Mikhail Gerasimov (poet)
Encyclopedia
Mikhail Prokofyevich Gerasimov was one of the most widely-read working-class poets in early twentieth century Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. Initially embracing the Bolshevik revolution as a liberating event and participating in the effort to create a new "proletarian culture," following the New Economic Policy
New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small animal businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade,...

 he became disillusioned and was imprisoned during the Stalin era.

Early life

Mikhail Gerasimov was born on 30 September (12 October) 1889 in the village of Petrovka, near the town of Buguruslan
Buguruslan
Buguruslan is a town in Orenburg Oblast, Russia. Population:...

, in Samara
Samara Oblast
Samara Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the city of Samara. Population: In 1936–1990, it was known as Kuybyshev Oblast , after the Soviet name of Samara .-Demographics:Population:...

 province in the Volga region of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. His father was a railway worker and crossing guard. His mother was a peasant of ethnic Mordvinian background. Starting at the age of nine, Gerasimov began helping out around the railroad, pulling weeds near the tracks. In the winter months he attended a two-class school in the town of Kinel'. After finishing school (in four or five years) he attended, while working in a variety of railroad jobs, the Samara railway technical school, allowing him to become a railway technician after graduation.

Revolution and exile

During the 1905 revolution, when Gerasimov was sixteen and working on the railroad, he got involved in an armed revolutionary detachment (druzhina) of railway workers, and became increasingly involved with the socialist underground. In 1906, he was arrested and imprisoned, but after six months escaped through a tunnel leading to a secret Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party , also known as Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or Russian Social Democratic Party, was a revolutionary socialist Russian political party formed in 1898 in Minsk to unite the various revolutionary organizations into one party...

 apartment. From there he was smuggled out of the country in the fall of 1907 by way of Finland (where he briefly met Lenin and other leading Social Democratic émigrés). For the next eight years, he lived mainly in France and Belgium, where he worked variously as a loader for blast furnaces in an arms factory in Nancy, France, as a hauler and coal-hewer in mines in Belgium, as a metal fitter and electrical fitter in French locomotive and car factories (including Renault
Renault
Renault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, and in the past, autorail vehicles, trucks, tractors, vans and also buses/coaches. Its alliance with Nissan makes it the world's third largest automaker...

), as a stoker and coalman on ocean liners, and in a variety of jobs in a number of other factories. In these years in exile and labor, Gerasimov managed to explore much of Western Europe (especially France, Belgium, Italy and the Alps), often working in winter and wandering by foot in summer—for which he was several times arrested for vagrancy.

Literary career

He began to write sometime before 1913. That was the year he joined Lunacharsky's Circle of Proletarian Culture in Paris, where he met other Russian émigré worker writers including Fedor Kalinin, Alexei Gastev, and Pavel Bessalko. He also began a correspondence with Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...

 at this time, sending Gorky poems for comments. Gerasimov's first poems were published in 1913 in the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

 magazine Prosveshchenie (Enlightenment). Other poems appeared in print in 1914 in the party newspaper Pravda, in Ilya Ehrenburg's émigré magazine Vechera (Evenings), and in other publications.

Military experiences

When the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 broke out in 1914, Gerasimov volunteered to fight against the Germans in the French Foreign Legion
French Foreign Legion
The French Foreign Legion is a unique military service wing of the French Army established in 1831. The foreign legion was exclusively created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces...

. He saw combat at the Marne, Champagne, and the Argonne, and was wounded several times but returned to battle. In the fall of 1915, for participating in anti-war agitation and for insubordination (he joined an uprising of Russian soldiers against harsh treatment by French officers), Gerasimov was deported to Russia. Returning to Samara he was placed under the surveillance of the military authorities and the following spring was arrested and assigned under guard to a reserve military engineering battalion. Amnestied as a result of the February revolution, Gerasimov became a member of the Samara Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies, and was elected chair. In June 1917, he was a delegate at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets and chosen a member of the new national Central Executive Committee
All-Russian Central Executive Committee
All-Russian Central Executive Committee , was the highest legislative, administrative, and revising body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Although the All-Russian Congress of Soviets had supreme authority, in periods between its sessions its powers were passed to VTsIK...

 (VTsIK) (see Soviet (council)
Soviet (council)
Soviet was a name used for several Russian political organizations. Examples include the Czar's Council of Ministers, which was called the “Soviet of Ministers”; a workers' local council in late Imperial Russia; and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union....

). In July, he joined the Bolshevik party, and in October 1917 was a delegate to the Second Congress of Soviets (which endorsed Soviet power). Returning to Samara, he became assistant chair of the Executive Committee of the Samara Provincial Soviet (Gubispolkom) and was named a military commissar. During the civil war he organized Red Guard
Red Guards (Russia)
In the context of the history of Russia and Soviet Union, Red Guards were paramilitary formations consisting of workers and partially of soldiers and sailors formed in the time frame of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

 detachments and commanded a unit on the Orenburg front.

From Proletkult to Kuznitsa

While continuing to write and publish a large number of poems (in a wide-variety of newspapers, magazines, and collections) during the years from 1918 to the mid-1930s, Gerasimov also became one of the leaders of the proletarian culture movement (Proletkult
Proletkult
Proletkult was movement which arose in the Russian revolution and was active from 1917 to 1925 which aspired to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.The name is a portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" , which are better-known as...

). In 1918, he organized and was chair of the Samara Proletkult and in 1919 edited the Samara Proletkult magazine Zarevo zavodov (Glow of the factories). Later that year he moved to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, where he was named head of the literary department of the Moscow Proletkult and joined the staff of the literary department of the Anatoly Lunacharsky's People's Commissariat of Enlightenment (LITO Narkomprosa). In February 1920, he formed a group of worker writers discontented with the Proletcult, feeling it inhibited their creative growth due to lack of attention to formal training and the special demands of the talented. Whilst still linked to Narkompros, he played a central role in organizing and then leading the Kuznitsa (Smithy) group. Many talented authors, such as Kirillov and Samobytnik-Mashirov, joined the Smithy. However they did not break their ties to the Proletkult. Eventually the new organisation agreed not to attempt to rival or eclipse the Proletkult; instead they devoted themselves principally to professional issues, such as payment scales. Gerasimov helped plan the First Congress of Proletarian Writers, and was elected (along with Il'ia Sadof'ev) assistant chair of the congress and of the resulting All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (VAPP). In 1921, in response to the New Economic Policy
New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small animal businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade,...

(NEP), which he viewed as signaling the end of the revolution, Gerasimov quit the Bolshevik party.

In the mid-1920s, he became less involved in cultural organizations as well, but continued to publish—though these writings, according to Soviet critics, "diverged from the path of proletarian poetry." In 1937, he was arrested. He died in prison in 1939.

Sources

  • RGALI (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow), f. 1374, op. 7, d. 13, l. 1-22
  • Kratkaia Literaturnaia Entsiklopediia, 2:129-30
  • V. L’vov-Rogachevskii, Noveishaia russkaia literatura, 350-66
  • Literaturnaia Entsiklopediia, 2:468-71
  • Russkie pisateli, 1800-1917, 1:540-41
  • Russkie pisateli: Poety, 5:388-419
  • Mark D. Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination: Self Modernity and the Sacred in Russia, 1910-1925 (Cornell University Press, 2002)
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