The Presidential Library presents front poems of Tvardovsky included in the poem “Vasiliy Terkin”

In honor of the 105th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Tvardovsky, which is celebrated on June 21, the Presidential Library presents his collections of poetry from the period of the Great Patriotic War. The collection of poetic texts shows us the birth of the main epic character of Tvardovsky, which appeared in the poem "Vasily Terkin" integrating the military theme.

The poem was based on many of the previously written poems by Tvardovsky. The 1941 collection "From the front poetry," an electronic copy of which is held by the Presidential Library, contains, for example, the poem "Accordeon," which we know well owing to the poem "Vasily Terkin." The image of Terkin is also present in two collections -"Front poetry" of 1941 and "Frontline Chronicle" of 1945.

The poem was created during the war, combining almost newsprint relevance and at the same time the depth of the Russian realistic poetic writing. The first chapters were published in the summer of 1942, after a hard and long retreat of our troops, when soldiers needed spiritual support even more than bread. They wanted the poetry, which was able to make them smile in spite of not too very encouraging frontline circumstances. Tvardovsky could do it like no other, owing to his talent and his human "mettle."

Alexander Tvardovsky was born June 21, 1910 on a farm Zagorye, Smolensk province, in the family of a village blacksmith. In the rural backwoods, in the realities of a difficult peasant childhood, was forged the freedom-loving spirit of the future editor of the "New World", which was the first to start printing the works of Solzhenitsyn. The formation of the future poet was greatly influenced by his "study" in the father's blacksmith shop, which was for the entire neighborhood both "a club, a newspaper, and the Academy of Sciences." That root, deep knowledge of life would help, years later, the talented poet to create a truly national image of defender of the Russian land.

Cheerful soldier Vasya Terkin, beloved by millions, appeared in the front press even before the Great Patriotic War - during the war with Finland in 1939-1940-ies. It was created by a team of war correspondents, which included Tvardovsky. The reader met a charismatic, as we would say today, joker, who always defeated the enemy. The hero invented in editorial sidelines at first looked like a character from cheap popular prints and the later so-called "ROSTA windows" (satirical posters): "Hercules, broad as an ax... / He kills the enemies with the bayonet, / As if they were sheaves and he used a pitchfork," and so on.

It was then, during the Finnish campaign, that Tvardovsky decided to make a "collection of cheerful chapters" about everyone's favorite serviceman Vasya Terkin. It was assumed that in the summer of 1941 the poem would be completed.

When the war began, Tvardovsky was appointed an author in the newspaper "Red Army" of the Kiev military district, and went to the front. Together with the army, he went through the war, broke out of encirclement in 1941. The idea of "Terkin" came back to the poet in June 1942, but it was not just "Vasya Terkin" any more, but "Vasily Terkin." Not only the name changed, but also the concept of the hero's image, designed to incarnate the best of the epic warrior-liberator. "The war is real, so the poetry should be real, too" wrote the poet in his diary.

Fantastic success of the poem "Vasily Terkin" was largely due to the degree of Tvardovsky’s understanding of an "ordinary" person, which he originally had. Therefore, the prologue is so organic with the entire content of the poem: "What can we not live without? / Without sheer truth / The truth, which strikes right in the heart, / And the more it is the better, /No matter how bitter it is."

Our great victory in May 1945 is due, to a large extent, to the literary hero Vasily Terkin - a collective image of Russian soldier, who fought together with the whole country.