Early years and the Civil War
Alexander Bek, the author of the story “Volokolamsk Highway”, was born on January 3, 1903 (according to the new style) in Saratov. His father, Alfred Beck, was a general in the medical service and the chief physician of a military hospital. According to a family legend, the great-grandfather of writer Christian Beck served as an experienced postmaster, and Peter “ordered” him from Denmark to organize the work of the Russian post.
When Beck was 16 years old, he graduated from the Saratov First Alexander-Mariinsky boys’ real school and entered service in the Red Army. During the Civil War, Alexander Beck served on the Eastern Front near Uralsk, where he was wounded.
Beck’s journalism began with a few war stories for a divided newspaper. At the age of 17 he became the chief editor of the Novorossiysk publication Krasnoye Chernomorye (in different years it was called Izvestia of the Novorossiysk City Revolutionary Committee, Izvestia of the Chernomorsky District Revolutionary Committee and Novorossiysk Rabochiy). On March 29, 1920, the first issue of the newspaper dedicated to the combat achievements of the Red Army units in Novorossiysk was published. At the end of each issue was a footnote: “The revolutionary committee of the city of Novorossiysk. Editor A. Beck.
In the spring of 1966, Grigory Freiman, director of the Novorossiysk branch of the State Archives, doubted that a 17-year-old teenager could manage the newspaper. To find out the truth, he sent Beck a letter with a related question.
“I declare that I am indeed the editor of the Krasnoye Chernomorye newspaper,” Beck replied.
As I remember it was like this. In the days when Novorossiysk was captured by our troops, I was the editor of the newspaper Our Way, the political department of the 22nd division. Then, if I am not mistaken, it was decided to merge the two newspapers. This joint newspaper of the Revolutionary Committee and the political branch of the 22nd Division was called the Red Black Sea Region. And when the political department of our department moved to the village of Krymskaya, we restored our old newspaper Our Way there, on Krymskaya. And the “Red Chernomorie”, of course, remained in Novorossiysk. Unfortunately, I do not remember who was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper after me. Best regards, A. Beck. 21 April 1966″.
Since 1931, Beck has published his texts in the collections History of Factory and Plants, People of Two Five-Year Plans and Cabinet of Memoirs, founded by Maxim Gorky, and later published in Komsomolskaya Pravda and Izvestia.
“After passing through the school of Gorky publications, I acquired a certain skill, a writing skill,” he recalled in his essay “Pages of Life”, “a skill that is absolutely not suitable for everyone, otherwise it may be contraindicated, but corresponding to my experiences, inclinations, abilities. ”
Collecting material for his first prose studies, Beck visited Kuznetsk-Sibirsky, Magnitogorsk, Donbass, Dnepropetrovsk and other places. After visiting a metallurgical factory under construction in the city of Kuznetsk-Sibirsky Bek, he wrote the story “Kurako” about Mikhail Kurako, a metallurgist and founder of the Russian school of blast furnace workers. This work “I. Alexandrov. The author also wrote “Notes of a blast furnace master”, “Life of Vlas Lesovik” and other stories.
During this period, Beck’s concise writing style was created by his sharp plot-dramaturgy and impeccable reliability of the facts told on behalf of the hero.
The Great Patriotic War and the Volokolamsk Highway
When the Great Patriotic War began, Beck joined a unique unit of the Red Army – the Writers Company of the Moscow People’s Militia, as part of the Krasnopresnenskaya Rifle Division. The company was founded in 1941 from the Moscow militia, most of whom were professional writers. According to the memories of his fellow soldiers, Beck quickly became the soul of the company, reaching Berlin and celebrating Victory Day there.
In the first months of 1942, Beck collected material for his most famous story, the Volokolamsk Highway. After talking with the soldiers of the 8th Panfilov Guards Division, he recreated the image of the late Major General Ivan Panfilov. The military leader was distinguished by his attention to the soldiers and became the author of the phrases “Do not rush to die – learn to fight”, “A soldier must fight with his mind”, “A soldier goes to war not to die.” but to live” and “Victory is made before war”. In the summer of that year, Beck took permission from Znamya magazine to focus on writing the story. In 1943 it appeared in a magazine with the headline “Panfilov’s men in the first line”.
The story tells of a real battalion from Panfilov’s division, commanded by senior lieutenant Cossack Bauyrzhan Momysh-Uly. In October – November 1941, the fighters coped with the task of slowing the advance of a stronger enemy to Moscow in the Volokolamsk region. For Momysh-Ula, this was her first combat experience as a battalion commander.
According to the book, the young commander faced the cowardice and betrayal of individual warriors, but managed to unite most of the soldiers into a combat-ready unit. The author paid close attention to the thoughts of the battalion commander, which is not characteristic of military literature. A month after the fighting near Volokolamsk, Momysh-Uly became regimental commander and led a division in February 1942. The tactics of fighting small forces against an outnumbered enemy were invented by Panfilov and applied by Momysh-Uly. In military science, it is called the Momysh-Uly spiral, invented by a Kazakh military leader.
“I call it a spiral because all the battles of the Panfilov division near Moscow are characterized by cutting off the road, bouncing aside and dragging the enemy, taking him 10 kilometers away, and then suddenly returning to his path. left again,” Momysh-Uly explained. – With such maneuvers, the enemy forces are dispersed, our troops go back to the highway. Literally exhausting the enemy was a waste of time.
This method was highly appreciated all over the world and was used to train the military in Finland, China, East Germany and Latin America.
Evaluation of the Volokolamsk Highway by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara
The story “Volokolamsk Highway” was popular with Latin American revolutionaries. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro and revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara called it their reference book. When journalists from a Spanish-language newspaper asked Castro which heroes of the Second World War he considered his idols, he replied: “The hero of Alexander Bek’s book Volokolamsk Highway is Kazakh Bauyrzhan Momysh-Uly.”
“The idea of using patriotism to persuade people to support the homeland came to me after reading this book,” said Castro.
Learning of Cuban politicians’ interest in the book, Momysh-Uly sent them an invitation to visit. The apartment in which the Kazakh military leader lived was in poor condition, and the authorities suggested that he move to a new flat. However, he flatly refused, saying that he was not ashamed to receive foreign guests in his home. In 1963, an entire Cuban delegation came to visit the battalion commander. It turns out that Castro did not leave the book “Volokolamsk Highway” and it was impossible to discuss all the exciting topics in one visit. Therefore, the president invited Momysh-Uly to Cuba, where he was received with great honor.
After the war
In the postwar years, Beck wrote a series of articles on Manchuria, Harbin and Port Arthur. The author devoted several works to metallurgists – the collection “Housemen”, the novel “New Profile” and the novel “Youth”, written together with his wife Natalia Loiko. Beck’s wife was a writer and architect. In 1949 the couple had a daughter named Tatyana, a poet and literary critic.
In 1960, Beck wrote two sequels to the Volokolamsk Highway – the novels A Few Days and General Panfilov’s Reserve. He also published the novel “Talent (Berezhkov’s Life)” about the aircraft designer Alexander Mikulin and the novel “New Appointment” about the former Minister of Metallurgical Industry Ivan Tevosyan. The book was banned at the request of Tevosyan’s widow – the woman said that the novel shows her private life in great detail. As a result, the book was first published in Germany and in 1986 in the USSR.
Beck lived in Moscow at number 4 on Chernyakhovsky Street in recent years. He died on November 2, 1972 and was buried at the Golovinsky cemetery.