Boris Petrovich Kornilov (July 16 [29], 1907, Semyonov Uyezd, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate — February 20, 1938, Leningrad) was a poet who grew up in Semyonov, a town beyond the Volga. He was the author of the words to "Song of the Counterplan" ("The morning greets us with coolness"), written together with Dmitri Shostakovich for the film "Counterplan" (1932); during his lifetime eleven books of his poems and long poems were published.[10] He was shot by sentence of a visiting session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and was rehabilitated on January 5, 1957, for lack of corpus delicti.[1] For almost two decades he went unpublished, and he was returned to readers beginning in the late 1950s — starting with his home region: a square, the central library, and a school in Semyonov bear Kornilov's name, as do the literary hall of the town museum and a street in Nizhny Novgorod.[3][12]

The Trans-Volga Environment

Semyonov grew out of a pochinok (a newly founded settlement) in the Kerzhenets volost, and the impetus for its development came from the Old Believers who fled persecution into the forests beyond the Volga; as early as the beginning of the 18th century it was a recognized trading center of the Kerzhenets area.[11] By the time Kornilov was born, it was a district town on the Kerzhenets left bank, living off its spoon-making trade and surrounded by the sketes of Old Believer Trans-Volga country; in 1916 it had five thousand residents.[11] The Nizhny Novgorod–Kotelnich railway, built in the 1910s, ran along the northern outskirts: Semyonov station appeared, with a wooden station building designed by the academician of architecture A. V. Shchusev.[11] This land — forests, sketes, kerzhaks (Old Believers of the Kerzhenets area), spoon-makers — became what Kornilov wrote about all his life.

Family and Childhood

The father and mother of the future poet, Pyotr Tarasovich and Taisiya Mikhaylovna Kornilov, were village teachers who worked at schools throughout Semyonov Uyezd.[1][3] Sources disagree on his place of birth: the martyrology, the St. Petersburg literary encyclopedia, and the Semyonov library name the selo of Pokrovskoye in Semyonov Uyezd,[1][2][3] while the Nizhny Novgorod biographical reference book names the village of Kozhikha in the same area.[14] In 1910 the family moved to the village of Dyakovo, where they lived until 1922.[2][3] Boris's godfather was Yevgeny Ivanovich Samossky, a Semyonov zemstvo doctor who ran the uyezd hospital and acted as patron of the village schools.[5]

From 1918 the boy studied at the Semyonov nine-year school with a teacher-training emphasis, and in 1922 the whole family moved to the town as well.[5] The school was housed in the former uyezd school building, constructed in 1898, on Respublika Sovetov Street; the house where the Kornilovs lived in the 1920s stands at 12 Vaneev Street.[6] Boris did not finish school: he worked at a veterinary clinic, then at the uyezd Komsomol committee.[5] He was an inspector at the young pioneers' bureau and wrote for the agitprop theater "Blue Blouse" and for wall newspapers.[3] His first love is said to have been the Semyonov beauty Tatyana Stepenina.[13]

"Molodaya Rat" and the Departure

Kornilov's first poems were published beginning in 1923.[14] On April 28, 1925, the Nizhny Novgorod newspaper "Molodaya Rat" (Young Host) printed his poem "To the Seas" — a publication signed with the pen name "Boris Verbin."[2] That same year he submitted a request to the Komsomol district committee asking to be sent "to an institute of journalism or to some literary school,"[3] and the uyezd Komsomol organization sent him to Leningrad as a person with literary ability.[2] He left at the end of 1925, hoping to show his poems to Yesenin, but did not find him alive.[2][14]

Nizhny Novgorod in His Poetry

The Nizhny Novgorod Regional Library, compiling a literary map of the region, opens its entry on Kornilov with lines about the Kerzhenets — for it, he is first and foremost a poet of the forests beyond the Volga.[10] The poem "On the Kerzhenets" (1927) is about the Old Believer land as the poet's childhood found it, and in "From an Autobiography" he names as his homeland Dyakovo — the village where he grew up, rather than the selo (a larger village) recorded in his documents.[15] His only urban landscape is "In Nizhny Novgorod from the Slope," in which a line about the Otkos and the Dyatlov Hills both opens and closes the poem. The texts of these poems and of "Song of the Oncoming" are collected separately: Poems of Boris Kornilov.

