Khrapchenko, Mikhail Borisovich

Born Nov. 8 (21), 1904, in the village of Chizhovka, in what is now Ekimovichi Raion, Smolensk Oblast. Soviet Russian literary critic and public figure. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966; corresponding member, 1958). Academician-secretary of the academy’s division of literature and language since 1967; member of the presidium of the academy since 1967. Chairman of the Committee on the Arts of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (1939–48). Member of the CPSU since 1928.

Khrapchenko graduated from the University of Smolensk in 1924. He wrote on the development of Soviet literary theory and criticism in World View and Creativity (1957) and Literary Theories and the Creative Process (1969). In The Writer’s Creative Individuality and the Development of Literature (1970; Lenin Prize, 1974), a work that draws on Russian, Soviet, and Western European literature, Khrapchenko examined a wide range of problems regarding a world view and aesthetics, established principles for the typological study of literature, and explored the nature of artistic creativity. In such articles as “Semiotics and Artistic Creativity” (1973) and “Thoughts on the Systemic Analysis of Literature” (1975) he developed a set of principles based on a historically functional and systemic concept of literary phenomena. Khrapchenko’s studies of N. V. Gogol and L. N. Tolstoy represent a major contribution to Soviet literary theory and criticism.

Khrapchenko is president of the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature, and in 1973 he became an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Khrapchenko has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and various medals.