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السيل الحديدي
The Iron Flood is a passionate chronicle of the heroic march in 1918 of many thousand of Red soldiers together with their families across the Caucasian mountains. Barefoot, hungry, exhausted, they rammed their way through to join the main forces of the Red Army. A lawless mob at first, they become a formidable force - the iron flood of the Revolution.
Alexander Serafirmovich (1863-1949) was born on the Don. His father was paymaster in a Cossack regiment. When Alexander Serafimovich was eleven years old his family moved to the Cossack village of Ust-Medveditskaya (now the town of Serafimovich), where the boy began to go to high school. Soon after, his father died and with the death of the only bread-winner in the family life became difficult.
In 1903-1907, his stories and sketches were featured in collections edited by Maxim Gorky.
Serafimovich's best work, The Iron Flood, was written in 1921-23.
- GenresRussian LiteratureRussia
205 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1924
4 people are currently reading
167 people want to read
About the author
Alexander Serafimovich
19 books7 followersAlexander Serafimovich (Russian: Александр Серафимович, born Alexander Serafimovich Popov) (O.S. January 7 (N.S. January 19), 1863, stanitsa Nizhnekurmoyarskaya, today's Tsimlyansky District, Rostov Oblast — January 19, 1949, Moscow) was a Russian/Soviet writer and a member of the Moscow literary group Sreda.
Serafimovich was born in a Cossack village on the Don River. His father served as a paymaster in a Cossack regiment. Serafimovich attended a grammar school, then studied in the Physico-Mathematical faculty of St. Petersburg University. During his time at the University he became friends with Aleksandr Ulyanov, the brother of Vladimir Lenin. Serafimovich was later exiled to Mezen, a town in northern Russia, for spreading revolutionary propaganda. During his time in exile he became a Marxist.
He began writing stories in 1889. His works of this period showed the hard living and working conditions of the peasants. During the 1905 Russian Revolution he continued to describe the brutal and unfair treatment of the peasants under Tsarist rule, and began to write stories about revolutionary men and women and their activities.
At the start of the 1917 Russian Revolution he joined the Bolsheviks, and became a member of the CPSU. His best known work of this time is the novel The Iron Flood (1924) set during the Russian Civil War and based on a real incident of a Red Army unit escaping encirclement by the enemy Whites. He also wrote a stage adaptation of The Iron Flood, which was produced by Nikolay Okhlopkov at the Realistic Theatre in Moscow and was the subject of several filming ideas by Sergei Eisenstein. After The Iron Flood, he published stories, sketches and plays about the building of the Soviet state and the growth of Soviet culture. He died in Moscow in 1949.
Serafimovich's works were praised by many of his fellow writers. Maxim Gorky especially appreciated his talent, introducing him into the Sreda group in Moscow and publishing his works in the Znanie collections. Leo Tolstoy liked his short novel Sand.
The Nobel Laureate Mikhail Sholokov said of him:
"Serafimovich was a great man, a real artist whose stories are near and dear to us; he was one of that generation of writers from whom we learned in our youth."
Vladimir Korolenko said of Serafimovich's first story On the Ice (1889):
"Splendid language, full of imagery, terse and powerful, the descriptions bright and lucid."
Serafimovich was born in a Cossack village on the Don River. His father served as a paymaster in a Cossack regiment. Serafimovich attended a grammar school, then studied in the Physico-Mathematical faculty of St. Petersburg University. During his time at the University he became friends with Aleksandr Ulyanov, the brother of Vladimir Lenin. Serafimovich was later exiled to Mezen, a town in northern Russia, for spreading revolutionary propaganda. During his time in exile he became a Marxist.
He began writing stories in 1889. His works of this period showed the hard living and working conditions of the peasants. During the 1905 Russian Revolution he continued to describe the brutal and unfair treatment of the peasants under Tsarist rule, and began to write stories about revolutionary men and women and their activities.