We are on the Kerzhenets, on the river, / Where my incomprehensible homeland is, / Where age-old forests grow, / Where both elk and fox roam / And at every forest verst, / At every Kerzhak hermitage / Rus, crucified on a cross, / On the ancient, / On the copper one, is nailed.

— Boris Kornilov, "On the Kerzhenets," 1927[15]

I couldn't invent anything like this, / and my words are plain — / I was born in the village of Dyakovo, / half a verst from Semyonov. / I came into the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate / in my young life…

— Boris Kornilov, "From an Autobiography"[15]

Reproach me for a flaw, / year after year / we grow bolder, / we are all proud, / we peasants, / children of village schoolteachers.

— Boris Kornilov, "From an Autobiography"[15]

Leningrad

In early 1926, Kornilov joined the Leningrad literary group "Smena" ("Shift"), led by Vissarion Sayanov; Olga Berggolts, Alexander Gitovich, Boris Likharev, and Leonid Rakhmanov also belonged to it.[2][3] He was married to Berggolts from 1927 to 1930; their daughter Irina died in 1936.[1] After the divorce, Kornilov married a second time, to L. G. Borenstein; their daughter was born in 1937, when her father was already gone from home.[5]

His first collection, "Molodost" ("Youth"), came out in 1928 under Sayanov's editorship; the author himself considered only the next one to be his first real book — "First Book. Poems 1927–1931" (1931). After that, books appeared almost every year: "All My Friends" (1931), "A Book of Poems" and "Poems and Narrative Poems" (both 1933), "The New" and the fairy tale "How the Bear's Teeth Began to Ache from Honey" (1935).[2] The narrative poems "Tripolye" (1933) and "My Africa" (1935), which Romain Rolland praised highly, brought him fame as one of the leading poets of his generation; in August 1934, at the Writers' Congress, the author of "Tripolye" was called the hope of Soviet lyric poetry.[2][3] Kornilov became a member of the USSR Union of Writers in 1934.[5] His best-known work remained "Song of the Counterplan," written in 1932 with Dmitri Shostakovich for the film "Counterplan."[2][3]

In October 1936, Kornilov was expelled from the Writers' Union.[14]

Arrest and Death

By the time of his arrest, Kornilov was living in Leningrad, on the Griboyedov Canal embankment, at building No. 9. He was arrested on March 19, 1937.[1][9] The case file included a review by the critic N. Lesyuchevsky, "On Kornilov's Poems," dated May 13, 1937, which claimed that the poet "is trying to disguise the genuinely counterrevolutionary meaning of his works"; this text was added to the case as an "Expert Examination Report."[1] The poem "The Fir Tree" is named as the pretext.[8]

On February 20, 1938, a visiting session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in Leningrad sentenced Kornilov under Articles 58-8-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to capital punishment. The sentence was carried out the same day; in the execution order, his name appears ninth of eighteen.[1] He is buried in the Levashovo Wasteland near Leningrad, where a cenotaph was later erected.[3][14]

The poet's family shared his fate. His father, Pyotr Tarasovich Kornilov, director of the Semyonov adult school, was arrested on March 7, 1938; he died in a prison hospital on June 10, 1939, and is commemorated in the second volume of the Book of Memory of the Victims of Political Repression in Nizhny Novgorod Region.[1]

In 1956, Olga Berggolts and the secretariat of the Leningrad branch of the Writers' Union petitioned for a review of the case; Yaroslav Smelyakov gave testimony in Kornilov's favor.[1] On January 5, 1957, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR overturned the sentence and closed the case for lack of evidence of a crime, having established that the charge had been fabricated by Reznik, an official of the Leningrad Region Directorate of the NKVD.[1]

