Vera Panova
Encyclopedia
Vera Fyodorovna Panova was a Soviet novelist, playwright, and journalist.
, Russia. Her father, Fyodor Ivanovich Panov, built canoes and yachts as a hobby, and founded two yachting clubs in Rostov. When she was five her father drowned in the Don River. After her father's death, her mother worked as a saleswoman. As a girl she was taught by a family friend, an old school teacher named Anna Prozorovskaya. Vera credited Anna with instilling in her a passion for reading. Unfortunately Anna died after being with Vera for only a year. Prior to the October Revolution
she studied for 2 years at a private gymnasium
, before her formal education was stopped because of money problems in her family.
From her earliest years Vera was an avid reader, especially of poetry, at which she tried her hand at an early age. Her reading included the works of Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Gogol, and Ivan Turgenev
. She also read numerous textbooks on science, geography, and history as a form of self-education. At the age of 17 she started working as a journalist on the Rostov newspaper Trudovoy Don (Working Don), publishing articles as V. Staroselskaya (the surname of her first husband Arseny Staroselsky whom she had married in 1925 and divorced 2 years later) and Vera Veltman. She described her first editing job and her first steps in this career in her novel Sentimental Romance (1958). She learned newspaper work by experience, serving in turn as an assistant to the district organizer of labor correspondents, a reporter, and an essayist.
journalist Boris Vakhtin, was arrested and imprisoned on Solovki
where he died (the exact death date is unknown, probably the later thirties). The Gulag
authorities allowed her only one meeting with Boris, which she described in her story Svidanie (The Meeting).
From 1940 she lived in Leningrad
. The unexpected advance of the Nazis on the Leningrad Front
found her in Tsarskoe Selo. She and her daughter were put in a concentration camp near Pskov
, but they managed to escape to Narva
, where they lived illegally in a destroyed synagogue
. She then moved to the village of Shishaki to stay with relatives. There she began her first serious works, the plays Ivan Kosogor (1939) and In Old Moscow (1940). Although these 2 plays won prizes, Vera felt that the dramatic form confined her, and, by her own admission, she was unable to fit all that she wanted to say into its strict framework. She felt that she could work with greater freedom in the novel and story forms.
In 1943, when the Germans retreated from Ukraine, she moved to Perm
(called Molotov at that time). She worked for a local newspaper and published her first novel The Pirozhkov Family (later renamed Yevdokia, the source of a Soviet film produced by Tatyana Lioznova
in 1961). In 1944, as a journalist, she was embedded for two months with a hospital train about which she wrote the novel Sputniki (1946; translated as The Train) that brought her a Stalin Prize in 1947. There was a Soviet Film Poezd miloserdiya (Train of Mercy, 1961) and another TV-film Na vsyu ostavshuyuysya zhizn' (For the Rest of One's Life, 1975) based on the novel; the scenario for the later film was written by Panova's son Boris Vakhtin.
In 1945 she married David Yakovlevich Ryvkin (1910-1980), a notable Russian science-fiction writer who wrote under the pseudonym of "David Dar". Together with her husband and his 2 children and her own family she returned to Leningrad. In 1947 she published the novel Kruzhilikha, translated as Looking Ahead (Stalin Prize in 1948), about people working in a Ural
factory. She had began writing the novel in 1944, but had been interrupted by the hospital train assignment. In 1949 she wrote the novel Yasny Bereg (Bright Shore; Stalin Prize of 1950) about people working in a kolkhoz
.
With the onset of the Khrushchev Thaw
she wrote Vremena Goda (Span of the Year, 1953) about the relations of fathers and sons within the Soviet intelligentsia. The novel was immensely popular with the reading public, but Panova was criticized harshly in the press for her "naturalism" and "objectivism". In 1955 she wrote the novel Seryozha
, one of the best works about children in Soviet literature. She published the stories Valya and Volodya, also about children, in 1959.
Panova held a place among the top Soviet writers. At the Writer's Congresses of 1954 and 1959 she was elected as a member of the Presidium of the Union of Soviet Writers. She was twice awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
(1955, 1965). As an established writer she was allowed to travel to England
, Scotland
, and Italy
, and in 1960 she toured the United States
. Her published travel notes and articles, and an epilogue to the Russian translation of The Catcher in the Rye
, by J.D. Salinger, show her affinty for Western life and culture.
