Arkady Gaidar

Arkady Petrovich Gaidar (, born Golikov, ; – 26 October 1941) was a Russian Soviet writer, whose stories were very popular among Soviet children, and a Red Army commander.

Biography Gaidar was born in the town of Lgov, Kursk Governorate, Russian Empire (now in Kursk Oblast, Russia), to a family of teachers of Russian aristocratic descent.

In 1918, Golikov applied for Communist Party membership and started working for the local newspaper Molot as a correspondent. In August 1918, he became a party member and in December volunteered for the Red Army, having lied about his age. In January 1919, Golikov went to the front as a Special Unit commander's adjutant, to fight what Soviet biographies referred to as the 'kulak gangs'.

Fresh from the 7th Moscow Red Commanders' courses, Gaidar went to the Ukrainian (later Polish) front as a company commander. In December 1919, injured and shell-shocked, he was demobilised, but in March 1920 returned to the Red Army, to the Caucasian Front's 9th Army, 37th Kuban Division, as a company commander again. In summer 1920, Gaidar took part in operations against the units of generals Geyman and Zhitikov.

In 1921, Gaidar participated in the suppression of several anti-communist uprisings, among them Antonovshchina where he personally killed many innocent local residents in brutal ways and suffered nightmares afterwards as a result . In 1922, he was moved to the Mongolian border (where the Red Army was fighting White Army units led by colonels Oliferov and Solovyov), but later that year he was hospitalised with traumatic neuroses. He retired from the army in 1924 due to a contusion.

As the Great Patriotic War broke out, Gaidar was sent to the front as a special correspondent for the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. In the fall of 1941, Gaidar and other soldiers were surrounded by German troops. He joined the partisans and became a machine gunner. On 26 October, Gaidar was killed in combat near the village of Lipliave. He was buried in the town of Kaniv.

Literary work In 1925, Gaidar's debut novel In the Days of Defeats and Victories was published, followed by Life For Nothing and The Mystery of a Mountain, a sci-fi novel and, most notably, R.V.S. (1925) which formed a blueprint for his career as a children's writer, telling stories of front-line camaraderie and the romanticism of the revolutionary struggle. "The Blue Cup" (:ru:Голубая чашка), 1936 Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1988. The Drummer's Fate , 1939 Blue Stars (1939) "Smoke in the Forest" (Дым в лесу), 1939 Chuk and Gek , 1939 Timur and His Squad , 1940

English translations

Timur and his Gang, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, 1943. School and Other Stories, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1967. The Blue Cup, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1981. Selected Stories, Raduga Publishers, Moscow, 1986. The Drummer Boy and Two Other Stories, Hutchinson's Books for Young People, London, 1947. Chuk and Gek, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973.

Recognition and remembrance Gaidar was awarded two orders and several medals. This an abbreviation of French "Golikov Arkady d ' Arsamas", which means "Golikov, Arkady from Arzamas". Arkady took the name Gaidar from a Khakas language word meaning going first, the leader. Another version is that the name comes from the Khakas word for "Where is?" which is the question Gaidar would shout as he and his unit went from village to village in the Yenisei River region tracking down (and eventually killing) the Cossack hetman he was pursuing during the Civil War.

Family Arkady Gaidar's father, Pyotr Isidorovich Golikov, a teacher (after the 1917 Revolution a Red Army commissar), came from a working-class family. His mother, Natalya Arkadyevna Golikova (née Salkova), also a teacher (after the Revolution a doctor), was a daughter of a Tsarist Army officer. Arkady was the first of the couple's four children. His three sisters were Natalya, Olga and Yekaterina.

Maria Gaidar (born 1982), Russian activist, is a daughter of Yegor Gaidar.