His Mother and the Restoration of His Name

Kornilov's poems did not reach readers for about twenty years,[10] and "Song of the Oncoming" ("Pesnya o vstrechnom") was performed without mention of the name of one of its authors.[3] The return began in his native land. In the autumn of 1960, the literary section of the Gorky Regional Student Club came to Semyonov and held an evening of Kornilov's poetry at the railwaymen's club near the railway station; among those who came was Yuri Adrianov. When asked from the stage who had written the words "The morning greets us with coolness," the hall was silent, and only one voice named Isakovsky.[7]

The poet's mother, Taisia Mikhailovna, was living in Semyonov at the time, at 16 Uchitelskaya Street, but the visitors did not know her address; local Komsomol members tracked her down, along with Boris's sisters, and brought them to an evening in his memory in Gorky, at the House of Scholars.[7] For a long time she did not know of her son's death and hoped he was alive: no one had seen any documents about the sentence and execution at that point, and Yaroslav Smelyakov, in a letter of 1968, advised her not to lose hope.[7][9] On July 29, 1967, at a festive gathering in Gorky for Kornilov's sixtieth anniversary, Olga Berggolts spoke and interrupted a speaker who said that the poet's life had been "cut short in its prime": "Why don't you say that Borya was killed?" The next day a delegation of writers came to Semyonov, and Berggolts, having climbed the porch steps, knelt before Taisia Mikhailovna.[7]

The documents were found by the Semyonov local historian Karp Vasilyevich Yefimov (1924–2011), whose sister Anna had studied together with the poet. In November 1989 he reviewed investigation file No. 23229 and established that the sentence had been handed down and carried out on the same day. On his initiative, a cross and a memorial plaque were erected at the cemetery near Levashovo station; the words of the inscription are his. Yefimov wrote the book "Literary Semyonov" and saw to it that the poet's name was given to a library, a school, a square, and a street in Semyonov, as well as to a dry cargo ship, a diesel-electric ship, and an electric train.[8][5]

There is also a story connected with Kornilov's name that has not been documentarily confirmed. According to the poet Valery Shumilin (1936–2016), in 1967 Taisia Mikhailovna revealed to him the poem "Continuation of Life" ("Prodolzhenie zhizni"), which, in her words, had been memorized by her son's cellmate, who did not give his name.[9] A posthumous collection of Kornilov's work with a foreword by Berggolts was published under the same title in 1972.[2]

Memory in Nizhny Novgorod Region

The monument to Kornilov, created by the Moscow sculptor A. A. Bichukov, an honorary citizen of Semyonov, was carved from pink granite and unveiled on December 21, 1968, in front of the House of Pioneers. In 1987 it was moved to Friedrich Engels Square, and in 1992 the square was named after the poet.[4][11] His fellow countrymen call Kornilov "the Semyonov nightingale,"[8] while the poet Fyodor Folomin called him "the nightingale of the Trans-Volga."[3]

Kornilov's name is borne by Semyonov's central library and by the town's School No. 1.[3][5] The literary hall "Poet B. P. Kornilov" operates in the history and art museum, housed in the mansion of the Old Believer townsman P. P. Sharygin at 5 Vaneev Street.[12] Every year on July 29, the poet's birthday, the Kornilov Readings gather at the monument on the square that bears his name; they continue at the museum, where poems are read by members of the "Rodniki" literary association at the central library.[13][3] In 2007 the administration of Semyonovsky District established a literary prize named after B. P. Kornilov: its first laureate was the poet Evgenia Koreshkova, and in 2008 it went to Karp Efimov himself.[3]

In Nizhny Novgorod there is a Boris Kornilov Street; in 2010 a new electric train of the "Nizhny Novgorod — Moskovsky" multiple-unit depot of the Gorky Railway was given the poet's name.[3] Publications about him from Nizhny Novgorod include the collection of memoirs and articles "The Poet Born of October" (Gorky, 1987), the book "I See My Earthly Beauty," compiled by V. A. Shamshurin and V. A. Alekseev (Nizhny Novgorod, 2007), and a bibliographic index prepared by L. I. Shiyan for the poet's centenary.[10]

