great importance, after which his poems acquire a rebellious character. Just then the pseudonym “Poor” appears. It was the nickname of his uncle, who was an atheist and a public accuser in the village. In telling a brief biography of Demian Poor, it is necessary to mention that for the first time this name appears in the 1911 poem "On Demian Poor, a harmful man." And the hero of our article begins to sign with the fable “Cuckoo” of 1912. Poems are published in the social democratic newspaper Zvezda. The publication was legal, but because of his works he was fined several times.
In 1912, the poet became a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Since then, the ostro-satirical fables of Demyan Poor have been published in Bolshevik magazines and newspapers Nevskaya Zvezda, Pravda, and Our Way.
In 1913, his first book was published. In the biography of Demian Poor it was a difficult time, as the police closely watched him. The newspaper numbers with his poems were confiscated, searches were constantly held at home.
The poet studied at the university for 10 years, but never graduated from it. He deliberately delayed the deadlines for exams, because after that he would lose the right to live in St. Petersburg and would have to go to serve in Yelisavetgrad.
World War I
During the war, the writer came under mobilization. At the front he was a paramedic in the sanitary-hygienic detachment.
He was awarded the St. George medal for saving the wounded from the battlefield. Since 1915, serves in the reserve. Perhaps due to suspicions of insecurity, he was sacked.
Since then, it has not been printed anywhere, the poet is arranged as a clerk in Petrograd. In 1916, his youngest daughter Susanna is born.
October Revolution
After the February Revolution, Poor worked with the Bolshevik newspaper Izvestia, and then with Pravda. The fables of the poet liked Lenin, who considered them to be true proletarian creativity.
They had been in correspondence since 1912, and in 1917 they met in person. Lenin often quoted the poems of the Poor during his speeches. The poet was even nominated as a delegate from the Bolsheviks to the elections to the Christmas Duma.
In the spring of 1918 he moved with the Soviet government to Moscow, having received an apartment in the Grand Kremlin Palace. Here he settles with his wife, children, mother-in-law and nanny. Soon he had two sons - Dmitry and Svyatoslav.
During the Civil War, he was engaged in campaigning in the Red Army. In the verses of those years he often extols Lenin and Trotsky.
Mixed success
The position of the poet at that time was controversial. On the one hand, he seemed to be the surrounding successful and popular author. In the 20s of the last century, his books were published with a total circulation of about two million copies. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, compared with Gorky.
On the other hand, the creativity and biography of Demian Poor many were critically evaluated. For many, his figure was unacceptable as a literary standard. Annoyed by his militant idealism, superficiality, stereotyped speech and images, every lack of poetic skill.
In the internal party struggle in the second half of the 20s, he was on the side of Stalin. Due to this, he continued to enjoy the benefits from the authorities. He had a close relationship with the future generalissimo.
In addition to works on pressing political topics, he paid great attention to feuilleton and anti-religious propaganda. It can be noted his "New Testament without the flaw of the Evangelist Demian," "Baptism." The satire of the poet was devoted to criticism of fascism and imperialism.
Opal
Speaking briefly about the most important thing in the biography of Demian Poor, we note that in the early 30s he was in disgrace. It all started with the condemnation of his poetic feuilleton “Without Mercy” and “Get Off the Stove,” which appeared in Pravda. The author was accused of sweeping the whole Russian. At the same time, the last work spoke of the uprising in the Soviet Union and the assassination attempt on Stalin.
The poor complained to Stalin, but he sharply replied that the poet had gone too far in the necessary criticism of social processes, which turned into slander of the past and present of the country.
After that, much has changed in the biography of Demian Poor. Poems and fables of the poet have become emphasized party and trustworthy. He began to regularly use the words of Stalin as epigraphs to his works. He criticized Trotsky in the poems True. Heroic Poem and No Mercy.
In 1933, on the eve of his 50th birthday, he was awarded the Order of Lenin. At the same time, his criticism at the party level continued. In 1934, at the First Congress of Soviet Writers, he was accused of political backwardness. Shortly before this, they were evicted from the Kremlin apartment. In 1935, a scandal erupted when a notebook was found with offensive characteristics that Poor gave prominent figures of the government and the party.
In 1933, the poet divorced his wife. And in 1939 he married the actress Nazarova.
Criticism of works
In 1936, Molotov and Stalin were outraged by the comic opera Bogatyrs, for which the poet wrote the libretto. The performance was condemned as anti-patriotic.
In 1937, in a letter to the editorial board of Pravda, Stalin called literary rubbish the next anti-fascist poem of the hero of our article “Fight or Die,” seeing in it a criticism of the Soviet system rather than the fascist one.
At the end of the same year, a devastating article appeared in Pravda entitled “Falsification of the People’s Past”. The poor person was accused of distorting Russian history, manifested in the denigration of the heroes and heroes of Ancient Russia.
At the end of life
In 1938, Poor was expelled from the Union of Writers and the Party with the phrase "for moral decay." He was finally stopped printing, and the objects that managed to rename in his honor were returned to their previous names.
Caught in disgrace, the poet was in poverty. He continued to praise Lenin and Stalin in poetry, but in personal conversations spoke negatively about the leader and the party elite.
When the Great Patriotic War began, it began to be published again. First, under the pseudonym D. Battle, and then under the same name. Participated in the "TASS Windows", collaborated with the Kukryniksy in the creation of campaign posters. His anti-fascist songs and poems were imbued with calls to recall antiquity and praise of Stalin. But these verses went unnoticed, he failed to restore the leader’s former location.
May 25, 1945 the poet died in a sanatorium. The diagnosis is paralysis of the heart. He was buried in the Novodevichy cemetery. Later, the poet was rehabilitated, in 1956 he was posthumously restored to the party.