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Yuri Bondarev

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Yuri Bondarev
Bondarev in 2014
Bondarev in 2014
BornYuri Vasilyevich Bondarev
(1924-03-15)15 March 1924
Orsk, Soviet Union
Died29 March 2020(2020-03-29) (aged 96)
Moscow, Russia
GenreNovel, short story, essay, social realism, lieutenant prose
Years active1953–2020

Yuri Vasilyevich Bondarev (Russian: Юрий Васильевич Бондарев, 15 March 1924 — 29 March 2020) was a Soviet and Russian writer and screenwriter.[1] He was best known for co-authoring the script for the serial film franchise Liberation (1968–71).[2]

Biography

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Bondarev took part in World War II as an artillery officer and became a member of the CPSU in 1944.[3] He graduated in 1951 from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute.[4] His first collection of stories entitled On a Large River was published in 1953.[5]

His first successes in literature, the novels The Battalions Request Fire (1957) and The Last Salvoes (1959) were part of a new trend of war fiction which dispensed with pure heroes and vile villains in favor of emphasizing the true human cost of war.[3] The Last Salvos was adapted for the cinema in 1961. His next novels Silence (1962), The Two (1964) and Relatives (1969) established him as a leading Soviet writer. His novel Silence became a landmark as the first work to depict a citizen who had been wrongly sentenced to the Gulag.[3] His novels generally cover topics of ethics and personal choices.[6]

In the novel The Hot Snow (1969) he again used the theme of war, creating an epic canvas dealing with the Battle of Stalingrad from the viewpoint of its many participants including common soldiers and military commanders.[7] In his novel The Shore (1975), a Soviet writer learns that a German woman, with whom he had a passionate love affair as a young officer, still loves him. He dies before reaching the promised "shore" of his youthful dream.[4] In The Choice (1980) a terminally ill expatriate kills himself on a visit to Moscow so that he can be buried in the city of his youth. His fate causes an old Soviet friend of his to engage in a painful exploration of existential questions.[4]

Bondarev did also much work for the cinema. Besides adapting his own novels for the screen, he co-authored the script for the serial film Liberation.[7]

In political life during the early 1990s, Bondarev participated in Russia's national-communist opposition politics, belonging to the National Salvation Front leadership. Bondarev was a member of the central committee of the hardline Communist Party of the RSFSR at the end of the Mikhail Gorbachev era; in July 1991 he signed the anti-Perestroika declaration "A Word to the People".

Bondarev died on 29 March 2020 in Moscow at the age of 96.[8]

Awards

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Bondarev on a 2024 stamp of Russia

In 1994 he refused to accept the award of Order of Friendship of Peoples from Boris Yeltsin.[6][10]

English translations

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  • Silence, Houghton Mifflin, 1966.
  • The Last Shots, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1970.
  • The Hot Snow, Progress Publishers, 1976.
  • The Vigil, from Anthology of Soviet Short Stories, Vol 2, Progress Publishers, 1976.
  • The Shore, Raduga Publishers, 1984.
  • The Choice, Raduga Publishers, 1984.
  • On Craftsmanship, Raduga Publishers, 1984.

Filmography (writer)

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References

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  1. ^ Травля Солженицына и Сахарова. Официальные публикации и документы
  2. ^ Текст выступления Бондарева на партконференции
  3. ^ a b c Brown, Archie (1991). The Soviet Union, A Biographical Dictionary. NY: Macmillan. pp. 44–45. ISBN 0-02-897071-3.
  4. ^ a b c Terras, Victor (1990). Handbook of Russian Literature. Yale University Press. p. 59. ISBN 0-300-04868-8. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
  5. ^ "Издательство ИТРК: Юрий Васильевич Бондарев". Archived from the original on 24 October 2016. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  6. ^ a b Биография Юрия Бондарева
  7. ^ a b Atarov, Nikolai (1976). The Vigil, Anthology of Soviet Short Stories, Vol 2; Introduction. Moscow: Progress Publishers. p. 111.
  8. ^ Умер писатель Юрий Бондарев (in Russian)
  9. ^ "Память народа". pamyat-naroda.ru. Retrieved 29 March 2020.
  10. ^ Евгений Евтушенко сгорел на работе
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