Viktor Nekrasov

Kiev, 1911–Paris, 1987

Viktor Nekrasov, Kiev, 1950s. ©Viсtor Kondyrev

Nekrasov was a Soviet realist writer known for his prose on war and criticism of Soviet society. From the mid-1960s, he was a prominent figure of dissent, emigrating definitively to Paris in 1974, where he was involved in editing “Kontinent“. Viktor Nekrasov had no memories of his father, Platon, a Siberian-born banker, who died in 1917 and lived with his mother, Zinaida Motovilova (1879-1970), an esteemed paediatrician from Kiev with Italian ancestry (cf. Sabbatini 2018: 19-27). His aunt, Sof’ia Motovilova (1889-1966), a bibliographer in Moscow literary circles, published excerpts from her literary memoirs in 1963 in issue no. 12 of “Novyi mir”.
Between 1937 and 1941, after finishing his studies in architecture in 1936, Nekrasov devoted himself to acting. At the beginning of the Second World War, he volunteered for the Red Army and fought in the trenches of Stalingrad from 21^st September 1942 to 2^nd February 1943. Subsequently, he was sent to Lublin on the Western Front, where he was wounded, and in August 1944 he returned to Kiev as a war hero. Here, he was a member of the editorial staff for “Radians’ke mistetstvo”, for which he wrote several articles as well as a short story about his experience in the trenches (cf. Nekrasov 1986: web).
His success was as immediate as it was unexpected. His first work was entitled V okopakh Stalingrada (In the Trenches of Stalingrad), published in 1946 in “Znamia” under the title Stalingrad for which he was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1947. In the following years, Nekrasov became known for his war prose and began to climb the hierarchy of the Union of Soviet Writers, becoming vice-president of the Union of Ukrainian Writers. Although he continued to live in Kiev, he collaborated with the most important magazines and publishers in Moscow. In the second half of the 1950s, Nekrasov was a leading figure in framing relations between the Soviet Union and Italy and France.
He emerged as an original and independent voice during the Khrushchev Thaw, thanks to V rodnom gorode (In the hometown) published in 1954, a short novel which criticizes the dogmatism and bureaucratism of party leadership in post-war Kiev. The work met with success in the West, especially in Italy, where at the end of 1955 it was published by Feltrinelli (translated by Pietro Zveteremich) and Einaudi (translated by Vittorio Strada). In 1957 In the trenches of Stalingrad was made into a film entitled Soldaty (Soldiers) and in 1958 In the hometown was also freely transposed to film with the name Gorod zazhigaet ogni (The city lights up). Debate about the author in the West was lively, especially  after the controversial short story Kira Georgievna was published in 1961. It tells the story of a woman who refuses to live submissively in post-war Stalinist society, even though her husband suffered repression in 1937. The themes of detachment, absence and return play out against a background of Stalinist terror and memories of the Gulag, anticipating the themes explored a year later by A. Solzhenitsyn.
Nekrasov’s other narrative texts, which are tinged with heresy and at times barely veiled admiration for Western customs, include Pervoe znakomstvo (First Acquaintance) (1958), Po obe storony okeana (This Way and That Way from the Ocean) (1962) and travel journals on Italy (1957 and 1962), France (1962) and the United States (1960). During these years, Nekrasov was greatly influenced by Italian intellectuals, especially Carlo Levi, Renato Guttuso and Pier Paolo Pasolini and became an admirer of neorealist cinema (cf. Sabbatini 2018: 153-164). His unequivocal praise published in This Way and That Way from the Ocean of Marlen Khutsiev’s (1925-2019) film, Zastava Il’icha (Il’ich’s Gate), cost him a public reprimand in Nikita Khrushchov’s speech on 8^th March 1963. Nekrasov’s propensity for dialogue with the West and denunciation of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, for example in an article on hidden memory in Babii Yar in “Literaturnaia gazeta” on 10^th October 1959, had already compromised his position with the authorities.
His involvement in the organization of an unauthorized rally in Kiev on 29^th September 1966 to mark the 25th anniversary of the massacre of the Jews in Kiev represented the point of no return, especially as on 14^th February 1966 he appeared as one of 25 signatories to a letter addressed to Leonid Brezhnev protesting against the rehabilitation of Stalin. Towards the end of the 1960s, Nekrasov was responsible for other protests, for example in support of  Petro Grigorenko and, from 1967, for commemorating the Turbin house, a symbolic place in Kiev’s recent history, which today hosts the Mikhail Bulgakov House Museum.
In 1971, he published his last work in the USSR, V zhizni i pis’makh (In Life and in Letters), a collection of memoirs. From this moment on, the author had no place in Soviet publishing and his books became inaccessible to Soviet readers. In 1973, he was expelled from the Communist Party.
The hostile attitude of the authorities turned into provocation, detention, threat of arrest and two searches (cf. Matveev 2014); between 17^th and 19^th January 1974 he was subjected to a long interrogation and several of his books and manuscripts, including materials from his investigations on Babi Yar were confiscated. On 20^th May of the same year, he wrote a letter to Leonid Brezhnev, in which he declared that he could no longer accept such treatment and understood that he was no longer welcome in the Soviet Union (сf. Khazan 2014: 164-170). On 12^th September 1974, he left the Soviet Union with his wife Galina Bazii and travelled via Zurich to Paris. For the first few months he lived as a guest of Andrei Siniavskii and Mariia Rozanova. At the invitation of Vladimir Maksimov, he worked as deputy editor of the magazine “Kontinent” from 1975 to 1982. He collaborated with several emigrant editorial houses, such as “Russkaia Mysl'” and “Novoe russkoe slovo” and took part in broadcasts on “Radio Svoboda”. During his time in Paris he was prolific in producing memoirs and autobiographical prose: he published Zapiski zevaki (The Memoirs of a Time Waster) in 1975, Vzgliad i nechto (The Look and Something Else) in 1976-1977, Po obe storony Steny (On This Side and Beyond the Wall) in 1978, Iz dal’nykh stranstvii vozvratiyas’ (Returning from a Long Wander) in 1979-1981, Saperlipopet (Goodness me) in 1983 and Malen’kaia pechal’naia povest’ (Little Sad Tale) in 1986, his last work of a considerable importance. In the last thirteen years of his emigrant life, he met several writer friends, including Sergei Dovlatov, Aleksandr Galich, Bulat Okudzhava and Konstantin Kuz’minskii. After his Soviet passport was confiscated in 1979 following remarks against Brezhnev, Nekrasov acquired French citizenship in 1983. He lived in Vanves, just outside Paris, until his death with his wife and stepson Viktor Kondyrev, who had managed to rejoin the family in 1976. Despite illness, Nekrasov continued to write until the last days of his life (cf. Kondyrev 2011: 558-559). He died on 3^rd September 1987.

Marco Sabbatini
[30^th June 2021]

Translation by Cecilia Martino

Bibliography

• Khazan L., Viktor Nekrasov. Arestovannye stranitsy. Rasskazy, interv’iu i pis’ma iz arkhivov KGB, Laurus, Kiev 2014.
• Kondyrev V., Vse na svete, krome shila i gvozdia, AST, Moskva 2011.
• Matveev P., Viktor Nekrasov i KGB, “Colta”, 12.09.2014, https://www.colta.ru/articles/literature/4592-viktor-nekrasov-i-kgb, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).
• Nekrasov V., Reziume, “Viktor Nekrasov. Sait pamiati pisatelia”, http://nekrassov-viktor.com/Biography.aspx, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).
• Sabbatini M., Viktor Nekrasov e l’Italia. Uno scrittore sovietico nel dibattito culturale degli anni Cinquanta, Mantova 2018.