Boris Suchkov

Suchkov, Boris Leont’evich 

Born July 23 (Aug. 5), 1917, in Saratov; died Dec. 2, 1974, in Budapest; buried in Moscow. Russian literary scholar. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1968). Member of the CPSU from 1941.

A 1938 graduate of the V. I. Lenin Moscow Pedagogical Institute, Suchkov was first published in 1940. He took part in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. Between 1967 and 1974 he served as director of the Gorky Institute of World Literature.

Suchkov’s works deal with theoretical problems of realism. His History of Realism: Reflections on the Creative Method (1967) was translated into many languages. In several other works, Suchkov brought to light some characteristic tendencies of 20th-century literature—for example, in Visages of Our Time: F. Kafka, S. Zweig, H. Fallada, T. Mann, L. Feuchtwanger (1969) and in articles about E. M. Remarque, K. Hamsun, and M. Proust. Suchkov won the State Prize of the USSR (1975) and was awarded two orders.

WORKS

“Leninskoe nasledie i razvitie literatury.” In Lenin i sovremennaia nauka, book 1. Moscow, 1970.
“Velikii russkii pisatel’.” In Dostoevskii—khudozhnik i myslitel’. Moscow, 1972.
“Sotsialisticheskii realizm segodnia.” In the collection Kontekst 1974. Moscow, 1975.

REFERENCES

Knipovich, E. “Istoricheskie epokhi i realizm.” Pravda, Jan. 16, 1968.
Knipovich, E. “Glavnoe napravlenie.” Literalurnaia gazela, Sept. 3, 1975.
Toper, P. “Tsel’nost’ kontseptsii.” Znamia, 1970, no. 3.
Samarin, R. “Tsennoe issledovanie.” Kommunist, 1970, no. 10.
Naumann, M. “Realismus und Geschichte.” Sinn and Form, 1973, fasc. 6.

F. S. NARKIR’ER