Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov

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Sergei Tretyakov

Sergei Tretyakov (Russian:. Сергей Михайлович Третьяков, scientific transliteration Sergei Mihajlovic Tret'âkov ; June 8 * . Jul / 20th June  1892 . Greg in Goldingen , Courland Governorate ; † 10. September 1937 ) was a Soviet writer and exponent of Russian futurism . His most important works include the portraits of German avant-garde artists People at a Stake , the life story of the Chinese student Den Schi-Chua , the play Brülle China!as well as the factography field gentlemen. The struggle for a collective farm through the establishment of the "Communist lighthouse" kolkhoz.

As a theorist and practitioner, Tretyakov was in active exchange with Sergei Eisenstein , Wladimir Majakowski , Bertolt Brecht and other exponents of the avant-garde art of the 1920s and 1930s. Walter Benjamin mentioned him as an example in his lecture The Author as Producer (1934).

In 1937 Tretyakov fell victim to the Great Terror in the Soviet Union.

Life

Sergei Tretyakov's life is closely linked to the history of the Soviet Union . He experienced the Russian Revolution as an active avant-garde artist and helped shape the development of revolutionary art as a commentator and collaborator on numerous committees until the mid-1930s. He changed whereabouts and tasks so often that a detailed representation would go beyond the scope of an article. Tretyakov found his death in Stalinist captivity. The representations of his life available in German focus almost exclusively on his artistic and agitational activity.

Childhood, youth and the beginnings of journalism

Sergei Tretyakov was born on June 21, 1892 in Goldingen in Courland (today Kuldīga, Latvia). His father Mikhail Konstantinowitsch Tretyakov was a math teacher. He and his wife Elfrida Emmanuilowna Meller had eight children, Sergei being the eldest of them. Elfrida Meller came from a German-Dutch family.

Tretyakov attended high school in Riga , which he graduated with a gold medal in 1913. He excelled as a pianist and played Frédéric Chopin , Sergei Rachmaninow and Alexander Scriabin at an early age . From 1913 to 1916 Tretyakov studied at the Law Faculty of Moscow University. During this time he joined the Social Revolutionaries . The acquaintance with Vsevolod Meyerhold and Wladimir Mayakowski, with whom he published his first ego-futuristic texts, became particularly significant .

At the time of the Russian Revolution , Tretyakov lived in Nikolayevsk , where he had moved with his family.

Years of civil war

Tretyakov took an active part in the civil war after the revolution and came to Vladivostok at the side of Admiral Kolchak . There he joined the Bolsheviks . On 4th / 5th In August 1920 he was an eyewitness to the Japanese attack on the city. In the article Where from and where to? He wrote about the poem that he wrote based on this experience . Perspectives of Futurism : “It was my first poem that went out into the street, distorted with rage, on the day of great anger. My career as a revolutionary poet dates from this poem. "

Because Tretyakov wanted to put his entire life at the service of the revolution, not just his writing, he was always looking for new tasks in collective projects, associations, in educational work, in work for newspapers, theater and film. In addition, he made numerous trips.

In Vladivostok and later in Chita Tretyakov was Minister of Education of the Far Eastern Republic (1921-1922). The first short stays in China also fall in these years. In the same years he is said to have been chairman of the Association for Art and Literature of the Primorye Region. For his work more important was the membership in the futuristic artist group around the magazine Tvichestwo . He also organized five large futurist meetings and edited the Biryutsch magazine .

Avant-garde in Moscow

The chroniclers are not entirely in agreement about Tretyakov's relationship to the proletarian movement . Back in Moscow, Tretyakov is said to have been a member of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Proletkult from 1922 to 1923. Later, however, he wrote sharp criticisms against this artistic direction, especially against the intention to develop “pure” proletarian art independent of the party.

Tretyakov is said to have lived with actors, directors and musicians in a dormitory for a while. He developed the concept of an artistically disciplined community life. These ideas are also expressed in his understanding of theater work, which he uses in agitation pieces - u. a. in collaboration with Sergei Eisenstein - implemented.

In 1923 the artist group and the eponymous magazine Linke Front der Kunst (LEF) are founded, with Vladimir Mayakovsky being the leading figure and Tretyakov a member. The group criticizes the manifestations of the NEP (New Economic Policy) in the field of everyday living conditions and polemics against the groups that followed the proletarian cult. It exists until 1925, but is hardly known to the general public.

China

In 1924 Tretyakov traveled to China again and worked as a professor of Russian literature at Peking University until 1925 . He also works as a China correspondent for Pravda . During this time he gained access to the material for two of his most successful works: the drama Brülle China! and the life story of the Chinese students Den Schi-Chua . In the magazine Internationale Literatur Tretyakov wrote in 1932 (No. 4/5) about his time in China:

“The newspaper wages the fight against everything exotic, apparently incomprehensible, irrational, inexplicable, against the concealment of the simplest and most necessary human relationships with mysterious flourishes. I fought such a struggle against the exotic particularly persistently in 1924-25 while working as a professor at Beijing National University. During this time I saw the common mendaciousness of all those exciting, romantic novels about China (with porcelain princesses in silk robes and treacherous poisoners from terrifying sects) particularly blatantly. The fairy tale of the mysterious people who were supposed to be more dangerous than a tiger and whose blood could not mix with the blood of a white man was purposely circulated in order to maintain the line between conqueror and slave. The newspaper, on the other hand, taught me to value facts and to use them for literary production. "

Literature of Facts and Travel

After returning from Beijing, Tretyakov took on official functions and concrete work in the field of film. He was involved in the making of the famous film Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein.

In 1927, the LEF magazine was reissued under the name Nowy LEF . Until 1928 or 1929, it served as a forum for discussions between different artistic directions. Central to Tretyakov was the elaboration of the concept of production art , the “ Literatura fakta ” with its processes of film, photography, photo montage and, in general, the creative work with documented facts. Tretyakov again worked with Vladimir Mayakovsky at the Nowy LEF and became editor-in-chief of the magazine after he left. Mayakovsky committed suicide in 1930. Tretyakov traveled to various rural areas of the Soviet Union, mostly on an official assignment, and produced reports, interviews, film scenarios and plays. The trips to Svaneti , the Tuvinian People's Republic and the Angara - Yenisei region have left their mark on his work .

Another field of engagement was the organization and training of proletarian writers, amateur artists and theater groups. Tretyakov called the amateur photographers, reporters and correspondents "factographers", whose qualification he regarded as an important task.

Writers in the collective farms!

In 1928 or 1929 Tretyakov followed the official call for “Writers in the Collective Farms !”. After his first trips and impressions, he made the decision that the role of the writer in a kolkhoz could not only consist of writing about the life of the workers. He began to take an active part in collective farm life and became a member of a collective farm combine in the Stavropol region . There he worked during two stays of several months as an instructor, education officer and editor of the Kombinatszeitung. The greatest “factography” he wrote, the book Feld-Herren, is based on this experience . The struggle for a collective farm .

International cooperation

After his involvement in collectivized agriculture, Tretyakov took on positions in international artistic cooperation. In 1933 he became editor of the journal Internationale Literatur . In the leadership of the Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers' Union, he campaigned for international cooperation.

From December 1930 to October 1931 Tretyakov himself stayed in Germany and came into intensive contact with the exponents of avant-garde German literature and art, whom he made known in Russia through translations and reports. They included Bertolt Brecht , John Heartfield , Hanns Eisler , Oskar Maria Graf and Johannes Becher . Tretyakov later acted as a tour guide for German authors visiting the Soviet Union. In one of his last works before his arrest, Tretyakov reported on a trip through Czechoslovakia .

Mass effective than the reports of anti-fascist intellectuals in Germany, the reports of which were Cheliuskin - expedition Tretyakov served as "editor-designer". The research ship sank in 1933 while trying to explore a trade route through the polar sea. The crew lived on an ice floe for several weeks and were then rescued. This action was celebrated as an example of the technical means of the Soviet Union. Newsreels and newspapers reported continuously over the bailout and the "community life" that the Tscheljuskin- had led the team on the ice.

Arrest and death

On July 25, 1937, the NKVD arrested Tretyakov as part of an extensive cleanup campaign . A military court sentenced him to death on September 10, 1937 in a secret trial as a "Japanese spy". Tretyakov was shot dead the same day . What is certain is that Tretyakov, like many pioneers of revolutionary art, fell victim to the so-called "internal purges" in the era of Joseph Stalin . In art, a romanticizing version of socialist realism had supplanted the positions of the futurists. Rehabilitation was only possible after the thaw after Nikita Khrushchev took office .

Marriage and rehabilitation

In 1919 Tretyakov met Olga Viktorovna Gomolitskaya. He married her that same year and adopted her daughter Tatiana. Olga Viktorovna Tretyakova was also arrested during the Great Terror and sentenced to camp imprisonment. At her instigation, he was rehabilitated by the Soviet Military College on February 29, 1956.

