Alexander Serafimovich | |
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| Born | (1863-01-19)January 19, 1863 stanitsa Nizhnekurmoyarskaya,Don Host Oblast,Russian Empire (present-day Tsimlyansky District,Rostov Oblast, Russia) |
| Died | January 19, 1949(1949-01-19) (aged 86) Moscow,USSR |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Notable works | The Iron Flood |
Alexander Serafimovich (bornAlexander Serafimovich Popov;Russian:Алекса́ндр Серафимо́вич Попо́в;O.S. January 7 (N.S. January 19), 1863 – January 19, 1949) was aRussian andSoviet writer and a member of the Moscow literary groupSreda.[1]
He was born in aCossack village on theDon River. His father served as a paymaster in a Cossack regiment. He attended a grammar school, then studied in the Physics and Mathematics faculty ofSt. Petersburg University. During his time at the university, he became friends withAleksandr Ulyanov,Lenin's older brother, who introduced him toMarxism. He was later exiled toMezen, a town in northern Russia, for spreading revolutionary propaganda. While in exile he wrote his first story, which was published inRusskie Vedomosti. It was then that he began using the pseudonym "Serafimovich".[2] After his exile ended, he spent many years living underpolice supervision.
In 1902, he moved to Moscow and became a member of the literary group "Sreda" (Wednesday). During World War I, he was a war correspondent forRusskie Vedomosti.
At the start of the1917 Russian Revolution he joined theBolsheviks, and became a member of theRussian Communist Party (b). In 1918, he became the literary editor ofIzvestia. His best known work of this time is the novelThe Iron Flood (1924) set during theRussian Civil War and based on a real incident of the RedTaman Army escaping encirclement by the enemyWhites.[3][4] He also wrote a stage adaptation ofThe Iron Flood, which was produced byNikolay Okhlopkov at theRealistic Theatre [ru] in Moscow and was the subject of several film proposals bySergei Eisenstein.[5]The Iron Flood was widely translated into a variety of languages, such as Korean[6] and used to advance Soviet and Communist ideology.
AfterThe Iron Flood, he published stories, sketches and plays about the building of theSoviet state and the growth of Soviet culture. From November 1926 to August 1929 Serafimovich was the editor-in-chief of the magazineOktyabr. In 1927 he was the first to read the manuscript ofMikhail Sholokhov's novelAnd Quiet Flows the Don and published the book in the magazine in 1928.
In 1934, he was elected to the governing board of theUnion of Soviet Writers. He died in Moscow in 1949.[2]
Serafimovich's works were praised by many of his fellow writers.Maxim Gorky especially appreciated his talent, introducing him into the Sreda group in Moscow and publishing his works in theZnanie collections.Leo Tolstoy liked his short novelSand.
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The Nobel LaureateMikhail Sholokhov said of him:
"Serafimovich was a great man, a real artist whose stories are near and dear to us; he was one of that generation of writers from whom we learned in our youth."[7]
Vladimir Korolenko said of Serafimovich's first storyOn the Ice (1889):
"Splendid language, full of imagery, terse and powerful, the descriptions bright and lucid."[7]
