Biography Adamovich Alexander Mikhailovich


(born 1927)

He was born on September 3 in the village of Konyukhi, Minsk region, to a doctor’s family. Since 1928 the family lived in Bobruisk, where it was found by the Patriotic War. From the age of 14, together with his relatives, he took part in the activities of the anti-fascist underground, from 1943 to early 1944 he fought in a partisan detachment.

In 1944 he went to Altai, where his aunt lived, entered the Leninogorsk Mining and Metallurgical College, settled in the student hostel (his mother and brother remained in the partisan detachment, his father at the front).

After the war he returned to Belarus, entered the Minsk University, graduated from the post-graduate course, defending his Ph. D. thesis. Working at the Institute of Literature. Y. Kupaly, defended his doctoral dissertation.

In 1962 – 66 he lived in Moscow, studied at the Higher Scenario Courses, while simultaneously reading the course of Belarusian literature at Moscow State

University. M. Lomonosov. Then he returned to Minsk, continuing work at the Institute of Literature. Corresponding member. AN Belorussia since 1980. He began his literary activity with the novel “War under the Roofs” (1960). His pen belongs to the story “Sons go into battle” (1965), “Khatyn story” (1968-72), “I’m from a fiery village” (1977, together with J. Bryl and V. Kolesnik), “The Punishers” (1980) , “The Blockade Book” (1977 – 81, together with D. Granin).

The author of short stories, numerous essay essays, an active public figure. Lives and works in Minsk.

(A short biography from the book: Russian writers and poets, Brief Biographical Dictionary, Moscow, 2000.

Ales (Alexander Mikhailovich) Adamovich is a prose writer, critic, literary critic, publicist, public figure. “Figure of a European scale,” according to Vasil Bykov.
Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR (1980), Doctor of Philology (1962), Professor (1971). Member of the Writers’ Union of the USSR since1957.