Chronicle of Events

  • July 16 (29), 1907 — born in Semyonov Uyezd of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, into a family of village teachers.[1]
  • 1910 — the family moves to the village of Dyakovo.[2]
  • 1922 — the Kornilovs move to Semyonov.[5]
  • April 28, 1925 — the Nizhny Novgorod newspaper "Molodaya Rat" prints the poem "To the Seas" under the byline "Boris Verbin."[2]
  • Late 1925 — leaves for Leningrad on assignment from the uyezd Komsomol organization.[2]
  • 1928 — his first book of poems, "Youth," is published.[2]
  • 1932 — "Song of the Counterplan," with music by Dmitri Shostakovich, for the film "Counterplan."[2]
  • 1934 — admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR.[5]
  • October 1936 — expelled from the Union of Writers.[14]
  • March 19, 1937 — arrested in Leningrad.[1]
  • February 20, 1938 — sentenced by a visiting session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and shot.[1]
  • March 7, 1938 — the poet's father, Pyotr Tarasovich Kornilov, is arrested; he died in a prison hospital on June 10, 1939.[1]
  • January 5, 1957 — rehabilitated for lack of corpus delicti.[1]
  • Autumn 1960 — an evening of Kornilov's poetry at the Semyonov railway workers' club, which began the return of his name to his native region.[7]
  • July 29, 1967 — Olga Berggolts speaks in Gorky at a gathering marking the poet's sixtieth birthday and travels to Semyonov the next day.[7]
  • December 21, 1968 — a monument by A. A. Bichukov is unveiled in Semyonov.[4]
  • November 1989 — local historian Karp Yefimov reviews investigation file No. 23229 and establishes the circumstances of the poet's death.[8]
  • 1992 — Friedrich Engels Square in Semyonov is renamed B. P. Kornilov Square.[4]
  • 2007 — the B. P. Kornilov Literary Prize is established.[3]

Sources

  1. visz.nlr.ru — Returned Names. Books of Memory of Russia
  2. lavkapisateley.spb.ru — Writers of Saint Petersburg. 20th Century — A. Pavlovsky. Kornilov Boris Petrovich
  3. cbs-semenov.ru — B. P. Kornilov Central Library, Semyonov — In Memory of B. P. Kornilov (archive)
  4. semenov.nobl.ru — Administration of the Semyonovsky Municipal District — Monument to B. P. Kornilov
  5. semenov.nnov.ru — Administration of the Semyonovsky Urban District — Famous People of the Semyonov Area
  6. semenov.nnov.ru — Administration of the Semyonovsky Urban District — The Town of Semyonov: Architectural and Historical Monuments
  7. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — A. M. Tsirulnikov. The Return of Boris Kornilov. Memorial Notes of the Society of Old Nizhny Novgorod Residents, Vol. 39
  8. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — V. M. Dobryanskaya. Karp Vasilyevich Yefimov — Boris Kornilov's Grateful Fellow Countryman. Memorial Notes of the Society of Old Nizhny Novgorod Residents, Vol. 39
  9. ng.ru — Nezavisimaya Gazeta — Elena Semyonova. "How Did I End Up Among You Chekists?", July 27, 2017
  10. ngounb.ru — Literary Map of Nizhny Novgorod Region (Lenin Nizhny Novgorod State Regional Universal Scientific Library) — Kornilov Boris Petrovich (1907–1938)
  11. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — I. S. Agafonova, A. I. Davydov (NIP "Etnos"). The Town of Semyonov, Nizhny Novgorod Region, as a Historic Settlement (archive)
  12. semenov-museum.ru — Museums of Semyonov — Museum of History and Art: Halls, the Sharygin Building, Literary Hall "Poet B. P. Kornilov" (archive)
  13. semvestnik.ru — Semyonovsky Vestnik — Nadezhda Uzdenyova. "So That the Poet's Verse Won't Fade…", August 2, 2023
  14. names52.ru — Names of Nizhny Novgorod Region — Kornilov Boris Petrovich
  15. az.lib.ru — Kornilov Boris Petrovich. Poems