Viktor Petrovich Astafiev (years of life 1924-01-05 - 2001-29-11) - Soviet and Russian writer, prose writer, essayist, most of whose works are made in the genre of military and village prose. He is one of the galaxy of writers who have made a very great contribution to the development of Russian literature. Astafiev was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, he fought since 1943. Until the end of the war, Viktor Astafiev remained a simple soldier, was a driver, a signalman, an artillery reconnaissance officer. Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of 2 state awards of the USSR.
Victor Astafiev was born into the family of the peasant Pyotr Pavlovich Astafiev on May 1, 1924 in the village of Ovsyanka, located on the territory of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The writer's mother, Lydia Ilyinichna, died tragically when he was only 7 years old. She drowned in the Yenisei, this event and the river will subsequently pass through all of his works. Astafiev will spend his best hours and days on the river, about which he will write books, remembering his mother in them. The mother remained in the life of the writer as a light shadow, touch, memory, and Victor never tried to burden this image with any everyday details.
The future writer went to school at the age of 8. In the 1st grade, he studied in his native village, and finished primary school in Igarka, where his father moved to work. He graduated from elementary school in 1936. In the fall, when he had to study in the 5th grade, trouble happened to him: the boy was left alone. Until March 1937, he somehow studied and even was a homeless child, until he was sent to the Igarsky children's boarding school. Recalling the time spent in the orphanage, Viktor Astafyev recalled with a special sense of gratitude the director Vasily Ivanovich Sokolov and the teacher of the boarding school Ignatiy Rozhdestvensky, who was a Siberian poet and instilled in Viktor a love of literature. These two people, in the difficult years of his life, had a beneficial effect on the writer. Astafiev's essay for a school magazine about his beloved lake in the future became a full-fledged story "Vasyutkino Lake".
In 1941, Astafyev finished his studies at a boarding school and at the age of 17 with difficulty, since the war was already going on, he got to Krasnoyarsk, where he entered the railway school of FZU. After graduating from college, he worked for 4 months at the Bazaikha station, after which he volunteered for the front. Until the very end of the war, he remained an ordinary soldier. Viktor Astafiev fought on the Bryansk, Voronezh and Steppe fronts, as well as as part of the troops of the First Ukrainian Front. For his services he was awarded military orders and medals: the Order of the Red Star, as well as the most valuable soldier's medal "For Courage", medals "For the Liberation of Poland", "For Victory over Germany."
At the front, he was seriously wounded several times, but here in 1943 he met his future wife Maria Koryakina, who was a nurse. They were 2 very different people: Astafyev loved his village Ovsyanka, where he was born and spent the happiest years of childhood, but she did not. Victor was very talented, and Maria wrote out of a sense of self-affirmation. She adored her son, and he loved his daughter. Victor Astafiev loved women and could drink, Maria was jealous of him both for people and even for books. The writer had 2 illegitimate daughters, whom he hid, and his wife all the years passionately dreamed only that he was completely devoted to the family. Astafyev left the family several times, but each time he came back. Two such different people could not leave each other and lived together for 57 years until the writer's death. Maria Koryakina has always been for him both a typist and a secretary and an exemplary housewife. When his wife wrote her own autobiographical story "Signs of Life", he asked her not to publish it, but she did not obey. He later also wrote the autobiographical novel The Merry Soldier, which recounts the same events.
Viktor Astafiev was demobilized from the army in 1945 together with his future wife, after the war they returned to the hometown of Maria - Chusova, located in the Urals. Severe wounds received at the front deprived Viktor of his faculty profession - his hand did not obey him well, and in fact only one good-seeing eye remained. All his works immediately after the war were of an accidental nature and were unreliable: a laborer, a loader, a locksmith, a carpenter. Lived young, frankly, not fun. But one day Viktor Astafyev got to a meeting of a literary circle organized by the newspaper "Chusovskaya Rabochy". This meeting changed his life, after which he wrote his first story "Civilian Man" in just one night, it was 1951. Soon Astafyev became a literary worker of the Chusovoy Rabochy. For this newspaper, he wrote a very large number of articles, stories and essays, his literary talent began to reveal all its facets. In 1953, his first book "Until Next Spring" was published, and in 1955 he published a collection of stories for children "Lights".
In 1955-57 he wrote his first novel "The Snows Melting", and also published 2 more books for children: "Vasyutkino Lake" and "Uncle Kuzya, Chickens, Fox and Cat". Since April 1957, Astafyev begins to work as a special correspondent for the Perm regional radio. After the release of the novel "Snow melt", he was admitted to the Writers' Union of the RSFSR. In 1959, he was sent to Moscow for the Higher Literary Courses, organized at the Literary Institute. M. Gorky. He studied in Moscow for 2 years, and these years were marked by the flourishing of his lyrical prose. He wrote the novels "Pass" - 1959, "Starodub" - 1960, in the same year in one breath in a few days he released the story "Starfall", which brought the writer wide fame.
The 1960s turned out to be very fruitful for Viktor Astafiev, he wrote a large number of stories and short stories. Among them are the novels "Theft", "Somewhere war is thundering." At the same time, the short stories he wrote formed the basis for the story in the stories "The Last Bow". Also during this period of his life he wrote 2 plays - "Bird cherry" and "Forgive me".
Childhood in the village and the memories of youth could not go unnoticed, and in 1976 the village theme is most vividly and fully revealed in the story "Tsar-fish" (narration in stories), this work was included in the school curriculum and is still loved by many domestic readers. For this work in 1978, the writer was awarded the USSR State Prize.
The main feature of Viktor Astafiev's artistic realism was the depiction of life and the surrounding reality in its fundamental principles, when life reaches the level of reflection and consciousness and, as it were, gives rise to moral supports that strengthen our being: kindness, compassion, selflessness, justice. The writer in his works subjects all these values and meaningfulness of our life to rather severe tests, primarily due to the extreme conditions of Russian reality itself.
Another feature of his works was the test of the solid and good foundation of the world - by war and the relationship of man to nature. In his story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess,” Viktor Astafyev, with his characteristic poetics, demonstrates the war to the reader as an absolute hell, which is terrible not only for its degree of moral shock and physical suffering, but also for the overwhelming military experience for the human soul. For Astafiev, the horror of the war, what would later be called the "trench truth" was the only possible truth about that terrible war.
And although disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, often paid for by their own lives, the indestructibility of good, military brotherhood are exposed and manifested during the war, and no less - in military life - Viktor Astafyev does not see the price that could justify the human "massacre". The memory of the war, the incompatibility of military and peaceful experience will become the leitmotif of many of his works: "Starfall", "Sashka Lebedev", "Is it a clear day", "Feast after victory", "Live life" and others.
In 1989, Viktor Astafiev was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for his literary merits. After the collapse of the USSR, he created one of his most famous war novels - "Cursed and Killed", which is published in 2 parts: "Black Pit" (1990-1992) and "Bridgehead" (1992-1994). In 1994, the writer was awarded the Triumph Prize for his outstanding contribution to Russian literature, and the following year he was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation for his novel Cursed and Killed. In 1997-1998, a complete collection of the writer's works was published in Krasnoyarsk, which consisted of 15 volumes and contained detailed comments by the author.
The writer died in 2001, almost all of this year, having spent in Krasnoyarsk hospitals. Affected by his age and the wounds he received in the war. The best that a writer can leave behind is his own works, in this regard, we are all lucky with the complete collection of Astafiev's works of 15 volumes. Books by Viktor Astafiev for their realistic depiction of military life and lively literary language have been and remain popular in our country, as well as abroad. In this regard, they were translated into many languages of the world and were published in millions of copies.
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