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Krasnaya znamia
(Red flag). As a war correspon-
dent, he traveled to many fronts and was present
during the final Soviet assault on Berlin in 1945.
A party member since 1939, he was given an
army rank and during the war was promoted to
lieutenant colonel, followed by a promotion to
full colonel after the war.
In addition to his reportage, Simonov pub-
lished a number of plays and novels, of which
the best known is perhaps
Days and Nights
(1944), set in the city of Stalingrad in late 1942
on the eve of the Soviet counteroffensive that
turned the tide of the Battle of
STALINGRAD
and of
the war itself. Simonov continued to mine war
themes after the war in novels such as
Comrades
in Arms
(1952) and
The Living and the Dead
(1959). While working within Soviet ideological
strictures, Simonov wrote expressively about the
impact of war on soldiers and families in a direct,
conversational style that also managed to con-
vey the emotions of his characters.
For his literary efforts, Simonov was rewarded
with important positions in the party and Soviet
literary world. He also traveled extensively as a
Soviet literary ambassador. Simonov was a mem-
ber of the Central Committee of the
COMMUNIST
PARTY
from 1952 to 1956 and twice served as
deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He
first served as editor of the influential literary
journal
Novy mir
from 1946 to 1950 and again
from 1954 to 1958. He first served as secretary of
the Union of Soviet Writers from 1946 to 1950
and was appointed to a second term in 1967.
Simonov balanced some relatively independent
political stands without losing his respected posi-
tion in the Soviet literary establishment. After
being dismissed as editor of
Novy mir
in 1958 for
approving the publication of the controversial
novel by Vladimir Dudintsev,
Not by Bread Alone,
Simonov was sent to Tashkent as correspondent
for the Central Asian Bureau of the Communist
Party's newspaper,
Pravda.
Likewise, his refusal to
sign a statement of support for the 1968
WARSAW
PACT
invasion of Czechoslovakia did not jeopar-
dize his position as secretary of the Union of
Soviet Writers, a post he continued to hold until
the year of his death. In addition, he received a
1974
LENIN PRIZE
and was made a Hero of Social-
ist Labor in 1977.
Sinyavsky, Andrei Donatovich
(1925-1998)
writer
Together with his codefendant, Yuli Daniel,
Sinyavsky was involved in a landmark trial in
the mid-1960s that marked the end of the post-
Stalinist thaw in Soviet literature. Sinyavsky was
born in Moscow and graduated from Moscow
State University in 1952. By the time of his
arrest in 1965, he had written an important
study of poetry in the early revolutionary period
and had established himself as a literary scholar
and author. But after 1956 Sinyavsky, writing
under the pseudonym of Abram Tertz, and his
colleague Daniel (pseudonym Nikolai Arzhak)
had been smuggling manuscripts of short stories,
short novels, and essays that were highly critical
of Soviet life. Among Sinyavsky's contributions
from this time were
On Socialist Realism
(1960), a
thorough critique of the official Soviet literary
doctrine, and
The Trial Begins
(1960), a fictional
exposé of Soviet justice. Although critical, the
works were not explicitly anti-Soviet. Neverthe-
less, the KGB (secret police) sought to identify
and prosecute the authors. Their identities were
finally established and Sinyavsky and Daniel
were arrested in September 1965 for disseminat-
ing anti-Soviet literature and were placed on
trial. Despite a brave defense by both defen-
dants, they were found guilty. In February 1966,
Sinyavsky was sentenced to seven years hard
labor (the maximum sentence), while Daniel
received five. The trial—and the harshness of the
sentences—shocked the Soviet intelligentsia, for
it was the first time that writers had been tried in
an open court, and it marked an important mile-
stone in the development of the dissident move-
ment. Sinyavsky was released in 1971 and
emigrated to Paris two years later, where he
published his prison journal
A Voice from the Cho-
rus
(1973) and became a celebrated literary fig-
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