At the start of the 1917 Russian Revolution he joined the Bolsheviks, and became a member of the CPSU. His best known work of this time is the novel The Iron Flood (1924) set during the Russian Civil War and based on a real incident of a Red Army unit escaping encirclement by the enemy Whites. He also wrote a stage adaptation of The Iron Flood, which was produced by Nikolay Okhlopkov at the Realistic Theatre in Moscow and was the subject of several filming ideas by Sergei Eisenstein. After The Iron Flood, he published stories, sketches and plays about the building of the Soviet state and the growth of Soviet culture. He died in Moscow in 1949.
Serafimovich's works were praised by many of his fellow writers. Maxim Gorky especially appreciated his talent, introducing him into the Sreda group in Moscow and publishing his works in the Znanie collections. Leo Tolstoy liked his short novel Sand.
The Nobel Laureate Mikhail Sholokov said of him:
"Serafimovich was a great man, a real artist whose stories are near and dear to us; he was one of that generation of writers from whom we learned in our youth."
Vladimir Korolenko said of Serafimovich's first story On the Ice (1889):
"Splendid language, full of imagery, terse and powerful, the descriptions bright and lucid."
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 27, 2017
My copy of this is from 1935 and says it was published by the Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., so i'm guessing the translation is different to later English editions. anyway it's a quick and intense early soviet novel with lot of vivid imagery and brutal violence.
April 25, 2021
I used to take it as a given that all Socialist Realism was crap. It could be amusing, but the need to toe the party line and to portray heroes of socialism was fundmentally incompatible with good literature. After reading this surprisingly good book, I'm no longer so sure of my negative judgment.
The Iron Flood is a Soviet Anabisis with Kojukh in the role of Xenophon. Like Xenophon's famous often imitated story, it is about an army trapped in a hostile land that must fight its way against all odds back to its homeland, only to find when it finally arrives that more fighting and lack of appreciation for its great deeds are the only reward. Like Xenophon, Kojukh is a doubtful leader, thrust to the fore almost against his will, not always respected, but always situationally aware and smarter than anyone else in the room. And curiously, this story takes place only a few hundred miles away from the location of the Anabisis.
But the best thing about this book is its narrative point of view. The action is presented through a narrow field of view. As you read, you see only a fraction of what is going on around you, and you have to piece together a bigger picture. It's the same perspective that a common soldier or one of the refugees in the midst of the action would have had. Sometimes it is confusing, but it works because there is always enough information that the bigger picture gradually becomes clear. And there are very few individuated characters here. Most of them have no names. They effectively merge together into a collective, so that people themselves become the main character. Others have tried this. I remember something similar in Pushkin's Boris Godunov, but it isn't easy to do, and I felt that Serafimavich pulled it off quite effectively, even as he carefully delivers standard party approved politics by castigating both left and right deviationists as he walks the tightrope of proper Stalinism. I don't know if this could ever have given birth to a mainstream genre of books of Socialist Realism. I don't think that Furmanov or Gladkov or Ostrovsky could have written in this style. It is a style that feels experimental and exciting, almost worthy of the kinds of things that the Futurists and Absurdists were doing in Russia at around the same time before Stalin shut them down and packed them off to Siberia or drove them to suicide.
The Iron Flood is a Soviet Anabisis with Kojukh in the role of Xenophon. Like Xenophon's famous often imitated story, it is about an army trapped in a hostile land that must fight its way against all odds back to its homeland, only to find when it finally arrives that more fighting and lack of appreciation for its great deeds are the only reward. Like Xenophon, Kojukh is a doubtful leader, thrust to the fore almost against his will, not always respected, but always situationally aware and smarter than anyone else in the room. And curiously, this story takes place only a few hundred miles away from the location of the Anabisis.
