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Roman "Vesna na Odere" Emmanuila Kazakevicha byl napisan v 1949 godu i predstavljaet soboj mnogoplanovoe povestvovanie o poslednem periode Vtoroj mirovoj vojny. Za eto masshtabnoe proizvedenie, gerojami kotorogo stali marshaly Zhukov, Konev i Rokossovskij, pisatel byl udostoen Stalinskoj premii.
778 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
About the author
Emmanuil Kazakevich
25 books4 followersEmmanuil Genrikhovich Kazakevich (Russian: Эммануи́л Ге́нрихович Казаке́вич, Yiddish: עמנואל קאַזאַקעװיטש; February 24, 1913 – September 22, 1962) was a Soviet author, poet and playwright of Jewish extraction, writing in Russian and Yiddish.
Kazakevich was born at Kremenchuk in Ukraine (then part of Imperial Russia) in 1913 and received training as an engineer at Kharkiv. In the early 1930s he moved to the Jewish autonomous region of Birobidzhan on the Amur River, where he became the chairman of a local kolkhoz and also ran a theatre. During these years he began writing and publishing poems and stories in Yiddish. In 1941 he was in Moscow, taking part in the defence efforts of the capital and later joining the regular Red Army for frontier service. His war service brought him close to some of the major battles of 1943-45 and finally into the battle for Berlin; by this time he had become assistant director of intelligence in one of the armies involved.
After 1945 Kazakevich began writing in Russian, and his debut short story Zvezda ("The Star", 1947, adapted into a film in 1949 (remake - film 2002)) was an instant success and awarded a Stalin Prize for literature. The story describes an army intelligence unit during WW2 and their raid behind enemy lines. It showcases some of his later recurrent traits: the sharp, lyrical evocation of nature, the interest in moral conflicts and ambiguities, often relating to the transition between war and peace, the sense of humour and psychological observation. Many of his later stories are set during or shortly after the Second World War. Kazakevich's 1948 story "Dvoe v stepi" ("Two in the Steppe", adapted into a 1964 film and a 2015 remake "On the Road to Berlin"[1]), was fiercely criticized in the Party press[2] but that did not prevent his next story "Vesna na Odere" ("Spring on the Oder River," 1949) from being awarded a second Stalin Prize.[3] The novella "In the Light of Day" (1960) explores ambiguities of guilt, bravery and memory as a soldier makes a visit to the widow of his fallen friend and unit officer.
During the fifties, Kazakevich reached high positions in the Soviet Association of Writers and was aligned with the efforts of de-Stalinization. He kept picking up potentially sensitive subjects, and during his last years may have been working on a major novel about Lenin during the revolutionary years. The short novel Sinyaya tetrad (The Blue notebook) appeared in 1961; it is set during Lenin's stay on the Karelian isthmus in the summer of 1917 and brings Lenin face to face both with ordinary people and with Grigory Zinovyev, who was still considered a traitor or at best a dubious figure at the time of writing. While Kazakevich, in the end, makes Lenin refute Zinovyev's fears and allegations, there is no attempt to show the latter as an evil or insincere person, which would have been a given for most Soviet writers at the time.
Kazakevich continued with Lenin as a main character in another story, "Enemies", written in his last year, and it is likely that he was planning to bring them together within a larger novel about Lenin. However, his sudden passing away in the summer of 1962 meant that those plans were left unfulfilled.
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Эммануил Генрихович Казакевич (идиш. עמנואל קאַזאַקעװיטש, среди близких известный как Эмма Казакевич; 24 февраля 1913, Кременчуг Полтавской губернии — 22 сентября 1962, Москва) — русский и еврейский советский писатель. Прозаические произведения писал преимущественно на русском языке, поэзию — на идише. Лауреат двух Сталинских премий второй степени (1948, 1950).
Эммануил Казакевич родился 24 февраля 1913 года в Кременчуге (ныне Полтавской области Украины) в семье еврейского публициста и литературного критика Генеха Казакевича (1883—1935). В 1930 году окончил Харьковский машиностроительный техникум и в следующем году переехал с родителями в Биробиджан, где была организована Евре
Kazakevich was born at Kremenchuk in Ukraine (then part of Imperial Russia) in 1913 and received training as an engineer at Kharkiv. In the early 1930s he moved to the Jewish autonomous region of Birobidzhan on the Amur River, where he became the chairman of a local kolkhoz and also ran a theatre. During these years he began writing and publishing poems and stories in Yiddish. In 1941 he was in Moscow, taking part in the defence efforts of the capital and later joining the regular Red Army for frontier service. His war service brought him close to some of the major battles of 1943-45 and finally into the battle for Berlin; by this time he had become assistant director of intelligence in one of the armies involved.
