Belarus persons and events: Ivan Shamyakin

Ivan Shamyakin was born on January 30, 1921, in the village of Korm, Dobrushskiy District, Gomel Region, in the family of a forester. After completing seven grades of school, he enrolled in the Gomel Technical School of Building Materials and actively participated in the meetings of the literary association at the Gomelskaya Pravda newspaper.

After some time, I. Shamyakin was drafted into the Red Army. He served in an anti-aircraft artillery unit near Murmansk. From the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he participated in battles near Murmansk, Kondolaksha, and Petrozavodsk. He ended the war with the rank of officer on the Oder River. He taught in the village of Prokopovka in the Terekhovsky District. In 1946, he enrolled in the correspondence department of the V. Chkalov Gomel Pedagogical Institute.

In 1950, he graduated from the republican school of the Communist Party at the Central Committee of Belarus and soon moved to Minsk. He was appointed senior editor of the Belarusian State Publishing House and worked as editor-in-chief of the almanac Soviet Motherland. For many years, I. Shamyakin held leadership positions in the Union of Writers of Belarus. From 1980 to 1992, he was editor-in-chief of the publishing house Belarusian Encyclopedia named after Petrus Brovka. He was elected deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and headed the Supreme Soviet of the BSSR (1971-1985).

I. Shamyakin started writing fiction while he was in technical school. His first story, «In the Snowy Desert» (1944), is about the Great Patriotic War. His humanistic interpretation of the war as a national tragedy was embodied in his first novel, «Deep Current» (1947-1948). The most ambitious work on the war in Belarusian literature was the pentalogy «Anxious Happiness» (1957-1965), where the fate of the characters is associated with the fate of an entire generation that went through the hardships of war, fighting the enemy on the front lines and in partisan detachments, and through the post-war restoration of the national economy.

The theme of war continues in the short stories «Wedding Night» (1975), «The Merchant and the Poet» (1976), and the novel «Zenith» (1987).

The writer's novels Heart on the Palm (1963), Snowy Winters (1968), Atlases and Caryatids (1974), I Will Take Your Pain (1978), and other works have become part of the golden fund of Belarusian literature.

Ivan Shamyakin is also the author of the plays «Don't Believe the Silence» (staged in 1958), «Autumn Exam» (staged in 1974), «Gold Medal» (staged in 1980), and others. Literary criticism articles, speeches, memoirs, portraits of friends and relatives are included in the books «Conversation with the Reader» (1973), «Roots and Branches» (1986), in the diary entries «Night Memories» (2002), and others. Many of his works have been translated into various languages. Some have been made into films and staged as theater productions.

Ivan Shamyakin is a People's Writer of Belarus (1972), Hero of Socialist Labor (1981), and academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (1994). He has been awarded numerous orders and medals. He is a laureate of the USSR State Prize (1951), the Y. Kolas Literary Prize (1959), the BSSR State Prize named after Y. Kolas (1968), the Literary Prize of the USSR Ministry of Defense (1978), the BSSR State Prize in the field of theater arts, cinematography, radio, and television (1982), and the Union State Prize of Belarus and Russia (2002). One of the streets in Minsk and the Mozyr State Pedagogical University are named after the writer.

 Based on the materials of the National Library of Belarus

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