Mikhail Alekseev


Alekseev, Mikhail Nikolaevich

 

Born May 6, 1918, in Monastyrskoe, in present-day Saratov Oblast. Soviet Russian writer. Member of the CPSU since 1942. Graduated from the advanced literature courses of the Writers’ Union of the USSR in 1957. Participated in the Great Patriotic War.

Alekseev’s novel-“chronicle,” The Soldiers (1951–53), and his novella Divizionka (1959) are devoted to events of the Great Patriotic War; his novella The Heirs (1957) deals with the peacetime, everyday life of Soviet soldiers. Alekseev’s novel The Cherry Whirlpool (1961) and the novellas Bread—A Noun (1964; made into a film entitled The Crane, 1968) and Kariukha (1967) portray the past and contemporary life of village people, their difficult labor, and their love for their native land. During 1950–55 he directed the Military Publishing House. He became chief editor of the magazine Moskva in 1968 and is secretary of the board of the Writers’ Union of the RSFSR. Alekseev has received four orders and medals.

WORKS

Izbrannoe. [Foreword by N. Dalada.] Moscow, 1967.

REFERENCES

Vikulov, S. “S perednego kraia.” Oktiabr’, 1964, no. 8.
Sofronov, A. “Sel’skaia khronika Mikhaila Alekseeva.” Moskva, 1964, no. 8.
Balandin, L. “Liubov’ i dobrota. K piatidesiatiletiiu Mikhaila Alekseeva.” Sibirskie ogni, 1958, no. 6.
Rus. sov. pisateli-prozaiki. Bibliograficheskii ukazatel, vol. 1. Leningrad, 1959.