Name Panteleimon Romanov Died 1938, Moscow, Russia | Role Writer Education Moscow State University | |
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Born July 24, 1884
Tula Oblast ( 1884-07-24 ) Books On the Volga and other stories, Three pairs of silk stockings, Diary of a Soviet marriage, Without cherry blossom | ||
Panteleimon Sergeyevich Romanov (Russian: Panteleimon Sergéevich Romanov; July 24, 1884 – April 8, 1938) was a Russian/Soviet writer.
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Biography
Romanov was born into a gentry family in the village of Petrovskoe in what is now Tula Oblast. After completing his law studies at Moscow State University, he devoted himself to literature. He published his first story in 1911, but had little success before the Russian Revolution (1917).
He published "Childhood" in 1920. Since he wrote to express his philosophy, he was not put off by the work's lack of success. Anna Gattinger, the author of the master's degree thesis Literary Heritage of Panteleymon Romanov, 1883-1938, wrote that "Childhood" was Romanov's first published work.
He became one of the best known Soviet authors of the 1920s and 30s. He won most of his fame with short satirical stories exposing the ignorance, inefficiency and cowardice of the new Soviet bureaucrats and their aides. He also devoted his attention to the sexual revolution of the 1920s, sometimes in works that were considered too graphic by contemporary standards, as in the story Without Bird-Cherry Blossoms (1926). He wrote novels in the epic manner, including Childhood (1926) and his five volume series Russia (1922–1936), dealing with rural life in prerevolutionary Russia.
In 1938, he died of heart disease. The Writers' Union did not publish an obituary.
In 1964 there were no Romanov works published in the Soviet Union. That year Gattinger wrote that Romanov "is not counted among those who have made a worthy contribution to Soviet letters." In 2007 the book The Fatal Eggs and Other Soviet Satire stated that Romanov is "virtually unknown in Russia" because Romanov's name had been "deleted from history" with his books taken out of circulation, and he had never "been accorded with even partial rehabilitation in the post-Stalin era".
Works
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