After 1945 Kazakevich began writing in Russian, and his debut short story Zvezda ("The Star", 1947, adapted into a film in 1949 (remake - film 2002)) was an instant success and awarded a Stalin Prize for literature. The story describes an army intelligence unit during WW2 and their raid behind enemy lines. It showcases some of his later recurrent traits: the sharp, lyrical evocation of nature, the interest in moral conflicts and ambiguities, often relating to the transition between war and peace, the sense of humour and psychological observation. Many of his later stories are set during or shortly after the Second World War. Kazakevich's 1948 story "Dvoe v stepi" ("Two in the Steppe", adapted into a 1964 film and a 2015 remake "On the Road to Berlin"[1]), was fiercely criticized in the Party press[2] but that did not prevent his next story "Vesna na Odere" ("Spring on the Oder River," 1949) from being awarded a second Stalin Prize.[3] The novella "In the Light of Day" (1960) explores ambiguities of guilt, bravery and memory as a soldier makes a visit to the widow of his fallen friend and unit officer.
During the fifties, Kazakevich reached high positions in the Soviet Association of Writers and was aligned with the efforts of de-Stalinization. He kept picking up potentially sensitive subjects, and during his last years may have been working on a major novel about Lenin during the revolutionary years. The short novel Sinyaya tetrad (The Blue notebook) appeared in 1961; it is set during Lenin's stay on the Karelian isthmus in the summer of 1917 and brings Lenin face to face both with ordinary people and with Grigory Zinovyev, who was still considered a traitor or at best a dubious figure at the time of writing. While Kazakevich, in the end, makes Lenin refute Zinovyev's fears and allegations, there is no attempt to show the latter as an evil or insincere person, which would have been a given for most Soviet writers at the time.
Kazakevich continued with Lenin as a main character in another story, "Enemies", written in his last year, and it is likely that he was planning to bring them together within a larger novel about Lenin. However, his sudden passing away in the summer of 1962 meant that those plans were left unfulfilled.
--------------------------------------------------------
Эммануил Генрихович Казакевич (идиш. עמנואל קאַזאַקעװיטש, среди близких известный как Эмма Казакевич; 24 февраля 1913, Кременчуг Полтавской губернии — 22 сентября 1962, Москва) — русский и еврейский советский писатель. Прозаические произведения писал преимущественно на русском языке, поэзию — на идише. Лауреат двух Сталинских премий второй степени (1948, 1950).
Эммануил Казакевич родился 24 февраля 1913 года в Кременчуге (ныне Полтавской области Украины) в семье еврейского публициста и литературного критика Генеха Казакевича (1883—1935). В 1930 году окончил Харьковский машиностроительный техникум и в следующем году переехал с родителями в Биробиджан, где была организована Евре
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 10, 2026
The winner of what must be automatically suspect Stalin Prize for Literature in 1949, Spring on the Oder is I think worth reading for a partially authentic account of the Soviet push into Berlin and its occupation of what would become East Germany, as well as a quite readable example of what writing would have had to have been like under Stalin.
The writer, Emmanuil Kazakevich, was of Jewish extraction—interestingly his first name is nowhere mentioned in my book (only “E.” Kazakevich). Born in Ukraine in 1913, he grew up in the Jewish autonomous region of Birobidzhan on the Amur River where he became chairman of a local kolkhoz as well as director of a theatre there. He started writing poems and stories in Yiddish. In 1941, he joined the Red Army for frontier service, moving to becoming assistant director of intelligence for one of the armies moving against Germany and finally becoming involved in the battle for Berlin.
Why this context? Both because it goes to the partly very authentic description of the Soviet Army’s push for Berlin as well as to the author’s having to be even more sensitive to what he can politically write. Thus his description of life of the soldiers in the Red Army’s push west to Berlin in 1944-1945 is believable in many instances—complete with a love interest between a Soviet woman doctor and the underlying (at least partially autobiographical) hero of the book—a leading scout/intelligence officer who shows great daring in getting behind German lines and indefatigable and uncomplaining energy on behalf of the Red Army. At the same time, he is careful at all times to toe the Party line—with Stalin of course being the great man whose brilliance and love of Mother Russia wins everything—but also with the unfailingly positive spirit and gentlemanly demeanor of the Red Army soldiers from all reaches of the Soviet Union as they and they alone liberate Germany. There is thus a constant tension between (1) authentic, war-time experiences as soldiers from across the vast Soviet Union (including Georgians, Tatars, Ukrainians, Russians and citizens of the Soviet far east) all fight together unite to push back the racially arrogant Aryan German and finally take Berlin—no doubt informed by Kazakevich’s own war-time services and (2) the frankly unbelievable (and no doubt necessary) praises of the Great Stalin and the army’s noble solidarity with all working people—including the Germans who the Soviet Army “liberates” on its path to Berlin.
