Tikhonov N.S. (1896-1979), writer

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TIKHONOV Nikolay Semenovich (1896, St. Petersburg - 1979), poet, prose writer, public figure, hero of Socialist Labour (1966). He held the post of a secretary of the Writers Union of the USSR (from 1944). He graduated from St. Petersburg Commercial School in 1911, and then worked as a copyist at the Chief Naval Economic Board. He took part in the First World War of 1914-18 as a volunteer, fought in the Baltics as a member of the hussar regiment and received a shell-shock. His romantic and courageous perception of the events of the World War and the Civil War was rendered in his collections of poems The Horde and The Beer (both in 1922), which attained wide renown. Tikhonov's contemporaries were of the opinion that his early works maintained the traditions set by N.S. Gumilev, though Tikhonov himself had bad memories of his brief acquaintance with the former, as well as of the participation in the meetings of the Third Guild of Poets. In St. Petersburg, he lived in the House of Arts; he was a member of the Islanders Community and of the literary group Serapion Brothers. Tikhonov was the first among Soviet writers to write a poem about Lenin (Ourselves, 1921). He headed the department of poetry of the Zvezda journal, and presided over Leningrad Department of the Writers Union. He wrote a poem Kirov with Us (1941; the Stalin Prize of 1942). Altogether he published over 100 volumes of poetry and prose, with many of them repeatedly reprinted. He used to travel a lot. Tikhonov was a productive translator (especially with the translation of Georgian poets T. Tabidze, P. Yashvili, G. Abashidze et al.). He was twice awarded the Stalin Prize (in 1949 and 1952), and conferred on the Lenin Prize once (1970). He had been living at 2/5 Zverinskaya Street from 1922 (memorial plaque), with the family of his wife M.K. Neslukhovskaya; their flat was a literary centre of Leningrad during the 1920-40s. He took part in the Soviet-Finnish war and the Great Patriotic War. In 1944 he moved to Moscow.

References: Хренков Д. Т. Николай Тихонов в Ленинграде. Л., 1984; Федоров А. И. "...Каждый камень твой поэма" // "...Одним дыханьем с Ленинградом...": Ленинград в жизни и творчестве сов. писателей. Л., 1989. С. 352-371.

T. M. Dvinyatina. Abashidze Grigol Grigorievich
Lenin (real name Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich
Neslukhovskaya (Tikhonova) Maria Konstantinovna
Tabidze Titsian Yustinovich
Tikhonov Nikolay Semenovich
Yashvili Paolo (Pavel) Dzhibrailovich
Zverinskaya Street/Saint Petersburg, city, house 2/5
Хренков Д. Т. Николай Тихонов в Ленинграде. Л., 1984
Федоров А.И. "... Каждый камень твой поэма" // "... Одним дыханьем с Ленинградом...": Ленинград в жизни и творчестве сов. писателей. Л., 1989 Poets Guild
Arts, The House of, literary society
Serapion's Brothers
Zvezda (The Star), journal