Poet of "Zemlyanka" and the Writers' Union enforcer who led the campaign against Pasternak
Trapped under fire near Istra in November 1941, his coat shredded by shrapnel, Surkov said: 'Not one step back from the regimental HQ. And to death — four steps.' Those words became 'Zemlyanka.'
Russian Soviet poet and literary functionary who served as First Secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers (1953–1959). Author of the iconic WWII song "Zemlyanka" and two-time Stalin Prize laureate, he led the official campaign against Boris Pasternak during the Doctor Zhivago affair, traveling to Italy in 1957 to press Feltrinelli to halt publication. A paradoxical nomenklatura enforcer who, in 1937, secretly slipped 300 rubles into the pocket of a destitute Osip Mandelstam and quietly aided Anna Akhmatova during the Zhdanov years.
Career Timeline
- 1918–1922Red Army service, Civil War
- 1926–1928Editor-in-chief, Severny Komsomolets
- 1934–1939Deputy editor, Literaturnaya Uchyoba; lecturer, Literary Institute
- 1940–1941Editor-in-chief, Novy Mir
- 1941–1945War correspondent, frontline press
- 1944–1946Editor-in-chief, Literaturnaya Gazeta
- 1949–1953Editor-in-chief, Ogoniok
- 1953–1959First Secretary, Union of Soviet Writers
- 1956–1966Candidate member, CPSU Central Committee