Member of the Union of Journalists of the USSR since 1967. Member of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR since 1977. Laureate of the State Prize of the BSSR. Yakub Kolas (1976), the USSR Defense Ministry Prize (1974) – for the book “The Khatyn story”.
He wrote prose, scientific and critical articles, and journalism in Belarusian and Russian.
Born in the family of employees on September 3, 1927 (passport date). And in fact, on August 3, 1926: the mother in the war, saving her son from hijacking to Germany, in the school certificate corrected the date of his birth. He was born in the village of Konyukhi, Kopylsky district, Minsk region. “The most mysterious, legendary place in my biography is these same grooms, I was born in them… I do not remember anything from Konyukhov’s life…”
Studying for a doctor, his father – Adamovich Mikhail Iosifovich (born in 1902, Rachen village of Slutsk district) on a student’s vacation moonlighted in the Kopylsky Holiday House. After graduating from the medical faculty of the Belarusian State University, (enrolled there in 1923), was sent in 1928 to a permanent job in the village of Glusha (Bobruisk district, Mogilev region). He moved there with his wife Anna Mitrofanovna (born in 1904, the village of Zabolotye of the Luban region, in 1935-1936 she graduated from the Mogilev Pharmaceutical School) and her sons: Yevgeny (born in 1924, a doctor in the future) and Alexander.
“A real small homeland, where I entered the age and into life – the working village Glusha. Soviet clarification: glass factory” Comintern. “
In 1930, the grandfather Ales Adamovich, Mitrofan Fomich Tychino, “dekulak” and sent with his wife and three children (out of seven) to the distant and cold Yakutia. This affected the fate of all the other children of MF Tychyna. Ales Adamovich’s mothers resembled endlessly that she was “the daughter of a fist”. Grandfather Mitrofan remained forever in Yakutia, the rest of his family returned to Belarus. These events responded in many works of A. Adamovich.
In Glush, the future writer studied from the first to the seventh grade. He loved books and, especially A. Pushkin, many times re-read the “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy. The greatest “masculine” authority for him then was his father and uncle Anton (mother’s brother Anton Mitrofanovich – a teacher of mathematics).
Mikhail Iosifovich Adamovich achieved the construction of a hospital in the village of Glusha, to which he was in charge. “The radius of the authority of the rural doctor,” according to Ales Adamovich, deservedly covered not only the village, but all the neighborhoods. Since January 1940 he was in military service. From the first days of the war he was at the front, he was a therapist of the ХІІІ army (the commander of the army was N. Pukhov), rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel of the medical service.
In the years 1940-1941. Ales studied in Berezki on Hotimshchina (Mogilev region), where his uncle Anton taught him, who “smashed” his character and knowledge. He returned to Glusha on the day when the war with Germany began, but for his mother, his elder brother Eugene and himself, “a war under the roofs.”
Anna Mitrofanovna became an active participant of the Glushansky underground since September 1941: being the head of the local pharmacy, she brought medicines from Bobruisk and provided them with guerrillas of the Kirov detachment, along with her children, performed various tasks and assignments. In early 1943, she and her sons “went into the forest,” the partisan detachment named after Kirov of the 37th Brigade named after Parkhomenko of the Minsk junction. Ales, going to the partisans, a loaf of bread, which was put in his mother’s bag, replaced with a one-volume Pushkin. For some time he was doing chores in the camp, later participated in battles in Bobruisk and Oktyabrsky districts, saw death in person. At the end of 1943 part of the detachment joined forces with the Soviet Army, crossed the front line. In early 1944 on a business trip of the Central Staff of the guerrilla movement was sent to the city of Leninogorsk in the Altai, where his aunt lived in the evacuation. He studied at Leninogorsk Mining and Metallurgical College and at the same time worked. And he met the Victory Day there.
Returning in 1945 to Glusha, he passed the examinations for secondary school externally and entered the philological faculty of the Belarusian State University. Having graduated in 1950, the university, entered the graduate school.
Since 1948 he began to write the novel “Sons go into battle.” November 25, my father suddenly died. Mikhail Iosifovich went by truck to the woman in childbirth, and the car deteriorated, then walked on foot through the night, blizzard, caught a cold, returned home with a fever, a stroke occurred. The death of his father greatly shocked him.
In 1950 he appeared in print as a critic. The object was: problems of the novel genre, creative style, artistic individuality. From the first publications, a fighting temperament emerged, the breadth of horizons, sensitivity to the truth, fought with vulgar sociological patterns, aesthetic deafness of criticism. I have made many enemies on the critical field: young, such advocates of literary provincialism, who did not disdain cooperation with punitive bodies, were replacing the “Stalin cadres”.
1954 year. After the defense of the thesis: “The language of the novel” The Third Generation “and the individual literary and artistic style of Kuzma Chorny” – (wrote over the three summer months of 1953, since he worked all the years of the graduate school), he became a teacher of Belarusian literature at the philological faculty of BSU, and then went to work as a research fellow at the Yanka Kupala Literature Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR, where he worked (with a break) for three decades (since 1976 – head of the literary interrelationship sector). He wrote about what appeared to be relevant for Belarusian literature (the genre of Belarusian literature, Kuzma Chorny and Fyodor Dostoevsky, the work of Maxim Garetsky and the classical tradition, military and rural prose on the literary planet, etc.). Published scientific works have always evoked a wide public resonance,
In the spring of 1954, Natalia’s daughter was born. Wife – Vera Semenovna Adamovich (in girlhood – Medvedev), born in 1929, philologist.
In 1958, the first book came out of print, a literary study “The Path to Mastery: The Formation of Kuzma Chorny’s Artistic Style”.
1959 year. The collection of literary-critical articles “Culture of creativity” was published. These books had a rich press. “I rushed into criticism, all with all my thoughts and emotions, and literary criticism, I can attest, can become your passion, but as long as you believe that it’s” not a storm in a glass of water, “but a truly public affair.”
1960 year. He publishes the novel “War under the Roofs” in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples”. Later he said: “If I succeeded in the novel” The War Under the Roofs, “it’s because the mother wrote her own life before this book.”
1961 year. A monograph “The Belarusian Novel” on the basis of which the doctoral dissertation was defended was published. Defended it in 1962 in Kiev, at the Institute of Literature named after TG Shevchenko: in Minsk, “influential” writers threatened not to allow protection. This was the beginning of the “ousting” of Adamovich outside Belarus.
