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By E. Andrusenko
On February 29 Fedor Abramov would have turned 80. He died in 1983 at the age of 63, leaving behind unfinished works, unaccomplished plans, and questions to which he, as a writer and citizen, sought but couldn't find answers. The image of Russia with its millennium-old history, its joys and grievances, its sufferings and hidden spiritual strength, the Russian people and Russian peasantry occupied the main place in his books.
Fedor Abramov was one of the fathers of a new literary movement known as county prose. Emerging in the 60s, it united a whole pleiad of acclaimed Soviet writers, among them Valentin Rasputin, Vassily Belov and Victor Astafiev. Perhaps, Russia will soon discover new names continuing this tradition - winners of a newly-instituted literary prize named after Fedor Abramov to be awarded on the day of his birth, February 29.
Abramov was born in the village of Verkola located amid dense forests in northern Russia. It was the land of his childhood pressed by his bare feet and watered by his baby tears. "It's in the nature of Russian farmers to treat any work seriously. They are hard and honest workers and reliable business partners. And what a sense of beauty they have! What good craftsmen they are! Log houses in the North - why, these are real palaces!" Abramov wrote.
In his stories Abramov pays tribute to old legends and epic tales of the North that are still fresh in people's memory. One story tells about a young peasant girl who set out on an incredible journey for St.-Petersburg, one thousand and a half kilometres away from her village, to buy a sleeveless dress. In another of Abramov's stories a 40-year-old construction worker drained a marsh all alone according to his own method. Yet another shows a former bandit who, after several years in prison, began planting pine groves as in his opinion "pine-trees keep the world going". All these stories sound like fairy-tales, but the events described are based on real facts.
Abramov had a deep and infinite love for his native village. But that was a difficult love. He was ever anxious for Verkola. Whenever he was away, he was overwhelmed by a passionate desire to return. But when he came back and saw the post-war devastation, peasants worn out by hard labor and hopelessness, he felt desperately unhappy. In his heart-breaking story "The Old Women" Abramov relates the hardships endured by peasant women in a remote Siberian village during the war. "The old women wept, straining my heart with their tears and complaints, and once again they made me look back at the cross they had borne ... The death of their husbands and sons in the war, early widowhood and fatherlessness, famine, unbearably high taxes and on top of it all - a meagre pension. Oh, so many times I lost my temper and banged my feast upon the table, calling for understanding and compassion, and so many times received an indifferent answer: "According to the law". Wild, bureaucratic logic!
Abramov protested against an unreasonable and irresponsible attitude to life, work and land, against indifference and endless tolerance. In a letter to one of his readers he wrote: "What kind of people are we, the Russians? We understand everything, know everything, but when it comes to action - we back down. We must be more active... When people are prepared to endure everything - why, that's the kind of tolerance on which all sorts of scoundrels and rascals feed!"
Tolerance wasn't Abramov's creed. He threw himself into the fight, writing pungent essays, knowing he would be fought back. And he was.
His chief literary work is "The Priaslins", a four-volume epic novel in which on the example of just one family and just one village he explained how and why the Russians and all other nationalities of the former USSR stood out the war. The novel was translated into 30 languages. Those who read Abramov in Russian may find this surprising as his prose maintains the specific dialect and ethnographic peculiarities of the Russian north so dear to the writer.
From Abramov's interview: "I receive letters from Siberia, the Urals and Ukraine. Some people write: "I recognised my brother in Priaslin." They don't believe that I never stayed in their village. There was a curious episode in France. Once I was talking with a university professor and he said to me: "Do you want to meet a French Mikhail Priaslin?..."
Many Russian theatre directors turned to Abramov's prose. In 1989 the US public saw a stage adaptation of his novel "Brothers And Sisters" put on by Lev Dodin at the Maly Drama Theatre in St.-Petersburg. "The performance lasts 8 hours", says Lev Dodin. "When we started working on it, no one expected it be a success. My friends shrugged their shoulders: "Oh, but it's about a village, who will watch this nowadays?" We were rehearsing over more than a year. We even lived in a village for a while. Now I can say for sure that the play was a tremendous success. We performed it in the Untied States, France, Japan and Germany... Strangely enough, when back in the 70s we were rehearsing "Brothers And Sisters", we thought it was about the present. Then under perestroika in the 80s, we were sure it was about the past, and now a terrible thought sometimes occurs to me that, perhaps, our performance is about the future."
National character and the essence of life are the key themes of Abramov's unfinished novel "The Blank Book". The heroine, an elderly woman Makhonka by name, is a fantastic, almost unreal personage, one of those who in olden times walked from village to village earning their living by amusing people with fairy tales, singing lullabies to babies and reading prayers over the dead. She pretends to be merry and content with her life, but deep in her heart she suffers a lot.
From memoirs by Abramov's wife Ludmila Krutikova: "Before the fatal operation in 1983 Fedor said to me: "If I die, live for both of us, for you and me, finish my work. Who, if not me, will finish "The Blank Book", and people need it so, especially now" .
 
By Natalia Victorova Russia's State Radio and TV Orchestra is giving a series of concerts at the Moscow Philharmonic Society. At present the orchestra has no permanent chief conductor, a situation in which few orchestras would have managed to survive. Without a chief conductor, an orchestra's unifying force, a key figure determining the main avenues of work, an orchestra gradually loses its lustre and falls into decay. A similar thing could happen to any orchestra but not the one we are talking about. The Radio and TV Orchestra is more than 20 years old. It so happened that in 1986 its founder, conductor Alexandr Mikhailov, was killed in a car crash. A few years ago his successor Igor Golovchin died of a heart attack. Under Golovchin the orchestra reached the peak of success. It accompanied the famous Spanish opera singer Moncerrat Caballe during her concert at Cathedral Square in the Moscow Kremlin. Left without a chief conductor, the musicians united around the orchestra's director, oboist Anatoly Nemudrov, who proved to be an excellent producer. Says Anatoly Nemudrov: "We have had many conductors, among them Leonid Nikolaiev, Vladimir Ponkin, Fedor Glushenko and Eduard Serov. They are all very good conductors. What's more, they understood the peculiarities of performing for the radio". It's not until before recently that the orchestra started working with temporary conductors. Whether it will manage to preserve its high professional level remains to be seen. The orchestra gives many concerts in Russia and abroad. Last autumn together with the Sveshnikov folk choir it made a month-long tour of the United States at the invitation of "Columbia Arts", performing Italian, French and Russian music.
"Last year we gave 42 concerts a season. This year we are planning to give about 50. We have prepared 20 new programs", says Anatoly Nemudrov. "This is very important for the radio. Anything new attracts attention. Even if popular well-known melodies are performed, they should be rearranged. Speaking about this particular season, we will give a series of concerts at the Moscow Philharmonic Society under the title "The Star Of The 21-st Century". It features young musicians, laureates of international competitions. We will also present the so-called "symphony hits". Other programs include little known or forgotten music by Russian and foreign composers".
Over the past few years the orchestra has successfully cooperated with foreign conductors, including Jose Callado (Spain), Andres de Cuardros (Austria), and Klaus Peter Hann (Germany).
This season it will present new programs for radio and television under conductors Fedor Gluschenko and Vladimir Verbitsky (Russia), and two conductors from Germany: Klaus Peter Hann and Johan Strobel.
 
 

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