January 2016 marked the 105th anniversary of the birth of Anatoly Naumovich Rybakov, a Russian and Soviet writer, author of the novel "Children of the Arbat", honorary doctor of Tel Aviv University and laureate of the Stalin Prize.
Childhood and youth
The future writer indicated the place where he was born, Ukrainian Chernihiv. According to other sources, he was born in the village of Derzhanovka in the southwest of the Chernihiv region in early 1911. The grandfather of Anatoly Naumovich, Boris Aronov, supported the family at the expense of the profit that the Muscat shop gave. He - a man of authority - was elected headman of the synagogue.
The writer's parents, Jews Naum Aronov and Dina Rybakova, after the revolution that abolished the Pale of Settlement, moved from the provinces to the capital of the young country of the Soviets and in 1919 settled on the Arbat. Rybakov's father is an engineer who previously served at the landowner's distillery, and in Soviet times continued to work in the industry and became the author of textbooks and monographs on wine production.
Anatoly Aronov went to school not far from home, in the alley between the Arbat and Plotnikov lane. The last 2 years of study were spent at a school on Ostozhenka, where Komsomol members who came from the fronts of the Civil War received their secondary education. After the certificate of maturity was presented, the young man got a job: he worked as a loader at the chemical plant named after him, then he learned to be a driver.
Anatoly Rybakov in exile (left) and after release (right) In 1930, Aronov became a student at the Moscow Transport and Engineering University. And after 3 years, the young man was arrested and, convicted of counter-revolutionary agitation and propaganda, was exiled. After serving his sentence, he wandered around the country: Aronov was forbidden to stay in cities where there was a passport regime. The future author of "Children of the Arbat" visited Bashkiria, Kalinin and Ryazan, where he worked as a driver and mechanic.
Anatoly Rybakov in the army (far right) In 1938, Anatoly Aronov was appointed chief engineer of the regional motor transport enterprise in Ryazan. From there, in 1941, he went to the front. Participated in the defense of the capital and reached Berlin. The future novelist ended the war with the rank of major engineer.
For the courage shown, Aronova had her criminal record canceled, and in 1960 she was rehabilitated. After demobilization, he returned to the capital. Then the creative biography of the prose writer began.
Literature
Rybakov demonstrated his mastery of the word as a student: he was arrested for articles in the institute's wall newspaper. After the war, he resumed his literary activity, but not in the newspaper: in 1948, the story for children and youth "Kortik" appeared, which was made into a film in 1948. The author signed the work, taking the name of the mother.
After 5 years, Anatoly Rybakov wrote a sequel, giving the story the name "Bronze Bird". In the mid-1970s, Dirk was filmed for the second time, filming the film and its sequel.
The stories about the just and brave Kroche appeared in the 1960s and are also dedicated to young people. Directors Genrikh Oganesyan and Grigory Aronov made films based on them.
The writer devoted his first novel to friends and colleagues in the driver's past, about the work, joys and sorrows of people who spend half their lives behind the steering wheel. The novel was called "Drivers" and in 1951 was awarded the State Prize.
The writer had a huge army of admirers who were looking forward to new works from Rybakov. The novels "Ekaterina Voronina" and "Summer in Sosnyaki" are about ordinary people, about the difficult formation in the post-war years, about work and valor.
In the mid-1970s, Anatoly Rybakov gave admirers of talent a sequel to the first two stories - "The Shot", according to which director Valery Rubinchik made a wonderful adventure film "The Last Summer of Childhood".
Three years later, in 1978, a novel about a Jewish family appeared. The period of life captured by the writer is 1910-1940. The described events take place in a provincial Ukrainian town populated by people of different nationalities. A novel about love, war, the tragedy of the Holocaust, courage and humanity was released under the title "Heavy Sand".
In 2008, father and son, directors Anton and Dmitry Barshchevsky, filmed a television series of the same name, based on Rybakov's book.
The appeal to the Jewish theme became a sensation in the cultural environment of the country, where before (the novel was published by the October magazine) no one had written so frankly about the life and troubles of Jews. The history of the ramified Rakhlenko-Ivanovsky family was based on documentary materials obtained by the prose writer in the places where Jews were exterminated by the Nazis during the years of occupation.
In 1987, the writer published the novel Children of the Arbat, written in the 1960s, which is called the pearl of Rybakov's work. A year later, the sequel "Thirty-fifth and Other Years" was published, and then two more books of the tetralogy - "Fear" and "Ashes and Ashes".
A novel about young people who grew up on the Moscow Arbat is the first story about the fate of girls and boys who grew up in a totalitarian era.
In the 2000s, based on the novel by Rybakov, he filmed the drama series of the same name "Children of the Arbat", in the main roles of which the audience saw,. The author introduced the events of the biography into the tetralogy.
In "Children of the Arbat" the novelist gave a picture-section of all strata of society - students, intellectuals, workers, employees of the NKVD, exiles and convicts. The writer tried to answer the question about the origin of totalitarianism, dictatorship and the repressive apparatus of the tyrant, about the roots and development of Stalinism in the country of the Soviets.
Personal life
Rybakov had three marriages in his life. The writer lived with his first wife Anastasia Tysyachnikova for 7 years. In 1940, his wife gave birth to their first child, Alexander. Anastasia is an accountant by profession. The union collapsed in 1946. The daughter of Alexander's son and the granddaughter of Anatoly Naumovich, Maria Rybakova is a prose writer.
For the second time, Anatoly Rybakov took his colleague, the writer Maya Davydova, to the registry office. She is the author of novels that are signed with a creative pseudonym. In 1960, the son Alexei Aronov was born in the family, who followed in his father's footsteps and, taking the pseudonym Alexei Makushinsky, wrote poetry and prose. Alexei immigrated to Germany in the early 1990s and works as a university lecturer in Mainz.
Anatoly Rybakov and his third wife Tatyana But the second marriage was short-lived. After breaking up with Davydova, Anatoly Rybakov in the late 1970s married Tatyana Belenkaya, the daughter of psychiatrist Mark Belenky, the right hand of the Minister of Trade, who was shot in 1938. For Tatyana Markovna, marriage with Rybakov is the second: the first husband was the poet Yevgeny Vinokurov, to whom she gave birth to a daughter, Irina.
After the death of the writer, the widow wrote a memoir about her husband, calling the book "Happy you, Tanya ...", which hit the shelves of bookstores in 2005.
Death
The writer's heart stopped on a December night in 1998. 6 months before the death of Anatoly Rybakov, he was operated on in a New York clinic, but heart surgery extended the life of the 87-year-old writer by only six months.
Anatoly Naumovich died in his sleep, the cause of death was surgical complications after the operation.
The writer died in America, but his body was transported to his homeland. The last shelter of Rybakov was the Moscow Kuntsevo cemetery.
Bibliography
- 1948 - Dirk
- 1950 - Drivers
- 1955 - "Ekaterina Voronina"
- 1956 - "Bronze Bird"
- 1960 - "The Adventures of Krosh"
- 1966 - "Vacation Krosh"
- 1970 - "Unknown Soldier"
- 1975 - "Shot"
- 1964 - "Summer in the Pine"
- 1978 - "Heavy Sand"
- 1982 - "Children of the Arbat"
- 1988 - "The thirty-fifth and other years (Fear), book one"
- 1990 - "Fear, (Thirty-fifth and other years) book two"
- 1994 - Dust and Ashes
- 1997 - "Remembrance novel (My XX century)"
This very interesting person - a writer and public figure - lived in a difficult time. We can say that he repeated the fate of the idol of more than one generation, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. His books have become a symbol of an entire era, and even now, with the passage of time, they have not lost either their novelty or literary value.
Family and childhood of Anatoly Rybakov
The biography of the future writer began in the village of Derzhanovka, Chernihiv province (now it is the territory of Ukraine). He was born on January 11, 1911 in the family of an engineer. The surname of Anatoly's father was Aronov, and the mother's surname was Rybakov. In his autobiography, he always indicated the city of Chernihiv. Perhaps Rybakov was embarrassed by his rural origin.
In adulthood, having already become a writer, Anatoly Naumovich took his mother's surname as a creative pseudonym, and then forever. Rybakov's father worked at a distillery, and his grandfather was a headman in the synagogue. After the abolition of the Pale of Settlement, the boy's parents moved to Moscow. It happened in 1919. They lived on the Arbat, in the same house that would later be described in the writer's works. He studied at the Hvorostov gymnasium, and completed his education at a special experimental school-commune in Moscow, where the best teachers of that time taught.
Youth
After graduation, the boy went to work at the Dorogomilovsky chemical plant. And in 1930 he entered the Moscow Transport and Economic Institute. But the biography of Anatoly Rybakov changed suddenly and terribly three years later. As a student, he was arrested for counter-revolutionary agitation and propaganda. True, at that time he received not such a long term - three years of exile. Freed, Anatoly could not work in big cities where there was a passport regime. Therefore, he had to be hired either as a locksmith, or as a driver, or as a loader in the provinces of Russia - Ryazan, Tver, as well as in Tatarstan and Bashkiria. Perhaps that is why he did not expect further arrests. He never filled out questionnaires and seemed to become invisible to the state security agencies.
War and the beginning of creative activity
The biography of Anatoly Rybakov also has army pages. With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he was called up. He served mainly in automotive units and saw the most famous battles - from the defense of Moscow to the storming of Berlin. He received the rank of Major Engineer Guards, and his criminal record was expunged for military merit.
During the Khrushchev thaw in 1960, Anatoly Rybakov was fully rehabilitated. But back in 1946, after demobilization, he returned to Moscow and began to try himself in the literary genre. The first literary successes were stories written for young people.
Official creativity in the USSR
The biography of the writer Anatoly Rybakov began in 1948. Then his first story "Kortik" was published. It was her that he signed with a pseudonym - the name of his mother. Since then, the writer has gone down in history not like Aronov. From now on, he became Anatoly Naumovich Rybakov. His biography in the field of literature had, as it were, a double bottom. He can be considered an semi-official writer, since, for example, he received the State Prize of the Soviet Union back in 1951 for the not very artistically remarkable, but ideologically correct novel “Drivers”. Although there was something in it from Anatoly's personal experience.
Interestingly, according to rumors, Stalin recommended him for the award, who liked the novel. True, the author was either included in the list of applicants, or thrown out as a counter-revolutionary. But in the end, they left. But his adventurous stories, such as the continuation of "Dagger" "The Bronze Bird" or a series about the adventures and holidays of Krosh, were very popular among the youth of the sixties. Mysteries, romance with a boyish pioneer flavor, old artifacts - all this was new and beckoned with freshness.
In 1970, the writer's landmark novel The Unknown Soldier was published, and in 1978 Heavy Sand. He already looked dissonant, because he talked about the plight of the Jewish family, and even against the backdrop of the then Soviet anti-Semitism.
What was written on the table
But it turned out that the biography of Anatoly Naumovich Rybakov is not so simple. Since the sixties of the twentieth century, he has been secretly writing a novel based on memories of the life of ordinary people in a Moscow communal apartment at the very beginning of the Stalinist repressions. Tvardovsky wanted to publish it as soon as he read it. But censorship did not miss the novel. As soon as perestroika began, in 1987 Rybakov published this book under the already world-famous title Children of the Arbat. The work had the effect of an exploding bomb. Together with Abuladze's film "Repentance", it became a symbol of perestroika. The confrontation between Sasha Pankratov, the alter ego of the writer, and Joseph Stalin, the ruler for whom only power matters, but not human lives, was probably the best that has been written on this topic.
The continuation of the novel was the trilogy "Thirty-fifth and other years", which tells about what happened later with the children of the Arbat - the heroes of the first book. The trilogy includes the novel "Fear", published in 1990, and "Ashes and Ashes", published in 1994. It is believed that the cycle of novels about the children of the Arbat is the peak of Anatoly Rybakov's work. After that, in 1997, he published only a memoir - an autobiographical novel with documentary memories.
last years of life
With books about Stalin's repressions and the period of the Great Terror, Anatoly Rybakov, whose brief biography is described above, came to worldwide fame. His works began to be translated into other languages and were published in 52 countries around the world. The writer becomes an active public figure and even - until 1991 - heads the Soviet PEN Center. Rybakov's identity was the feeling of a Russian Soviet Jew. He was a free and independent person.
But at the same time, I felt like a part of the Jewish people. In the mid-nineties, after the collapse of the USSR, Rybakov fell seriously ill. To have the operation, he leaves for the United States. But it's too late. December 23, 1998 Anatoly Rybakov dies in a New York hospital. He was buried in Moscow at the Kuntsevo cemetery. Based on the novels "Children of the Arbat" and "Heavy Sand", television series were filmed after the death of the writer in the 2000s.
Biography of Anatoly Rybakov: briefly about the writer's family
The writer's wife was no less famous woman - Tatyana Vinokurova, daughter of the former people's commissar of the food industry Mikoyan, who was both an author and a victim of Stalinist repressions. For a long time she was the editor of the magazine "Krugozor". One of Anatoly's two sons, Alexei, also became a writer. He was published in Russia under the pseudonym Makushinsky, and now lives in Germany in the city of Mainz and works at the university there at the Department of Slavic Studies. The eldest son of the writer died in 1994 during the life of his father. His daughter and granddaughter of Anatoly Rybakov Maria inherited the family gift for writing. She is the author of popular novels such as The Brotherhood of Losers and others.
(real name Aronov, Rybakov - mother's surname) was born on January 14 (January 1, according to the old style), 1911 in the city of Chernigov (Ukraine) in the family of an engineer.
In 1919, the family moved to Moscow and settled on the Arbat, in house number 51, later described by Rybakov in stories and novels. Anatoly Rybakov studied at the former Hvorostov gymnasium in Krivoarbatsky Lane. He graduated from the eighth and ninth grades (then there were nine-year-olds) at the Moscow Experimental Commune School (MOPShK), where the best teachers of that time taught.
After leaving school, Anatoly Rybakov worked at the Dorogomilovsky chemical plant as a loader, then as a driver. In 1930, he entered the road department of the Moscow Transport and Economic Institute.
On November 5, 1933, student Rybakov was arrested and sentenced to three years of exile under Article 58-10 - counter-revolutionary agitation and propaganda. At the end of the exile, not having the right to live in cities with a passport regime, Rybakov wandered around the country, worked as a driver, mechanic, worked at the transport enterprises of Bashkiria, Kalinin (now Tver), Ryazan.
Shortly before the war, he lived in Ryazan, where he met his first wife, an accountant by profession - Anastasia Alekseevna Tysyachnikova, in October 1940 their son Alexander was born.
In 1941 Anatoly Rybakov was drafted into the army. From November 1941 to 1946 he served in the automotive units, participated in battles on various fronts, from the defense of Moscow to the storming of Berlin. He finished the war with the rank of Guards Major Engineer, holding the post of head of the auto service of the 4th Guards Rifle Corps. "For distinction in battles with the Nazi invaders" Rybakov was recognized as having no criminal record, and in 1960 he was fully rehabilitated.
Demobilized in 1946, Anatoly Naumovich returned to Moscow. Then he began his literary activity, began to write adventure stories for youth. His first story "Dagger" was published in 1948, in 1956 its continuation was published - the story "The Bronze Bird", and in 1975 - the third and final part of the trilogy - "Shot".
He is the author of the trilogy "The Adventures of Krosh", the novels "Drivers" (1950), "Ekaterina Voronina" (1955), "Summer in the Pine" (1974). In 1978, the novel "Heavy Sand" was published, in 1987 - the novel "Children of the Arbat", written back in the 1960s, the continuation of which "Thirty-fifth and Other Years" was published in 1989.
In 1990, the novel "Fear" was published, and in 1994 - "Ashes and Ashes". In 1995, the collected works of Anatoly Rybakov were published in seven volumes, and two years later, the autobiographical "Roman-Memories" was published.
Based on the writer's books, films and television films have been staged. In 1957, his novel "Ekaterina Voronina" was filmed, in 2005 the television series "Children of the Arbat" was released, in 2008 - the television series "Heavy Sand". According to his scripts, the novels "Kortik" (1954), "The Adventures of Krosh" (1961), "The Bronze Bird" (1973), "The Last Summer of Childhood" (1974) were filmed, the series "Unknown Soldier" (1984) was filmed.
In the 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Anatoly Rybakov, not accepting the changes that had taken place in the country, left for the United States, but he did not emigrate. He came to his homeland every year for actually 4-5 months, was aware of everything that was happening here, took part in the literary and social life of Russia.
From 1989 to 1991 Anatoly Rybakov was President of the Soviet PEN Center, since September 1991 - Honorary President of the Russian PEN Center.
Since 1991, he has served as Secretary of the Board of the Writers' Union of the USSR.
Rybakov was an honorary doctor of philosophy from Tel Aviv University (1991).
He was awarded the Orders of the Patriotic War I and II degrees, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of Friendship of Peoples. He was a laureate of the State Prize of the USSR (1951), the State Prize of the RSFSR (1973).
Anatoly Rybakov died on December 23, 1998 in New York. Six months earlier, he had undergone heart surgery. He was buried on January 6, 1999 in Moscow at the Novo-Kuntsevo cemetery.
In 1978 Anatoly Rybakov married for the third time. His wife was Tatyana Markovna Vinokurova-Rybakova (nee Belenkaya), with whom he lived until the end of his life. She passed away in 2008.
He had two sons: from his first marriage - Alexander (1940-1994), from whom he had a granddaughter - Maria Rybakova (born 1973), writer, author of the novels "Anna Grom and Her Ghost", "The Brotherhood of the Losers" and the collection "The Secret".
From the second marriage - Alexei Makushinsky (born 1960), who took the surname of his mother, according to other sources - the surname of his maternal grandmother. Poet, prose writer and essayist, professor at the University of Mainz (Germany).
In 2006, the well-known documentary filmmaker Marina Goldovskaya made a film-portrait "Anatoly Rybakov. Afterword", dedicated to the life and work of the writer.
Anatoly Naumovich Rybakov (real name Aronov) was born January 1 (14), 1911 in Chernigov in the family of an engineer, since 1919 lived in Moscow.
He studied at the former Khvostovsky gymnasium in Krivoarbatsky lane. He graduated from the eighth and ninth grades at the Moscow Experimental Commune School (abbreviated as MOPSHK) in 2nd Obydensky Lane on Ostozhenka. The school arose as a commune of Komsomol members who returned from the fronts of the Civil War. After leaving school, he worked at the Dorogomilovsky chemical plant as a loader, then as a driver.
After graduation in 1930 entered the Transport Engineering Institute. Arrested in 1933 on charges of counter-revolutionary propaganda (Article 58-10), was exiled for 3 years to Siberia. After serving his sentence, he was deprived of the right to live in large cities, lived and worked in Ufa, Kalinin, Ryazan, etc. Drafted into the army at the beginning of World War II, he fought as a private, then received an officer rank, in 1960 his conviction was expunged.
Demobilized in 1946, starts work on the children's adventure story "Kortik" ( 1948 ), which takes place during the years of the Civil War and the New Economic Policy; its continuation was the story "The Bronze Bird" ( 1956 ). Built on a sharp plot, saturated with romance, Rybakov's books were reprinted many times. The trilogy is also addressed to the youth, which includes the stories "The Adventures of Krosh" ( 1960 ), "Krosh's Vacation" ( 1966 ) and "Unknown Soldier" ( 1970 ). Leading the story on behalf of the hero, who is turning from a teenager into a young man before the eyes of the reader, Rybakov shows how the process of character formation proceeds, moral principles are developed, and a place in life is determined. Rybakov's stories are characterized by the intensity of plot development, lightness of style, and the writer's warm sympathy for his young heroes.
In the State Prize-winning novel Drivers ( 1950 ) the writer refers to the image of people close to him in the former profession of an automotive engineer. Written according to the canons of a "production" novel, Rybakov's book attracts most of all with meticulous knowledge, an accurate depiction of the details of the life of people working at a motor transport enterprise: it is on this - labor - sphere that the author's interest is entirely focused. Rybakov's books Ekaterina Voronina, which were soon written, also turned out to be typically "industrial" novels ( 1955 ) and "Summer in Sosnyaki" ( 1964 ): and here the problems that arise in a team of people working in a large enterprise are central. In an effort to enlarge the scale of the narrative, Rybakov goes beyond the story of production: in the writer's novels, a persistent desire is revealed to affirm the idea of a person's responsibility to himself and others for everything that happens in life.
Rybakov made a new step for himself with the novel "Heavy Sand" ( 1979 ): the time frames and the field of depiction have expanded widely, the fates of numerous characters turned out to be associated with the movement of history. While striving for the authenticity of the narrative, Rybakov also writes passionately, the pain determines the tone of the novel. The beginning of the history of the Jewish family, which is told in the novel, dates back to 1910, and this story ends in 1943, which is terrible for its members. Rybakov.
One of the most notable events in the literature of the late 1980s was Rybakov's novel "Children of the Arbat": its idea dates back to the late 1950s, and work on it continued for a long time. Novy Mir magazine announced the novel in 1967, and "October" - in 1979, but it was first published only in 1987. The events described here were continued in the novel "Thirty-fifth and other years" ( 1988 ), the second book of which was the novel "Fear" ( 1990 ), and the third - the novel "Ashes and Ashes" ( 1994 ). These multifaceted psychological novels give a vivid picture of Soviet society in the era of Stalinist repressions that are beginning to spread, engulfing all layers: people of different generations living in different parts of the country find themselves under the ever-increasing terrible oppression of an inhuman dictatorship.
The writer not only talks about the events, the terrible power of which is increasingly felt by the characters of his narrative, but also seeks to explore the psychology of the society of the 1930s, where the fear that settled deeper and deeper in the souls of people only gradually replaced their belief in the expediency of what was happening.
Accurately reproducing the signs of the times, Rybakov now comes to an artistic understanding of the process of confrontation between different ideas about the paths of historical development. One of the first writers made readers think about the validity of the seemingly unshakable principle of the superiority of the team's point of view over the individual: the title of one of the parts of the trilogy - "Fear" - defines the feeling that was diligently implanted in Soviet society at that time, which makes it possible to make a person submissive. Rybakov was also one of the first to attempt to explain the character of Stalin and the reasons that for several decades allowed millions of people, against all odds, to believe in the wisdom of the leader and the justice of his state policy, which led to the destruction of millions of Soviet citizens. Rybakov shows how consistently, without stopping at anything, a dictator strengthens his power, resolutely suppressing any manifestation of dissent. But the novel also talks about how an understanding of the enormity of what is happening is maturing in people, an understanding of the true - tragic - meaning of the processes in the life of society, guided by the cruel hand of the leader.
From 1989 to 1991 Anatoly Rybakov was the president of the Soviet PEN Center, since September 1991- Honorary President of the Russian PEN Center. Since 1991 served as Secretary of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR. Honorary Doctor of Philosophy from Tel Aviv University ( 1991 ).
A. N. Rybakov(Aronov) was born on January 1 (14), 1911 in Chernigov into a Jewish family of engineer Naum Borisovich Aronov and his wife Dina Abramovna Rybakova.
From 1919 he lived in Moscow, on the Arbat, 51. He studied at the former Khvostovskaya gymnasium in Krivoarbatsky lane. Yuri Dombrovsky studied at the same school and at the same time. He graduated from the eighth and ninth grades at the Moscow Experimental Commune School (abbreviated MOPSHK) in 2nd Obydensky Lane on Ostozhenka. The school arose as a commune of Komsomol members who returned from the fronts of the civil war.
After leaving school, he worked at the Dorogomilovsky chemical plant, as a loader, then as a driver.
In 1930 he entered the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers.
On November 5, 1933, he was arrested and by a special meeting of the OGPU collegium was sentenced to three years of exile under Article 58-10 (Counter-revolutionary agitation and propaganda). At the end of the exile, not having the right to live in cities with a passport regime, he wandered around Russia. Worked where it is not necessary to fill out questionnaires. From 1938 to November 1941 he worked as the chief engineer of the Ryazan Regional Motor Transport Administration.
From November 1941 to 1946 he served in the Soviet army in the automobile units. Participated in battles on various fronts, from the defense of Moscow to the storming of Berlin. The last position was the head of the auto service of the 4th Guards Rifle Corps, the rank was Major Engineer. "For distinction in battles with the Nazi invaders" recognized as having no criminal record.
In 1960 he was completely rehabilitated.
A. N. Rybakov died on December 23, 1998 in New York. He was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery in Moscow.
Poet, prose writer and essayist Alexei Makushinsky is the son of Anatoly Rybakov. Writer Maria Rybakova - granddaughter of A. N. Rybakov
Anatoly Rybakov was president of the Soviet PEN Center (1989-1991), secretary of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR (since 1991). PhD from Tel Aviv University.
With difficulty due to the unusual subject matter, the novel Heavy Sand (1978), which made its way into the Soviet press and immediately brought immense popularity to Rybakov, tells about the life of a Jewish family in the 1910-1940s in one of the multinational towns of Western Ukraine, decades later, about the tragedy of the "Holocaust" and the courage of the Resistance. This pinnacle work of the writer combined all the colors of his artistic palette, adding to them philosophy, craving for historical analysis and mystical symbolism (the image of the main character, beautiful lover, then wife and mother Rachel on the last pages is like a semi-real personification of the anger and revenge of the Jewish people).
Based on Rybakov's personal experiences, the novel Children of the Arbat (1987) and its continuation of the trilogy Thirty-Fifth and Other Years (book 1, 1988; book 2 - Fear, 1990; book 3 - Dust and Ashes, 1994) recreates the fate of the generation 1930- 1990s, seeking to reveal the mechanism of totalitarian power. Among the writer's other works are the story The Unknown Soldier (1970) and the autobiographical Novel-Memoirs (1997). Anatoly Rybakov is a laureate of the State Prizes of the USSR and the RSFSR.