On the whole, this tension is fascinating. Curiously, when seen through the lens of post Soviet nonfiction accounts as well as what I know from the Soviet Army’s rape and pillage across Germany and subsequent whole sale removal of any remaining useful capital equipment from what was to become the DDR to parts East, I believe this book achieves a rare success in what it believably recounts, and what its obvious political pandering in fact implies about what it cannot recount if it is to be published and its author remaining healthy.
Two examples of the two tracts underlying this book are:
Speaking of tired, wounded soldiers now out of the fray: “Artillery rumbled in the distance. The wounded listened to it with a kind of dreamy abnegation, as old men listen to tales of the difficult but golden times of youth.”
And: “The car was speeding along a wet road leaving tyre tracks behind it. Whirls of snow spun in the light of the headlights as if they had been caught by surprise and were dashing aside in panic, leaving new ones to take their place.
BUT:
“The soldier listened again to the stillness [absence of guns] and said quietly: ‘Thanks to Stalin’. Yes, thanks to him, thought the member of the Military Council, looking at the glistening waters of the Elbe. Thanks to his might mind, iron assurance, incomparable resolve and measureless foresight. To the Party which he fashioned, the Army which he created, the people whom he raised to such great heights, thanks!”
The juxtaposition of very real images as the first two above with the cringe-worthy paeans to the vindictive and power-hungry pedophile Stalin provides a deeper picture of what the Soviet Union was during the final days of World War II—with its heroic and mission driven army focused on its reality and (published in 1949) the underlying political situation waiting in the wings.
A fascinating if objectively flawed book.
The writer, Emmanuil Kazakevich, was of Jewish extraction—interestingly his first name is nowhere mentioned in my book (only “E.” Kazakevich). Born in Ukraine in 1913, he grew up in the Jewish autonomous region of Birobidzhan on the Amur River where he became chairman of a local kolkhoz as well as director of a theatre there. He started writing poems and stories in Yiddish. In 1941, he joined the Red Army for frontier service, moving to becoming assistant director of intelligence for one of the armies moving against Germany and finally becoming involved in the battle for Berlin.
Why this context? Both because it goes to the partly very authentic description of the Soviet Army’s push for Berlin as well as to the author’s having to be even more sensitive to what he can politically write. Thus his description of life of the soldiers in the Red Army’s push west to Berlin in 1944-1945 is believable in many instances—complete with a love interest between a Soviet woman doctor and the underlying (at least partially autobiographical) hero of the book—a leading scout/intelligence officer who shows great daring in getting behind German lines and indefatigable and uncomplaining energy on behalf of the Red Army. At the same time, he is careful at all times to toe the Party line—with Stalin of course being the great man whose brilliance and love of Mother Russia wins everything—but also with the unfailingly positive spirit and gentlemanly demeanor of the Red Army soldiers from all reaches of the Soviet Union as they and they alone liberate Germany. There is thus a constant tension between (1) authentic, war-time experiences as soldiers from across the vast Soviet Union (including Georgians, Tatars, Ukrainians, Russians and citizens of the Soviet far east) all fight together unite to push back the racially arrogant Aryan German and finally take Berlin—no doubt informed by Kazakevich’s own war-time services and (2) the frankly unbelievable (and no doubt necessary) praises of the Great Stalin and the army’s noble solidarity with all working people—including the Germans who the Soviet Army “liberates” on its path to Berlin.
On the whole, this tension is fascinating. Curiously, when seen through the lens of post Soviet nonfiction accounts as well as what I know from the Soviet Army’s rape and pillage across Germany and subsequent whole sale removal of any remaining useful capital equipment from what was to become the DDR to parts East, I believe this book achieves a rare success in what it believably recounts, and what its obvious political pandering in fact implies about what it cannot recount if it is to be published and its author remaining healthy.
Two examples of the two tracts underlying this book are:
Speaking of tired, wounded soldiers now out of the fray: “Artillery rumbled in the distance. The wounded listened to it with a kind of dreamy abnegation, as old men listen to tales of the difficult but golden times of youth.”
And: “The car was speeding along a wet road leaving tyre tracks behind it. Whirls of snow spun in the light of the headlights as if they had been caught by surprise and were dashing aside in panic, leaving new ones to take their place.
BUT:
“The soldier listened again to the stillness [absence of guns] and said quietly: ‘Thanks to Stalin’. Yes, thanks to him, thought the member of the Military Council, looking at the glistening waters of the Elbe. Thanks to his might mind, iron assurance, incomparable resolve and measureless foresight. To the Party which he fashioned, the Army which he created, the people whom he raised to such great heights, thanks!”
The juxtaposition of very real images as the first two above with the cringe-worthy paeans to the vindictive and power-hungry pedophile Stalin provides a deeper picture of what the Soviet Union was during the final days of World War II—with its heroic and mission driven army focused on its reality and (published in 1949) the underlying political situation waiting in the wings.