But the best thing about this book is its narrative point of view. The action is presented through a narrow field of view. As you read, you see only a fraction of what is going on around you, and you have to piece together a bigger picture. It's the same perspective that a common soldier or one of the refugees in the midst of the action would have had. Sometimes it is confusing, but it works because there is always enough information that the bigger picture gradually becomes clear. And there are very few individuated characters here. Most of them have no names. They effectively merge together into a collective, so that people themselves become the main character. Others have tried this. I remember something similar in Pushkin's Boris Godunov, but it isn't easy to do, and I felt that Serafimavich pulled it off quite effectively, even as he carefully delivers standard party approved politics by castigating both left and right deviationists as he walks the tightrope of proper Stalinism. I don't know if this could ever have given birth to a mainstream genre of books of Socialist Realism. I don't think that Furmanov or Gladkov or Ostrovsky could have written in this style. It is a style that feels experimental and exciting, almost worthy of the kinds of things that the Futurists and Absurdists were doing in Russia at around the same time before Stalin shut them down and packed them off to Siberia or drove them to suicide.
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October 8, 2021السيل الحديدي / ألكسندر سيرافيموفيتش / ترجمة ترجمة سعدي المالح / 1985 .
" ينبغي أن نطالب الأديب قبل كل شيء، ان يكون صادقاً لا يهاب الحياة، بل وان يستمد منها كل ما تحتويه من أحداث "
في هذه الرواية جسد ألكسندر قصة الصراع والحرب الأهلية التي حدثت في الاتحاد السوفيتي وكيف جسد الأدوار البطولية والحياة الشاقة للعمال والفلاحين، وتكاد تخلى الرواية من الابطال عدا الضابط كوجوخ الذي كان من طبقة المعدومين والفلاحين وكيف ارتقى بشجاعته سلم المجد وأصبح ضابطاً في الجيش لكنه في ذلك الوقت يعاني من اضطهاد وعزلة كبيرة، فبين عدم تقبل باقي الضباط لوجوده وعدوه دخيلاً على هذا المنصب كونه مجرد حقير من طبقة أدنى منهم وبين فقده في بادئ الأمر لدعم باقي زملاءه الجنود من الفلاحين الذي حارب إلى جانبهم .
علي غضبان مُشكل .
" ينبغي أن نطالب الأديب قبل كل شيء، ان يكون صادقاً لا يهاب الحياة، بل وان يستمد منها كل ما تحتويه من أحداث "
في هذه الرواية جسد ألكسندر قصة الصراع والحرب الأهلية التي حدثت في الاتحاد السوفيتي وكيف جسد الأدوار البطولية والحياة الشاقة للعمال والفلاحين، وتكاد تخلى الرواية من الابطال عدا الضابط كوجوخ الذي كان من طبقة المعدومين والفلاحين وكيف ارتقى بشجاعته سلم المجد وأصبح ضابطاً في الجيش لكنه في ذلك الوقت يعاني من اضطهاد وعزلة كبيرة، فبين عدم تقبل باقي الضباط لوجوده وعدوه دخيلاً على هذا المنصب كونه مجرد حقير من طبقة أدنى منهم وبين فقده في بادئ الأمر لدعم باقي زملاءه الجنود من الفلاحين الذي حارب إلى جانبهم .
علي غضبان مُشكل .
March 23, 2019
Communism is dead. Yet the ideals and aspirations of those fought for it are not.
March 15, 2023
The first book i've read! :-)
October 12, 2015
«Железный поток» своеобразен. В этом произведении очень трудно узнать руку Серафимовича. Чересчур автор играет словами, усиливая нажим с последующей строкой. Герои повествования скорее обезличены, их голоса раздаются откуда-то со стороны. Сама речь наполнена заимствованиями из говора кубанских казаков, что крайне затрудняет чтение. Серафимович постоянно повторяется, отбрасывая действие к определённому моменту, рассматривая ситуацию под другим углом. У читателя должно сформироваться понимание трудностей писателя, решившего донести до него историю людей, гонимых с родной земли во время нестабильной обстановки в стране, покуда каждый населённый пункт на пути стремится вешать всех пришлых, не считаясь с политическими воззрениями, особенно люто питая ненависть к большевикам. Люди постоянно находились в движении, видя только в этом надежду на спасение, не веря в возможность когда-нибудь где-то снова осесть.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews