Translated material
Seeker Lada
The writer Vasily Belov, one of the leading prose writers of a powerful galaxy of "rustic", left
On December 4, in the village of Timonikha, Vologda province, Vasily Ivanovich Belov, the author of the “usual business” (1966), “Plotnitsky Stories” (1968), Lada (1982), one of the leading prose writers of a powerful galaxy of “villagers”, died in the 81st year of life.
In the late 1960s, the whole USSR read “The usual business”-a laconic story about a large village underwear, Pahara and sufferer of the Russian North Ivan Africanine, about his wife Katerina, worked out to death, about the fierce experience of Soviet and military years, which crushed a strong and rich northern village, arranged by her life. Among the heroes of the "rustic prose" Ivan Afrikanych Belov was perhaps the most meek and unrequited. The lyricist who dreams of the return of the former patriarchal ideal lurked in the soul of the author - and therefore, probably, Belov acted as an archaeologist of the former customs, holidays, crafts of northern peasant Rus', writing a book with a capacious name “Lad” about them. Perhaps that is why he wrote so hard, with such horror about the collapse of peasant civilization, about “new citizens”, funny and well-fed marginals in the 1970s-1980s, in the stories of the cycle “Education on Dr. Spock”.
His novel “The Eve” became a fresco of collectivization. In 1989, at the II Congress of People's Deputies in Moscow, Belov demanded to recognize collectivization by the form of genocide. In the 1990s, when the worst forecasts of “Education of Dr. Spock” came true - Vasily Belov was increasingly moving away from public life.
... In the village of Timonikh (where he himself was born, where his early and best books took place) Vasily Belov restored the old wooden church at his own expense. New generations of fellow villagers plundered and desecrated it. This was the cause of a stroke, from the consequences of which the writer died.
The New Gazeta expresses condolences to the family, friends and readers of Vasily Belov.