ABSTRACT
A leksandr Trifonovich Tvardovskii was a poet, literary critic, and journalist. His epic narrative poems, well-crafted and rich in colloquial language, promoted Soviet moral values, and described easy to identify with contemporary folk heroes. These narrative poems, especially Vasilii Tiorkin (1945), translated into English as Vassili Tyorkin: A Book about a Soldier (1975), won him immense popularity and several of the most prestigious government awards. He was recipient of four Stalin Prizes (1941, 1946, 1947), the Lenin Prize (1961), and the State Prize (1971). One of the most trusted and celebrated representatives of the literary establishment, he served as the Secretary of the Board of the Soviet Writers’ Union (1950-1954, 1959-1971) and Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. During the period of liberalization, he was appointed editor-in-chief of the literary journal Novyi mir (1950-1954, 1958-1970), where he used his influence in political circles to promote the works of liberal writers. The journal introduced to the reading public the names of Solzhenitsyn, Voinovich, Siniavskii, Nekrasov, and revived the publication of works by Pasternak, Akhmatova, Mandelshtam,Tsvetaeva, and many others. His comments on Samuil Marshak’s achievements as translator are emblematic of the political climate of relative liberalization, known as the Thaw. Paying tribute to Marshak’s art, Tvardovskii still feels the necessity to stress the importance of class ideology in Burns’s works, and to justify the selection of translated texts by their political significance in their potential to serve ‘the cause of peace throughout the world’.