1963 year. Publishes in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples” the second part of the novel-dilogii “Sons go into battle.” On the basis of these works, a screenplay of the two-part film “War under the Roofs” and “Sons go into battle” (directed by Viktor Turov, author and songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky, film studio “Belarusfilm”, 1970) is written.
From December 1962-1964 he studied at the Higher Scenario Courses in Moscow. At the same time he taught Belarusian literature at the Moscow State University (1964-1966), from where in 1966 he was compelled to refuse to sign a letter condemning Andrei Sinyavsky and Yulia Daniel, Moscow dissident writers, who were tried for “anti-Soviet activities.” I was forced to leave Moscow and return to Minsk. For more than half a year he was unemployed: he was not taken to the BSU, where the rector AN Sevchenko invited, nor to the Academy of Sciences. Andrei Makayonok, who appealed to P. Masherov, secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee, helped. He was recruited to the Yanka Kupala Literature Institute as a senior research fellow. He took an active part in the work of the “reform” V congress of Belarusian writers, where a sharp confrontation took place “
In 1966, the novel “Victoria” (later called “Assiya”) was published, in which he tried to go beyond the limits of autobiography.
1968 year. He wrote the script of the documentary film “Khatyn, 5 kilometers” (director I. Kolovsky), from which a new stage in the prose writer’s approach to the military theme began: the heroism was replaced by tragedy.
1969 In the “Friendship of Nations” published the novel “The Last Leave.” He also published a series of articles “The Width of the Writers’ World” about the work of Kuzma Cherniy in the context of world literature, which provoked a negative reaction from local pseudo patriots and orthodox Marxists.
1970 year. Has finished “the Hatynsky story” (magazine “Friendship of the people”). Although the work had positive reviews, the writer himself experienced: “He revealed, raised, showed only one grain of truth, a drop from what he saw and understood, and the bottomless ocean of folk, fiery, Khatyn memory remained, in the same place, inaudible, invisible to the world.” The thought of a documentary book came.
1970-1973. Together with Jank Bryl and Vladimir Kolesnik traveled all over Belarus with a tape recorder, visited hundreds of burned villages, interviewed and recorded more than three hundred witnesses of the military tragedy, the stories of which formed the basis for the documentary book “I am from a fiery village.”
1975 year. The book “I’m from a fiery village…” appeared in a separate edition. Translated into many foreign languages, became a literary bestseller in the West. In the magazine “Polymya” published a series of literary articles on the work of Maxim Garetsky “The gate of my treasure I open…” – a kind of novel-essay.
Based on the “Khatyn story” in the State Russian Drama Theater of the BSSR in 1977, the play “Return to Khatyn” (directed by B. Lutsenko) was staged. Based on the book “I’m from a fiery village…” director Victor Dashuk (according to A. Adamovich’s script) made a series of documentary films, the composer L. Shleg wrote the requiem “Remember”, the Novosibirsk Drama Theater made a dramatization.
Since April 1975 he began to write down the Leningrad blockade. Co-author-Leningrad writer Daniil Granin. In 1979, the first part of the “Blockade Book” is published.
1977 year. The Collected Works was published in 2 volumes.
1979 22 May. After a serious illness, Ales Adamovich’s mother dies. Died “on Mikola” spring, when the gardens blossomed. Shortly before this, the writer himself suffered a bleeding ulcer. He was saved by a lucky chance and his mother: he came to visit her in the hospital and was himself immediately hospitalized.
1981 year. Published the novel “Punisher”. A new look at the concept of military literature is set forth in the books On Modern Military Prose (1981), War and the Village in Contemporary Literature (1982) and Nothing More Important (1985), in which “
1982 year. Participates in the work of the UN General Assembly in New York as part of the Belarusian delegation. In those years, traveled the world a lot, taking part in international anti-war, anti-nuclear conferences, where he made presentations, gave numerous interviews. Publicism of the time is collected in the books “Choose – life!” (1986), “Literature and the Problems of the Century” (1986), “Think to the End” (1988).
1981-1983. The Collected Works were published in 4 volumes.
1984 year. The filming of the film “Go and See,” based on the scenario of A. Adamovich (based on the script “Khatyn story” and “Punisher”, co-authored with film director Elem Klimov), were held in Belarus. A. Adamovich took an active part in them, he was present on the set. (This film – and under the original title “Kill Hitler!” A. Adamovich and E. Klimov tried to put up to this almost seven years, after in 1977 the work on the film was stopped by the Goskino).
1985 year. The film “Go and See,” received the first prize and the Golden Prize at the XIV Moscow Film Festival and went around the screens of many countries of the world, receiving a huge resonance.
1986 year. On the night when the reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, Adamovich flew by plane to the south, to the sanatorium Zheleznovodsk. He began to seek the opportunity to destroy the wall of secrecy around Chernobyl, interviewed physicists, physicians of Minsk and Moscow about the possible consequences of the catastrophe. Then he wrote a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the CPSU, to convey to him and the world community the true extent of the disaster that befell Belarus. There was a real opportunity to influence the course of events. The Belarusian party leadership, instead of using properly the intellectual potential and organizational abilities of Ales Adamovich, organized the obstruction in the press, accusing him of pacifism, alarmism, sacrilege and clericalism. As a result, he was forced to leave Minsk and move to work in Moscow, where in the autumn of 1987 he was elected director of the All-Union Research Institute of Motion Picture Arts. He finished the story-anti-utopia “The Last Pastoral” (“The New World”, 1987). He was the chairman of the jury of short film at the XV Moscow International Film Festival (1987, July). A book of short stories and an essay “Prayer for the Future” was published.
1988 year. There was an opportunity to publish the chapter of the novel
“Punisher” – “Double” (“Friendship of Peoples”, 1988, No. 11), over which he worked for several years.
1989 year. He became a People’s Deputy of the USSR, actively used three
buna of congresses for performances for perestroika, democratization and glasnost. Adamovich’s publicism of recent years is collected in his books “Reclaimed!” (1990), “We are the sixties” (1991).
1991year. In the days of the August coup in Moscow he was in the ranks of the
defenders of the White House. These events reflected in the journalistic and memoirs essay “Thank you, junta!”.


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Biography Adamovich Alexander Mikhailovich