Nikolai Tikhonov

Biography

Nikolai Semenovich Tikhonov was born on November 21, 1896, in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a barber. Young Tikhonov studied at School of Commerce in St. Petersburg. He dropped out and became a stenographer at the Office of the Imperial Trade Fleet and Ports of Russia, in St. Petersburg. At that time he wrote his early poems. From 1914-1918 he served as a hussar in the Imperial Russian Army in the First World War. His first literary teacher was poet Nikolai Gumilev. From 1918-1944 Tikhonov lived in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). He joined the literary group Serapionovy Bratya (The Serapion Brothers). The group was initiated in February of 1921, by Yevgeni Zamyatin who professed, at his literary seminars with aspiring writers, that: "true literature can be created only by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics." They took their name from the story of E.T.A.Hoffmann titled 'Serapion Brothers', about artistic freedom. The group included Mikhail Zoshchenko, Lev Lunts, Konstantin Fedin, Vladimir Pozner, Viktor Shklovskiy, Mikhail Slonimsky, Vsevolod Ivanov, Elizaveta Polonskaia, Nikolai Nikitin, and Veniamin Kaverin. The Serapion Brothers was under the patronage of critic and writer Yuri Tynyanov. They also attended seminars of Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy. They lived in the famous artistic community known as 'Dom Iskusstv' (House of Arts) in a former aristocratic palace on the Nevsky Prospect in St. Petersburg. The writers of the group were non-conformists and were in opposition to the official Moscow-based Soviet literature. Their leader Yevgeni Zamyatin fearlessly criticized the Soviet policy of "Red Terror" and intimidation of intellectuals. Some writers of the Serapion Brothers' group were under severe criticism and were censored. Tikhonov chose to split from Serapion Brothers and turned to the Soviet official literature and politics. In 1925 Tikhonov coined the famous propaganda slogan about the Bolshevik Communists and their stubbornness: "Gvozdi by delat is etikh ludei; krepche b ne bylo v mire gvozdei" (Turn this people to nails; there would be no stronger nails in the world). He wrote a propaganda poem about Lenin and pleased Soviet officials during the ideological struggle of the 1920's. During the 1930's Tikhonov made a fast political career under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Tikhonov chose to comply with the Soviet official line in literature and served the Soviet propaganda during his first trip abroad. In 1935 he was a member of the Soviet delegation to Peace Congress in Paris. There he connected with the French communists, such as Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet. He adopted the methods of "socialist realism" in his writings. He eventually made an impressive career as a literary administrator, rising to Member of the Board of the Soviet Writers' Union during the Second World War. He was a friend of Andrei Zhdanov. In 1944 he was appointed the Chairman of the Soviet Writer's Union and Moved to Moscow. In 1946 he switched places with his friend Aleksandr Fadeyev, who became the Chairman again, and Tikhonov remained Member of the Board at the Soviet Writer's Union for many more years. He opposed poets of the younger generation of the 60's at the time of "Thaw" that was initiated by Nikita Khrushchev. During the rule of Leonid Brezhnev he took the side of Mikhail Sholokhov against Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and other dissident writers. His early book of poetry "Twelve Ballads" (1925) remained his best work. Tikhonov was among the hard-line literary officials in Soviet Russia. He was awarded the Stalin's Prize three times (1942, 1949, 1952), the Lenin's Prize twice (1957 and 1970), and many other Soviet awards and decorations. From 1946-1979 he was continuously elected representative to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Nikolai Tikhonov died on February 8, 1979, in Moscow, and was laid to rest in the Novodevichi Convent Cemetery in Moscow, Russia.