Belarus: persons and events (Ivan Yakovlevich Naumenko)

Ivan Yakovlevich Naumenko was born on February 16, 1925 in the town of Vasilevichi, Rechitsa district, Gomel region, in the family of a railway worker. He began to write poems while he was still in high school. He sent them and numerous notes to the local district newspaper. In high school he tried writing articles and reviews of works of art. Within a year he passed his eighth and ninth grade external exams.

He dreamed of seriously pursuing literature, but all plans were canceled by the war. As a seventeen-year-old young man he joined the fight against the occupiers: he took an active part in underground activities, was a liaison and partisan of P. Ponomarenko's Vasilievets brigade, was a member of the army reconnaissance and diversion group. Together with the Red Army units he participated in the liberation of his native town. In 1943 he was drafted into the army. He fought on the Leningrad and First Ukrainian Fronts, on the Karelian peninsula, in East Prussia, and finished the war in Silesia.

After demobilization he worked as a correspondent for the Mozyr district newspaper "Bolshevik Polesya". In 1950 he graduated from the correspondence department of the philological faculty of the Belarusian State University named after Y. I. Lenin (now BSU), and in 1954 - from the postgraduate program. From 1953 to 1958 he headed the prose department of the magazine "Yunost". He worked as a senior lecturer, associate professor, professor, head of the Belarusian Literature Department of BSU (until 1972).

In 1972 Ivan Naumenko was elected a corresponding member of the BSSR Academy of Science. From that time, all his work and scientific activities were connected with this institution. In 1973 he headed the Kupala Institute of Literature, in 1980 he became an academician, and two years later the vice-president of the BSSR Academy of Science. In 1992-2002. - Advisor to the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NAS of Belarus). Since 2002 - Chief Scientific Associate of the Kupala Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

Ivan Naumenko actively participated in the public life of the republic. At the V and VI Congresses of Writers of the USSR he was elected a member of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR, was a member of the Board of the Union of Writers of Belarus. He took part in the work of the XXV session of the UN General Assembly as a member of the BSSR delegation. Honored Scientist of the BSSR (1978), People's Writer of Belarus (1995), was awarded the Order of the Red Star (1945), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1975), the Order of World War II and the Order of the October Revolution (both 1985). numerous medals.

The beginning of the writer's literary activity is considered to be 1955. Then his first stories "Sidar and Gorashka" and "Ekh, Mogorachka" were published in the magazine "Yunost". Since 1957 he began to publish collections of stories, novels and short stories - "Seventeenth Spring" (1957), "Boys of the same age" (1958), "Poplars of Youth" (1966), "Veranika" (1968), "That very land" (1971) and others.

The theme of the Great Patriotic War is most fully revealed in the novels "The Pine Tree by the Road" (1962), "The Wind in the Pines" (1967), "The Forty-Third" (1973). In the novels created in 1970-80s ("The Sadness of White Nights", "The Dreamer") the image of the Belarusian intelligent of the older generation emerges. Modern life with all its conflicts and contradictions is comprehended by the writer in his last significant work - trilogy "Childhood. Adolescence. "Youth" (1997) and its sequel "Favorite City" (1999).

Ivan Naumenko is widely known as a researcher in the field of Russian literary studies. He is the author of the monograph "Yanka Kupala. The Spiritual Cloud of the Hero" (1967), "Yakub Kolas. The Spiritual Cloud of the Hero" (1968; both received the Y. Kolas State Prize of the BSSR, 1972), "Zmitrok Byadulya" (1995), "Maksim Bogdanovich" (1997), "Early Kuzma Cherny (1923- 1929)" (2000). In 1997 he received the prize of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus for a series of monographs.

The writer has worked in the sphere of national literature for more than 50 years. Ivan Naumenko's works are inspired by sincerity, truthfulness and deep feeling. They have been translated into Bulgarian, Latvian, German, Polish, Russian and other languages. 

Based on materials of the National Library of Belarus.

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