Aleksandr Fadeyev

Biography

Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeyev (1901–1956) was a Soviet writer, one of the co-founders of the Union of Soviet Writers and its chairman from 1946 to 1954. In 1930, he published the first part of the novel The Last of the Udege, on which he continued working the rest of his life (an edition containing the second volume, all he was able to complete, was published in 1940). In 1945, he wrote the novel, The Young Guard (based upon real events of World War II) about the underground Komsomol organization named Young Guard, which fought against the Nazis in the occupied city Krasnodon (in the Ukrainian SSR). For this novel, Fadeyev was awarded the Stalin Prize (1946). In 1948, a Soviet film The Young Guard, based on the book, was released, and later revised in 1964 to correct inaccuracies in the book. In the last years of his life, Fadeyev developed a nervous condition, exacerbated by the prolonged abuse of alcohol. He eventually committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart at his dacha in Peredelkino, leaving a suicide note which made clear his negative attitude to both the old and the new leaders of the Party.