Postage stamp for the writer’s centenary
Photo: wikimedia.org.
Vladimir Bogomolov, the author of excellent military prose, was one of the most mysterious writers in the history of Soviet literature. He has three surnames: he was born Voitinsky (his father’s surname), in the 1950s he took his mother’s surname Bogomolets, and on the covers of books he appears as Bogomolov. Apparently, he also changed his year of birth: in fact, he was born in 1926, and not in 1924 (that is, in fact, we are now celebrating his 98th birthday). According to the official version, Bogomolov fought a lot, but two years after the writer’s death, in 2005, Komsomolskaya Pravda found his friend, who claimed that the author of “In August 44” “invented a biography for himself.” The commander of a squadron, a deputy platoon commander, an order, a medal – none of this happened… And his military experience, used in novels and stories, was borrowed precisely from the letters of this very friend.
But others find many documents from which it is clear that Bogomolov fought and how. It is difficult to find out where the truth is and where the fantasy is: for this, you must first invent a time machine and then follow the path of his life. But perhaps no one doubts that his books were excellent (and extremely precise in texture). Although even the documents he cites in his books are often just a figment of his imagination, a very precise stylization of real orders and reports. His huge semi-autobiographical novel, published (and still not completed) after his death, was entitled “My Life, or Did I Dream of You?”
13 months in prison and a telegram to Stalin
His father, Joseph Voitinsky, according to some reports, was not legally married to his mother (although she recognized the boy and gave him her surname). Voitinsky’s fate was tragic: he made a brilliant career as a lawyer, but in 1938 he was repressed, suffered a severe stroke even before the trial, and as a result served his sentence in closed prison-type psychiatric hospitals (in 1943 he died in one of them). But Vladimir spent his childhood in his mother’s family and eventually adopted her surname – his father, apparently, was a stranger to him.
He left school at an early age to go to the Crimea to earn money. But he did not stay as a sailor for long: before the war he returned to Moscow. And when the war began, like hundreds of thousands of Soviet children, he went to the front as a volunteer. Of course, he was not prepared for the monstrous images he was about to see (in front of his eyes, a wounded soldier was trying to stuff his intestines back into his stomach). He was not prepared for a serious injury and a concussion, after which he had to undergo long-term treatment. However, after the hospital he returned to the front and then spent several years in the army. He was thrown into different places: Sakhalin, Manchuria, Germany… And it all ended with his imprisonment. Because he dared to object to the colonel at a meeting in Berlin. An important operation failed, they were going to blame Bogomolov’s friend, turning him into a “switchman.” “I stood up and said that the operation was carried out under the direction of the department and I don’t understand why everyone here is silent and not naming the real culprits.”
After that, he spent 13 months in prison. There he was beaten mercilessly (but he responded bravely: he even hit one of the jailers on the head with handcuffs). Later, however, he was released, but returning to service after the punishment cells was almost impossible. Without thinking twice, Vladimir sent a telegram: “The Kremlin. Stalin. I, an officer, a participant in the war, spent 13 months in prison without trial or investigation. Released without charge. I am waiting for an appointment. I am in a difficult situation, I have nothing to buy bread with. I request your immediate intervention.” It is unlikely that Stalin personally read the telegram, but it caught the attention of the right people, and Bogomolov’s superiors received a blow on the head: the colonel, who had previously despised Vladimir, fell out of favor with him, fed him a sumptuous dinner and gave him forty thousand rubles (a colossal sum: according to Bogomolov, an experienced doctor then received a salary of 635).
His friend Leonid Rabichev, however, claimed in a famous interview with KP that in the late 1940s Vladimir lived in Moscow, went to a literary association, spent two summers at the dacha of a professor of American studies, married a girl named Svetlana Suvorova, became a father… “He told me that at the end of 1942 he was mobilized and ended up in the SMERSH troops, but he did not stay there long because he told some kind of joke and was arrested. He was arrested and hit hard on the head, which is why he became disabled, and I went with a certificate. He is a dreamer. He was a talented man. He began to write about the war and identified himself with its heroes. He composed himself. A person has the right to create himself! I think it is a feat to create a person!
