Vasilii Azhaev

Azhaev, Vasilii Nikolaevich

 

Born Jan. 30 (Feb. 12), 1915, in the village of Sotskoe, Moscow Province; died Apr. 27, 1968, in Moscow. Soviet Russian writer.

Azhaev graduated from the A. M. Gorkii Literary Institute in 1944 but had already begun publishing his works as early as 1934. In 1948 he issued a collection of short stories entitled Gold. Azhaev was the author of the novel Far From Moscow (1948; State Prize of the USSR, 1949), dealing with the labor sacrifices of the Soviet people who constructed an oil pipeline in the remote taiga during the Great Patriotic War. A motion picture, made in 1950, and an opera by I. I. Dzerzhinskii, written in 1954, were based on this novel. In 1961, Azhaev published his novella about Soviet youth, Prologue to Life. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

REFERENCES

Lenobl’, G. “Mesto v boiu.” Znamia, 1948, no. 12.
Gurvich, A. “Sila polozhitel’nogo primera.” In his book Cherty sovremennika. Moscow, 1958.
Sokolov, V. “Vtoraia kniga.” Novyi mir, 1961, no. 10.
Russkie sovetskie pisateli-prosaiki. Bibliograficheskii ukazatel, vol.1. Leningrad, 1959.