People engaged in literary creativity in the Soviet Union were treated with respect and severity. If the poet deviated from the party line, then he could be punished. Leonid Martynov is a well-known poet, but not everyone is loved and understood by not everyone either.
Siberian earth salt
In a harsh land, where snow and frost do not dispose to idleness, there is a very meager soil for poetry. However, people brought up by a harsh nature manage to discern grains of light and beauty through the swirls of a blizzard. The popular Soviet poet Leonid Nikolaevich Martynov was born on May 22, 1905 in the family of an engineer at the Ministry of Railways. Parents at that time lived in the city of Omsk. My father was engaged in the design of culverts on the railway. Mother worked as a teacher at a local gymnasium.
In his free time from official duties, his father willingly studied with little Lenya. I told him Russian folk tales. After a while, he began to retell the myths of Ancient Greece. The boy had an excellent memory and often asked the head of the family for details of plots that his father sometimes simply did not know about. In communication with his mother, the future journalist quite decently mastered the German and Polish languages. By the age of four, Martynov had learned to read. There was a good selection of books in the house. Leonid read everything, even those that were printed in foreign languages.
Then he switched to the city library. To get to the city book depository, the boy had to cross the Cathedral Square and pass through the Cossack Bazaar. Here, at the junction of Europe and Asia, a luxurious marketplace was noisy and agitated in any weather. Fox malachai and velvet hats, hats and caps flashed before my eyes. Over the hustle and bustle, the bells of the Catholic cathedral sounded, trams rang and the horseshoes of horses clattered. Martynov loved to observe this dynamically changing picture.
Leonid was enrolled in a men's gymnasium, where from the first days he demonstrated commendable abilities in the humanities. Revolutionary events and episodes of the civil war were preserved in his memory to the smallest detail. Martynov, who was still a teenager, managed to run into the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Russia, Admiral Kolchak. Two friends rode a boat along the Irtysh and "cut" the boat with the admiral on board. In their youth, the schoolboys got away with this offense. Although Martynov and his comrade were pretty scared.
The beginning of the creative path
Having received a secondary education, Martynov did not look for a long time to use his strengths and talents. By 1921, several periodicals were published in Omsk. Leonid entered his notes and poems in the editorial office himself. After a short period of time, he was received as a good friend. The aspiring writer even made a schedule of visits. First of all, I took the prepared texts to the Rabochy Put newspaper. Then he visited the editorial office of Gudok. And he ended his trip with a tea party with the editor of "Signal". The first poems of the young poet appeared on the pages of the almanac "Art", which was published by the Omsk futurists.
Martynov quickly studied and felt the specifics of editorial work. The career of a correspondent was going quite well. A year later, he was invited to the position of a traveling reporter for the newspaper Sovetskaya Sibir, whose editorial office was in Novosibirsk. Leonid traveled across the expanses of Siberia and Kazakhstan, gaining impressions and new knowledge. He witnessed with his own eyes how the daily life of people changes after political reforms. He prepared not only materials for the newspaper, but also poems, which he sends to Moscow magazines.
The first time Martynov's poem appeared on the pages of the magazine "Zvezda" in 1927. By that time, the poet had already prepared the poems "Old Omsk" and "The Admiral's Hour". But for the time being, for the time being, they lie in the table. Two years later, a book of essays was published under the title "Autumn travels along the Irtysh". In between business trips, the correspondent participates in discussions about the place of literature in the construction of a new society. Quite unexpectedly, Leonid was accused of counter-revolutionary propaganda and sentenced to three years of exile in distant Vologda.
Recognition and privacy
Returning from exile, Martynov did not betray himself. He continued to be creative. By the end of the thirties, three books of the poet and journalist were published with an interval of one year: "Poems and Poems", "History of the Fortress on Omi", "Poems". He became famous, critics and colleagues started talking about him. When the war began, Leonid Nikolaevich did not get to the front due to poor health. He had already been booked as a correspondent in the editorial office of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, but the circumstances did not work out.
A year after the victory, Martynov moved to Moscow. It would seem that fortune smiled at the Siberian. However, after a devastating review of the collection of poems "Ertsin Forest", which was written by Vera Inber, the poet's works were no longer published. For almost ten years he earned his living by translating poets from Hungary, Poland, Italy, France into Russian. The Hungarian government awarded the poet's educational works with the Silver Cross and Gold Star orders. Only in 1955 the poet was “forgiven”.
The personal life of Leonid Martynov has developed happily. He met his wife Nina Popova in Vologda, where he was serving a sentence. Husband and wife in the most difficult situations tried to preserve the family hearth. Nina died in 1979, and Leonid died in the summer of 1980.