A fascinating if objectively flawed book.
August 28, 2021
У «Весны на Одере» есть две части. Первая — удостоилась Сталинской премии, вторая — нет, поскольку после смерти Сталина данная премия не вручалась. Но была бы она такой почести удостоена? Вопрос, на который нет необходимости отвечать. Лучше посмотреть, к чему проявили внимание, когда обращались к тексту произведения, считая его достойным ведущей государственной литературной награды. Тогда Казакевич уже успел себя зарекомендовать, написав пронзительную повесть «Звезда», рассказав о том, как погибла группа разведчиков, с самого начала понимавшая — вернуться не получится, но они обязаны добыть ценные сведения. Теперь Эммануил писал на другую тему, говоря о коренном переломе в войне. Вернее, о той стадии, когда падение Третьего Рейха казалось очевидным. Советские солдаты пересекали границу Германии, сами не веря, насколько подобное оказалось возможным. С этого и начинается повествование.
(c) Trounin
(c) Trounin
January 9, 2024
نبذة ومراجعة:-
خلفية تاريخية؛ مسار وثائقي يؤرِّخ مشاهدات وأحداث مرافِقة، سابقة، لاحقة لسقوط (برلين) في إحدى الجولات الختامية من الحرب العالمية الثانية.
قِيَم إنسانية ومبادىء أخلاقية، في مجابهةِ لغة العنف، وأحكام العقيدة العسكرية.
بذرة حُب، تحتضر في جوفِ الرّكام. خراب هائل، يشعل شرارة صراعات داخلية يعلو ضجيجها على دويّ آلة الدّمار. أجسادٌ تذوي، وأرواح تُسحَق أو تُتّخذ دروعاً بشرية تحقيقاً لأجندة حزب يستحوِذ على السُّلْطة.
تكرار الوقوع في فخ الاسهاب واستدعاء حشد من تفاصيل غير مُنتِجة، ما قد يفقد النص قدر من بريقه، رغم الترجمة المُتقَنة، والتي تبرز حِرَفيّة عالية في إدارة الوصف والسرد، وبناء الشخصيات والحوار.
صفحات رديئة الطباعة إلى حد اختفاء جميع الكلمات: 386، 391، 399، 402، 407، 410، 415.
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اقتباسات:-
"الهزائم المؤقّتة لا تحطمنا". (149).
"إنّهم يحبون حبّاً صادقاً عميقاً، ولكن في صمت وهدوء، وغالباً ما يفضلون التعبير عن ذلك بنكتة إنسانية عابرة على الاعترافات الطنّانة". (506).
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صدر في 2020، الطبعة الأولى، عن "المحروسة" للنشر والخدمات الصحفية والمعلومات، بترجمة سعد زهران. يقع الكتاب في (777) صفحة، تضم (3) أجزاء: "الحرس"، "الأعلام البيضاء"، و"في الطريق إلى برلين".
خلفية تاريخية؛ مسار وثائقي يؤرِّخ مشاهدات وأحداث مرافِقة، سابقة، لاحقة لسقوط (برلين) في إحدى الجولات الختامية من الحرب العالمية الثانية.
قِيَم إنسانية ومبادىء أخلاقية، في مجابهةِ لغة العنف، وأحكام العقيدة العسكرية.
بذرة حُب، تحتضر في جوفِ الرّكام. خراب هائل، يشعل شرارة صراعات داخلية يعلو ضجيجها على دويّ آلة الدّمار. أجسادٌ تذوي، وأرواح تُسحَق أو تُتّخذ دروعاً بشرية تحقيقاً لأجندة حزب يستحوِذ على السُّلْطة.
تكرار الوقوع في فخ الاسهاب واستدعاء حشد من تفاصيل غير مُنتِجة، ما قد يفقد النص قدر من بريقه، رغم الترجمة المُتقَنة، والتي تبرز حِرَفيّة عالية في إدارة الوصف والسرد، وبناء الشخصيات والحوار.
صفحات رديئة الطباعة إلى حد اختفاء جميع الكلمات: 386، 391، 399، 402، 407، 410، 415.
---
اقتباسات:-
"الهزائم المؤقّتة لا تحطمنا". (149).
"إنّهم يحبون حبّاً صادقاً عميقاً، ولكن في صمت وهدوء، وغالباً ما يفضلون التعبير عن ذلك بنكتة إنسانية عابرة على الاعترافات الطنّانة". (506).
---
صدر في 2020، الطبعة الأولى، عن "المحروسة" للنشر والخدمات الصحفية والمعلومات، بترجمة سعد زهران. يقع الكتاب في (777) صفحة، تضم (3) أجزاء: "الحرس"، "الأعلام البيضاء"، و"في الطريق إلى برلين".
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews