Kozakov, Mikhail Emmanuilovich

M. E. Kozakov was born at the Romodan station in the Poltava province (now Mirgorod district of the Poltava region of Ukraine ) into a Jewish family. In early childhood, he lived in Crimea , where his father worked as a weigher in the port of Feodosia ; He spent his school years in Lubny , where in 1916 he graduated from high school. He studied at the University of Kiev for a short time at the medical and then law faculties (1916-1917).

In January 1919 he was appointed Commissioner of Labor of the Executive Committee of the Council of Workers' Deputies of the city of Lubny , where his mother, Matilda Mironovna Kozakova, lived at that time; became an employee of the editorial board of local Izvestia and a correspondent for the ROSTA telegraph agency. During the offensive of Denikin’s army in August of that year, he was appointed responsible for the evacuation of the local population, accompanied the evacuees to Kazan as a train commissar, where in 1920 he resumed his studies at a local university . In 1921 he came to Petrograd , and already there in 1922 he graduated from the law faculty of the university .

Started as a journalist; made his debut with stories in 1923 (Sanka in the Young Proletariat, Three Days in the Literary Weekly). In 1924, the first collection of short stories, “Popugaev Happiness,” appeared, in which “the addiction coming from A. Remizov to the sophistication of narrative technique, for example, to the author’s interference in the process of narration, unusual metaphors, and removal by means of syntax” ^[2] . Kozakov was repeatedly criticized for "formalism." In the 20s, he was a member of the literary group "Commonwealth" (N. Barshev, M. Borisoglebsky, N. Brown , M. Komissarova, B. Lavrenev , P. Medvedev , I. Oksenov , Vs. Sun Rozhdestvensky , A. Sventitsky, A Chapygin, D. Chetverikov and others).

Throughout the 1920s he published the novels The Tradesman Adameiko, One and a half cad (both - 1927), The Man Falling on His Face (1929, on the phenomenon of anti-Semitism ), several collections of short stories. In the 1930s, he was editor-in-chief of the journal Literary Contemporary , an employee of the newspaper Literary Leningrad . In 1932, according to his script, the film “ Brilliant Career ” was shot ( Lensoyuzkino , director - V. A. Brown ). One of the authors of the book " Channel named after Stalin " (1934).

He wrote about 10 plays, including “When I Alone” (1934, banned as “ideologically harmful” by decree Central Committee of the RCP (B.) dated September 14, 1940), “Chekists” (1939, staged at the Leningrad theaters named after Pushkin and the Leningrad City Council), “Daria” (1942), “The Lark sings” (1943), “ The Island of Great Hopes ”,“ Golden Hoop ”,“ Crime on Marat Street ”(last three - 1945 and together with A. B. Mariengof ) and“ Frantic Vissarion ”(1948) about V. G. Belinsky . The staging of the Golden Hoop directed by S. A. Mayorov opened in 1946 at the Spartakovskaya Theater (later the Moscow Drama Theater on Malaya Bronnaya ). The production of Crimes on Marat Street at the Komissarzhevskaya Theater was stopped by a special resolution in 1946. The Island of Great Expectations was staged in 1951 by G. A. Tovstonogov at the Lenin Komsomol Leningrad Theater.

The main work of M. К. Kozakov is the novel “The Collapse of the Empire” (1956), originally published in four parts in 1929-1939 under the title “Nine Points”. This is a lengthy narrative in which the events of 1913-1917 are set out in a manner combining documentary and fiction . Completely and in a revised form, it was first published only after the death of the writer and remained almost unnoticed by criticism.

"Roman Kozakova in the ideological, social, historical plan is based on ... Lenin's interpretation of the events of the February revolution"

- Konstantin Fedin ^[3]

In the postwar years he wrote historical novels “Petrograd Days” and “Moscow Days”, the novel “Residents of this city”, published posthumously.

Son (from a second marriage with editor Zoya Aleksandrovna Nikitina, nee Gatskevich, 1902-1973) - actor and director Mikhail Kozakov (1934-2011).

• Popugaevo happiness (storybook). Leningrad, 1924
• One and a half boor. Leningrad: Thought, 1926
• The human nook (storybook). Leningrad, 1926
• The story of the dwarf Max. Leningrad, 1926
• Tradesman Adameiko: a story. Leningrad: Workshop "Surf", 1927
• Selected Works: vols. I — IV. Leningrad: Surf, 1929-1931
• The man is prostrating: novels and stories (The man, prostrating himself; Suicide bombers; The tale of the dwarf Max; Kuprikchaevskaya apartment). Leningrad: Surf, 1930
• Nine points: novel, book I (Selected Works, vol. 4). Leningrad: Surf, 1930, with reprints; I and II parts - 1934; III part - 1936; IV part - 1939
• Residents of this city: a novel. Moscow: Young Guard, 1955
• The collapse of the empire: a novel in 4 parts. Moscow: Izvestia, 1956 and 1963 (in 2 vols.), Moscow: Fiction, 1986; Tashkent, 1989 (in 2 vols.)

• Kozakovs: Three-Michael-Three. Tales and stories. Moscow: Rutena, 1999
• Favorites. Series "Domestic Prose". Moscow: Goodyal Press, 2002

• I. Vinogradov. Deepening the topic: on the work of M. Kozakov. Institute of Literature and Art, Leningrad Branch. Writers Publishing House in Leningrad, 1934

• Kozakov, Mikhail Emanuelovich // Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 30 vol.] / Ch. ed. A.M. Prokhorov . - 3rd ed. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978.
• Kozakov, Mikhail Emmanuilovich // Brief Literary Encyclopedia / Ch. ed. A.A. Surkov . - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia , 1962-1978.
• Alfred Griber. "About life, about people and about yourself." Mikhail Emanuelovich Kozakov
• Review of the book by Mikhail Emanuelovich Kozakov “Favorites” in the journal “People of the Book in the World of Books”
• Mikhail Kozakov “The collapse of the empire”