People engaged in literary creation in the Soviet Union were treated with respect and severity. If the poet deviated from the party line, then he could be punished. Leonid Martynov is a famous poet, but not everyone's beloved and understood, either.
Salt of the Siberian land
In a harsh region, where snow and frost do not favor idleness, there is very poor soil for poetry. However, people brought up by harsh nature manage to discern grains of light and beauty through the twists of a blizzard. The popular Soviet poet Leonid Nikolayevich Martynov was born on May 22, 1905 in the family of an engineer of the Ministry of Railways. Parents at that time lived in the city of Omsk. My father was engaged in the design of culverts on the railway. Mother worked as a teacher in a local gymnasium.
In his spare time, his father willingly engaged with little Lenya. Told him Russian folk tales. After a while, he began to retell the myths of Ancient Greece. The boy had an excellent memory and often asked the head of the family for details of plots that his father sometimes simply did not know about. In communication with his mother, the future journalist quite decently mastered German and Polish. By the age of four Martynov had learned to read. The house had a good selection of books. Leonid read everything, even those that were printed in foreign languages.
Then he switched to the city library. To get to the city book depository, the boy had to cross the Cathedral Square and pass through the Cossack Bazaar. Here, at the junction of Europe and Asia, in any weather, a luxurious venue was noisy and worried. Before his eyes flickered malachi and velvet hats, hats and caps. Above the hustle and bustle, the bells of the Catholic Cathedral sounded, the trams rang and the horseshoes clicked. Martynov loved to observe this dynamically changing picture.
Leonid was enrolled in the male gymnasium, where from the first days he demonstrated meritorious abilities in the humanities. The revolutionary events and episodes of the civil war were preserved in his memory to the smallest detail. Martynov, who was still a teenager, managed to run into Supreme Commander of Russia Admiral Kolchak. Two friends rode a boat along the Irtysh River and “cut” the boat with the admiral on board. According to the youth of high school students, this misconduct got away with it. Although Martynov and his comrade were pretty scared.
The beginning of the creative path
Having received a secondary education, Martynov did not long seek the application of his powers and talents. By 1921, several periodicals were published in Omsk. Leonid brought his notes and poems to the editors himself. After a short period of time he was accepted as a good friend. The beginning writer even made a schedule of visits. First of all, I took the prepared texts to the newspaper "Work Path". Then he went to the editorial office of “Beep”. And he completed his trip with a tea party with the editor of Signal. The first poems of the young poet appeared on the pages of the almanac "Art", which was published by Omsk futurists.
Martynov quickly studied and felt the specifics of the editorial work. The career of the correspondent was quite successful. A year later, he was invited to the position of a traveling reporter in the newspaper Sovetskaya Sibir, whose editorial office was in Novosibirsk. Leonid traveled across the expanses of Siberia and Kazakhstan, gaining impressions and new knowledge. He watched with his own eyes how the daily life of people is changing following political reforms. He prepared not only materials for the newspaper, but also poetry, which he sends to Moscow magazines.
For the first time, Martynov’s poem appeared on the pages of Zvezda magazine in 1927. By that time, the poet has already prepared poems "Old Omsk" and "Admiral's Hour." But for the time being, for the time being they lie on the table. Two years later, a book of essays entitled "Autumn Travels in the Irtysh" was released. In between business trips, the correspondent takes part in discussions about the place of literature in the construction of a new society. Quite unexpectedly, Leonid is accused of counter-revolutionary propaganda and sentenced to three years of exile in faraway Vologda.