According to Rabichev, in 1949 Bogomolov began working on his first story, “Ivan,” which most people know from the film adaptation of Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Ivan’s Childhood.” The story of a boy scout who suffered all the horrors of war was published in 1957 and became very popular.
“Who gave you the right to talk about Dunka like that?”
Bogomolov wrote little and slowly: the next story, “Zosya,” and several short stories were published only in 1963. And then, for many years, he wrote his main book, “In August 1944,” which they were very afraid to publish. According to the author of the essay about the writer, his friend Eduard Polyanovsky, the book was sent to the KGB and one general “liked the novel very much. He… stole the manuscript. He took it to his dacha and locked it in a safe there. This is how a precious item is kept in a single copy. Bogomolov was furious. “I will sue your general!” – he shouted into the phone. The manuscript was returned. It was then that the writer saw all the wonderful recommendations of the KGB. In the novel, the general, suffocated by asthma, cannot sit down: there is no chair. The KGB censor is furious: “Is there no chair for the Soviet general? “Put!” Elsewhere in the novel, soldiers talk about the inaccessibility and annoyance of Polish ladies, recalling their own: it’s our Dunka’s business, he poured her a hundred grams and she’s ready. The general noted menacingly in the margins: “Who gave the author the right to talk like that about our Soviet Dunka?!” The manuscript was covered with instructions. More than one general worked: there are a dozen different handwritings in the margins.”
Bogomolov fought for a long time to have the novel published. And finally he was released, without a single amendment. As Polyanovsky writes, “The chief editor of the Yunost magazine, Boris Polevoy, had access to the corridors of power. He managed to defend Dunka and everything else. With one exception: a meeting in a barn. Confident that thanks to the three pages there would be no problems with Bogomolov, they began to type the novel in the printing house. The writer received a fee – a lot of money. Bogomolov returned the fee. By mail. While the money flowed back and forth, the novel continued to be collected. “But it’s only three pages!” — Polevoy pleaded. “I won’t give in a word.”
And he did not give in. The book was eventually published in Novy Mir and became a literary sensation.
“I refuse a great reward”
Bogomolov was an extremely difficult person, often unpredictable. At school he received the nickname “Traffic”, because he could jump up and fly out of class if something didn’t suit him. (He maintained this tactic of turning his back and quickly abandoning people who didn’t suit him in some way until adulthood.)
Vasil Bykov wrote about him: “Vladimir never took off his mask of gloomy and offended expression, he kept himself aloof and spoke about everything very seriously. He was informed in detail about the criminal cases of Brezhnev’s daughter Galina, about her diamond trade, and knew many details of the life of the literary elite and the KGB. Sometimes I wonder how this writer, who sits at his desk for weeks, knows so much about what is not written in the newspapers.” (Bykov managed to become close friends with Bogomolov, but then the Belarusian classic responded coldly to “In August 1944,” and the friendship faded away.) They say that in reality Bogomolov was a member of the KGB and had access to the most secret information… However, they say a lot about him.
Directors had a particularly hard time. He argued a lot with Tarkovsky and with Mikhail Ptashuk, who filmed In August 44, and the film version of this book, made by Vytautas Žalakevičius in the 1970s, was not released at all: Bogomolov (as well as the film authorities) did not really like it.
Bogomolov also forbade photographing himself. That is, in reality there are practically no photographs of him: when he saw the camera, he turned away or covered his face with his hands. And he did not allow anyone into his office – according to Polyanovsky, even his wife entered there only after his death. He stubbornly did not join the Writers’ Union. He flatly refused the State Prize and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor that were to be awarded to him. (In the mid-80s, he was called and invited to the Kremlin to receive an order, and he first replied to the caller: “I am not allowed into the Kremlin in sneakers,” and then, more irritably, “I am not a public person, I have no labor merits. From above I refuse awards.” …
A very strange man. But he is very talented. In the end, what is more important to us: ladies or driving? He wrote several excellent books, and this is precisely what will remain the main and indisputable fact of his biography.
MAIN BOOKS
“Ivan”
“Zosia”
“In August 44” (“Moment of Truth”)
“My love, did I dream about you?”