, and Viktor Golyavkin. Her son Boris Vakhtin (1930–1981) was a notable dissident and Russian writer, the founder of the group Gorozhane.
In 1967 she suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed. Though incapacitated, she continued to work with the help of her family and a number of secretaries until the day of her death. Vera Panova died in Leningrad in 1973 and is buried in Komarovo
near Anna Akhmatova
.
Early life
Vera was born into the family of an impoverished merchant (later an accountant) in Rostov-on-DonRostov-on-Don
-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...
, Russia. Her father, Fyodor Ivanovich Panov, built canoes and yachts as a hobby, and founded two yachting clubs in Rostov. When she was five her father drowned in the Don River. After her father's death, her mother worked as a saleswoman. As a girl she was taught by a family friend, an old school teacher named Anna Prozorovskaya. Vera credited Anna with instilling in her a passion for reading. Unfortunately Anna died after being with Vera for only a year. Prior to the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
she studied for 2 years at a private gymnasium
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
, before her formal education was stopped because of money problems in her family.
From her earliest years Vera was an avid reader, especially of poetry, at which she tried her hand at an early age. Her reading included the works of Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Gogol, and Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
. She also read numerous textbooks on science, geography, and history as a form of self-education. At the age of 17 she started working as a journalist on the Rostov newspaper Trudovoy Don (Working Don), publishing articles as V. Staroselskaya (the surname of her first husband Arseny Staroselsky whom she had married in 1925 and divorced 2 years later) and Vera Veltman. She described her first editing job and her first steps in this career in her novel Sentimental Romance (1958). She learned newspaper work by experience, serving in turn as an assistant to the district organizer of labor correspondents, a reporter, and an essayist.
Career
In 1933 she began writing plays. In 1935 her second husband, Komsomolskaya PravdaKomsomolskaya Pravda
Komsomolskaya Pravda is a daily Russian tabloid newspaper, founded on March 13th, 1925. It is published by "Izdatelsky Dom Komsomolskaya Pravda" .- History :...
journalist Boris Vakhtin, was arrested and imprisoned on Solovki
Solovki
The Solovki prison camp was located on the Solovetsky Islands, in the White Sea). It was the "mother of the GULAG" according to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn...
where he died (the exact death date is unknown, probably the later thirties). The Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
authorities allowed her only one meeting with Boris, which she described in her story Svidanie (The Meeting).
From 1940 she lived in Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
. The unexpected advance of the Nazis on the Leningrad Front
Leningrad Front
The Leningrad Front was first formed on August 27, 1941, by dividing the Northern Front into the Leningrad Front and Karelian Front, during the German approach on Leningrad .-History:...
found her in Tsarskoe Selo. She and her daughter were put in a concentration camp near Pskov
Pskov
Pskov is an ancient city and the administrative center of Pskov Oblast, Russia, located in the northwest of Russia about east from the Estonian border, on the Velikaya River. Population: -Early history:...
, but they managed to escape to Narva
Narva
Narva is the third largest city in Estonia. It is located at the eastern extreme point of Estonia, by the Russian border, on the Narva River which drains Lake Peipus.-Early history:...
, where they lived illegally in a destroyed synagogue
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
. She then moved to the village of Shishaki to stay with relatives. There she began her first serious works, the plays Ivan Kosogor (1939) and In Old Moscow (1940). Although these 2 plays won prizes, Vera felt that the dramatic form confined her, and, by her own admission, she was unable to fit all that she wanted to say into its strict framework. She felt that she could work with greater freedom in the novel and story forms.
In 1943, when the Germans retreated from Ukraine, she moved to Perm
Perm
Perm is a city and the administrative center of Perm Krai, Russia, located on the banks of the Kama River, in the European part of Russia near the Ural Mountains. From 1940 to 1957 it was named Molotov ....
(called Molotov at that time). She worked for a local newspaper and published her first novel The Pirozhkov Family (later renamed Yevdokia, the source of a Soviet film produced by Tatyana Lioznova
Tatyana Lioznova
Tatyana Mikhailovna Lioznova was a Soviet film director best known for her TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring .-Film career:All of Lioznova's features - from Three Poplars at Plyushchikha Street , a cult film of the 1960s, to her last movie, The Carnival , - are distinguished by open...
in 1961). In 1944, as a journalist, she was embedded for two months with a hospital train about which she wrote the novel Sputniki (1946; translated as The Train) that brought her a Stalin Prize in 1947. There was a Soviet Film Poezd miloserdiya (Train of Mercy, 1961) and another TV-film Na vsyu ostavshuyuysya zhizn' (For the Rest of One's Life, 1975) based on the novel; the scenario for the later film was written by Panova's son Boris Vakhtin.