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Dramas

From 1921 to 1924 Tretyakov wrote agitation pieces in the context of the First Labor Theater of the Proletkult, which was led by Sergei Eisenstein. He belonged to the avant-garde of the revolutionary theater. Pieces from this period are:

  • The earth rears, Moscow 1923
  • The sage, Moscow 1923 (an Ostrowski adaptation)
  • Are you listening, Moscow, Moscow 1923, about the Hamburg uprising of 1923
  • Gas masks , Moscow 1924. Later filmed.
  • I want to have a child, Moscow around 1924

It is typical for these pieces that the game was interrupted during the performance in order to provoke reactions from the audience. In some performances there were violent arguments because the audience and extras actively intervened in the fighting. After his stay in Beijing, Tretyakov wrote his most successful piece:

  • Roar China !, Moscow 1926

The piece takes up an incident that happened in the city of Wan Süan in the summer of 1926 . The director of an American export company tries to take advantage of a Chinese skipper during a boat trip and to throw him overboard. Instead, he is thrown overboard himself and drowns. English troops demand that the city execute the guilty boatman or two men from the boatmen's guild of Wan Suan. This demand is not accepted and an English gunboat bombed the city. At the end of the piece the skippers shout: “You can shoot! ... I will fall - ten will rise. Ten will fall - a hundred will rise! "The piece ends with:" Out of our China! ... Roar, China! "

Wsewolod Meyerhold directed the drama in Moscow, followed by performances in Japan, England, Poland, the USA and Germany (Meyerhold made a guest appearance with the production in Berlin in April 1930). Léo Lania , an employee of Erwin Piscator, edited it for the German stages . In 1930 the piece was performed in China with great success.

Poems

  • Brazen break, Vladivostok 1919

These poems come from the beginning of Tretyakov's literary activity. Like his futuristic colleague Velimir Khlebnikov , he was concerned with the Russo-Japanese War , but also with the prime motif of futurism : life in the big cities with their steel structures, railways, automobiles and factories. Tretyakov also distinguished himself from an early age with a keen eye for the little things of everyday life.

  • Jasnych, Tschita 1922
  • Overall, Moscow 1924
  • Roar China !, Moscow 1926
  • Retschewik, Moscow / Leningrad 1929

Prose (selection)

  • Svaneti. Sketches from the book In the Alleys of the Mountains , Moscow 1928
  • After Tannu-Tuva, Moscow 1930
  • The challenge. Kolkhoss sketches, Moscow 1930
  • Den Schi-Chua - organic interview. Moscow 1930
  • A Month in the Country (June to July 1930): Operational Sketches, Moscow 1931
  • Field gentlemen. The struggle for a collective farm, German 1931
  • The country A – J. Sketches, Moscow 1932
  • A thousand and one working days, Moscow 1934
  • Chelyuskin. A country saves its sons, Moscow 1934
  • People at a funeral pyre. Literary portraits, Moscow 1936
  • Monograph John Heartfield, Moscow 1936
  • Crossroads. 5 weeks in Czechoslovakia, Moscow 1937

Theoretical and programmatic writings (small selection)

  • From where and where Perspektiven des Futurismus, original in LEF, 1923, pp. 6-7. German in: Faces of the avant-garde. 1985, pp. 38-53.
  • The art in the revolution and the revolution in art, original in Gorn, 1923. German in: The work of the writer. 1972, pp. 7-14.
  • The biography of the thing, original in Literatura fakta, 1929. German in: The work of the writer. 1972, pp. 81-85.
  • The writer and the socialist village. Original in: Das neue Russland 7th vol., H. 2/3, 1931. German in: The work of the writer. 1972, pp. 117-134.
  • Speech in Moscow 1934. German in: Faces of the avant-garde. 1985, pp. 38-53.

References

  • Chronicle of the life and work of Fritz Mierau , in: Tretjakow, Sergej. Faces of the avant-garde. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1985, pp. 459-463.
  • Epilogue to the life and work of Heiner Boehncke , in: Tretjakow, Sergej. The writer's work. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1972, pp. 188-213.

Works in German translation

  • Field gentlemen. The struggle for a collective farm. Berlin: Malik-Verlag, 1931.
  • A thousand and one working days. Zurich: Ring, 1935.
  • The writer's work. Articles, reports, portraits. Edited by Heiner Boehncke. Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1972.
  • Poetry, drama, prose. Leipzig: Reclam, 1972.
  • Faces of the avant-garde. Portraits, essays, letters. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1985.
  • The Shi-Chua. A young Chinese tells his life. Berlin: Malik-Verlag, 1988. (Reprint of the first edition from 1932)
  • I want a child! Edited by Tatjana Hofmann and Eduard Jan Ditschek. Volume 1: Two versions of the piece and a film libretto. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2019.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Simone Barck: “Assured you are innocent?” In: Wladislaw Hedeler (Ed.): Stalinscher Terror 1934–41. A research balance sheet. Basisdruck, Berlin 2002, ISBN 978-3-86163-127-9 , p. 203
personal data
SURNAME Tretyakov, Sergei Michailowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tretyakov, Sergej Michajlovic; Третьяков, Сергей Михайлович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION soviet writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Goldingen , today Latvia
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1937