Gribachev, Nikolai Matveevich

Born Dec. 6 (19), 1910, in Lopush, present-day Briansk Raion, Briansk Oblast. Soviet Russian author and public figure. Member of the CPSU since 1943.

Gribachev participated in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). He was editor in chief of the journal Sovetskii Soiuz (1950–54 and since 1956) and is the author of the verse collections Northwest (1935) and Down the Roads of War (1945). He acquired fame with his poems “The Bolshevik Kolkhoz” (1947) and “Spring at Pobeda” (1948), which received the State Prize of the USSR (1948, 1949). Gribachev also published the collections of stories August Stars (1958), Night-time Thunderstorm (1964), and My Crazy Love (1967) and the story “White Angel in a Field” (1967). He has written publicists articles on international themes and polemic articles on contemporary literature. Gribachev’s publicistic works are timely, take the offensive in the battle with bourgeois ideology, and have deep regard for folk life. Gribachev became a candidate member of the CC CPSU in 1961. He was deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR at the fifth through eighth convocations; he became secretary of the board for the Writers’ Union of the USSR in 1959. He received the Lenin Prize in 1960 and was awarded the Order of the October Revolution, six other orders, and medals.