In 1945 she married David Yakovlevich Ryvkin (1910-1980), a notable Russian science-fiction writer who wrote under the pseudonym of "David Dar". Together with her husband and his 2 children and her own family she returned to Leningrad. In 1947 she published the novel Kruzhilikha, translated as Looking Ahead (Stalin Prize in 1948), about people working in a Ural
Ural (region)
Ural is a geographical region located around the Ural Mountains, between the East European and West Siberian plains. It extends approximately from north to south, from the Arctic Ocean to the bend of Ural River near Orsk city. The boundary between Europe and Asia runs along the eastern side of...
factory. She had began writing the novel in 1944, but had been interrupted by the hospital train assignment. In 1949 she wrote the novel Yasny Bereg (Bright Shore; Stalin Prize of 1950) about people working in a kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
.
With the onset of the Khrushchev Thaw
Khrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and...
she wrote Vremena Goda (Span of the Year, 1953) about the relations of fathers and sons within the Soviet intelligentsia. The novel was immensely popular with the reading public, but Panova was criticized harshly in the press for her "naturalism" and "objectivism". In 1955 she wrote the novel Seryozha
Seryozha (novel)
Seryozha is a short novel by Soviet writer Vera Panova. Seryozha has also been translated as Time Walked and A Summer to Remember. Seryozha is a diminutive form of the name Sergey.-Plot:...
, one of the best works about children in Soviet literature. She published the stories Valya and Volodya, also about children, in 1959.
Panova held a place among the top Soviet writers. At the Writer's Congresses of 1954 and 1959 she was elected as a member of the Presidium of the Union of Soviet Writers. She was twice awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Order of the Red Banner of Labour
The Order of the Red Banner of Labour was an order of the Soviet Union for accomplishments in labour and civil service. It is the labour counterpart of the military Order of the Red Banner. A few institutions and factories, being the pride of Soviet Union, also received the order.-History:The Red...
(1955, 1965). As an established writer she was allowed to travel to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, and in 1960 she toured the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Her published travel notes and articles, and an epilogue to the Russian translation of The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage confusion, angst, alienation, language, and rebellion. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major...
, by J.D. Salinger, show her affinty for Western life and culture.
Later life
In her later life she published many works of fiction (most of them autobiographical or based on Russian history of the 17th century), plays, and film scripts. She helped many younger writers who later become famous, among them Yury Kazakov, Sergei Dovlatov (her secretary for many years), Viktor Konetzky, Andrei BitovAndrei Bitov
Andrei Georgiyevich Bitov is a prominent Russian writer. Many consider him among the foremost Russian writers of the late 20th century.Among the novels that solidified his reputation are: Flying-Away Monakhov, Life in Windy Weather, Pushkin House, Captive of the Caucasus, and The Monkey Link.Bitov...
, and Viktor Golyavkin. Her son Boris Vakhtin (1930–1981) was a notable dissident and Russian writer, the founder of the group Gorozhane.
In 1967 she suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed. Though incapacitated, she continued to work with the help of her family and a number of secretaries until the day of her death. Vera Panova died in Leningrad in 1973 and is buried in Komarovo
Komarovo, Saint Petersburg
Komarovo is a municipal settlement in Kurortny District of the federal city of Saint Petersburg, Russia, located on the Karelian Isthmus on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, and a station of the Saint Petersburg-Vyborg railroad. It is located about northwest of central Saint Petersburg...
near Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...
.
English translations
- Looking Ahead, (Novel), Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1947. from Archive.org
- The Factory, (Novel), Putnam, 1949.
- The Train, (Novel), Alfred A. Knopf, 1949. from Archive.org
- Span of the Year, (Novel), Harvill Press, 1957.
- Time Walked, (Novel), Harvill Press, 1957.
- A Summer to Remember, (Novel), Thomas Yoseloff, 1962.
- Selected Works, (Includes the novel The Train, the short novel Seryozha, and the stories Valya and Volodya), Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976.
- Three Boys at the Gate, (Story), Anthology of Soviet Short Stories, Volume 2, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976.
- Yevdokia, (novel), Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow.