World literature: How the Steel Was Tempered by Nikolai Alexeevich Ostrovsky. විශ්ව සාහිත්‍ය - වානේ පන්නරය ලැබූ හැටි. - නිකොලායි ඔස්ත්‍රොව්ස්කි.

Nikolai Alexeevich Ostrovsky (Russian: Николай Алексеевич Островский) (29 September 1904 – 22 December 1936) was a Soviet socialist realist writer, who published his works during the Stalin era. He is best known for his renowned novel How the Steel Was Tempered on the Russian Civil War.

Life

Nikolai was born in the village of Viliya (Russian: Вилия) near Ostroh in the Volyn' governorate in Ukraine (Volhynia), then part of the Russian Empire, into a Ukrainian working class family. He attended a parochial school until he was nine and was an honor student. In 1914, his family moved to the railroad town of Shepetivka where Nikolai started working in the kitchens at the railroad station, a timber yard, then becoming a stoker's mate and then an electrician at the local power station. In 1917, at the age of thirteen he became a Bolshevik party activist.[1] At the same period he contracted Ankylosing spondylitis which would later blind and paralyze him.[1]

According to the official biography, when the Germans occupied the town in spring of 1918, Nikolai ran errands for the local Bolshevik underground. In July 1918 he joined the Komsomol and the Red Army in August. He served in the Kotovsky cavalry brigade. In 1920 he was reportedly wounded near Lviv and contracted typhus. He returned to the army only to be wounded again and was demobilized on medical grounds. However, in the autobiography written by Ostrovsky himself he doesn't mention that he had served in the Red Army.

In 1921, he began working in railway workshops of Kiev as an electrician and as the secretary of the local Komsomol.

Suffering from rheumatism and typhus, in August 1922 he was sent to Berdyansk, a resort on the Sea of Azov, for treatment. In October 1922 he was officially declared an invalid; however he continued working. In 1923 he was appointed Commisar of the Red Army's Second Training Battalion and Komsomol secretary for Berezdov in western Ukraine. In January 1924 he went to Izyaslav as the head of Komsomol district committee and in August 1924 he joined the Communist Party. In 1925, with his health rapidly declining, he went to Kharkov for medical treatment and in May 1926 he went to a sanatorium in the Crimea. By December 1926 polyarthritis deprived him of almost all mobility and be became virtually bedridden. In December 1927 Nikolai began a correspondence course at the Sverdlov Communist University in Moscow that he completed it in June 1929. In August, he lost his vision.

Undaunted by his paralysis and blindness, in 1930, he began work on first novel, How the Steel Was Tempered, which became renowned and influential in the Communist world. He also wrote articles for newspapers and journals and spoke often on the radio. In April 1932 he became a member of the Moscow branch of the Association of Proletarian Writers and in June 1934 he joined the Union of Soviet Writers. On October 1, 1935, he was awarded the Order of Lenin.

After suffering for years from paralysis, illness and blindness due to congenital Ankylosing spondylitis as well as complications after the typhus, Nikolai died on 22 December 1936, aged 32. His death did not allow him to complete his second novel, Born of the Storm on the Russian Civil War in Ukraine.

Legacy

His novel How the Steel Was Tempered is considered one the most influential works of Communist literature. In Moscow during the Communist period was built the Ostrovsky Museum and the Ostrovsky Humanitarian centre. The preserves his study and bedroom, while other exhibits include showcases of achievements of disabled people like Nikolai Fenomenov and Ludmilla Rogova. [1]

Quotations

Man's dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world- the fight for the Liberation of Mankind.

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This is a very popular soviet writer who lived in the beginning of the previous century. He actively participated in the Russian Revolution and later wrote a book ‘How the Steel Was Tempered’ (වානේ පන්නරය ලැබූ හැටි. - නිකොලායි ඔස්ත්‍රොව්ස්කි. ) while he was extremely ill. He died in the age of 32 leaving one of a master piece of world literature. We included this YouTube video clip which is in Russian language as there wasn’t any video clip with English subtitles. This video clip is from an old Soviet Film made into his book. This book gives some idea that how hard the imperialists tried to destroy the young Russian revolution and how heroic people fought against those counter revolutionaries.

We regularly include those world Music and Literature as we intend to persuade our blog visitors to enjoy broad spectrum of Music and Literature from around the world. Currently the people are limited to only local, Hindi and Western entertainments.

By Chinthaka.