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Daniil Granin: “The pain of truth is more important than the dubious bliss of ignorance”
January 1, 2020 marks the 101st anniversary of the birth of the classic of modern Russian literature, the thinker, siege survivor and front-line soldier Daniil Granin. The outgoing 2019 was declared the Year of Granin; On the eve of the centenary of the writer, President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed a decree On perpetuating the memory of Daniil Granin and celebrating the centenary anniversary of his birth. The Presidential Library’s portal features an electronic version of this document.
The Presidential Library’s portal also provides the collection Daniil Granin (1919–2017), prepared for the centenary anniversary of the writer. It includes official documents, texts of individual works, photographs and video materials which spotlight the writer's social activities, as well as a documentary based on the story of Daniil Granin about years lived, about the war, and about his career. Part of the collection “Daniil Granin (1919–2017)” was a lecture within the framework of “Knowledge of Russia” series On the war and victory in the language of the book (Olga Bergholz and authors of “The Blockade Book”) and “Presentation of Daniil Granin’s book “A Stranger’s Diary” (2018)”.
Daniil Granin’s life was full of many things. He had a rule to tell the truth, no matter what he wrote. And not to give up, defending those ideals that he shared with the heroes of his documentary and feature works.
Here he comes back from the war, which he volunteered for, having the Kirov factory’s reservation — talented engineers always had a special account with the defence industry. He did not begin to write about the front immediately, only when it got a little sick, he let go of the experience there. In 1968, the story “Our Combat” was published - and was greeted with hostility by critics, so much it did not look like the prose of war, traditional for those years. “Warless” looks both in the novel “Claudius Vilor” and in the novel “My Lieutenant”.
Returning from the war as the commander of a company of heavy tanks, Granin initially worked in the field of energy, was about to sit down for a dissertation. The novice writer did not have to “study the material”, starting to write the scientific and production novels “Seekers” and “Going to a Thunderstorm”, which became cult for several generations of Soviet technical intelligentsia. The main topic for Granin was the moral problems of scientific and technical creativity, and not the intensification and pursuit of the plan at any cost.
Granin wrote a brilliant series of documentary works about scientists. A great literary event was the release in 1987 of the story "Bison" about the life and work of the geneticist N. V. Timofeev-Resovsky. Granin personally knew his hero, admired his powerful intellect, "talent", courage and an unconventional look at what was happening.
The hero of the story Nikolai Vladimirovich once jokingly told Granin that he had gone to science “because at that time there were few of these parasites, scientists, and they did not bring much harm to their own country”. He himself lived a great bright life, creating his own scientific school.
After the release of The Blockade Book (1977–1981), Granin and Adamovich were acknowledged the main writers of this tragic page in the history of the war. The authors on documentary material tried to honestly and without cuts illustrate in it the life in Leningrad during the 900-day siege. Not all of what was written was managed to be published in Soviet times, and it was only in 1988 that the Forbidden Chapter from this book was printed.
When Granin and Adamovich began this work, they did not have a firm belief that it would be printed. There was only an irresistible need to tell people the truth about the events of 1941-1944: “The only thing we were sure of was the intrinsic value of the “material”, which determined the character itself and the genre of the book,- the co-authors noted. - You should always be prepared for the fact that, collecting “stones” of truth about yourself and about your time, you prepare them for yourself. But this is how a person works - the pain of truth, all truth for him, is ultimately more important, more expensive than the dubious “bliss” of ignorance or lies”.
Daniil Granin attended the Presidential Library many times. He got the reader’s card as early as June 2011. He talked with the specialists of the institution, shared his creative plans, and discussed current problems of the society. In 2013, an interview film with the writer “Time to Remember. Daniil Granin" was shot at the Academic Council hall.
In December 2018, as part of activities to perpetuate memory, prepare and celebrate the centenary anniversary of the birth of Daniil Granin, the comprehensive event “Daniil Granin and the Youth” was held. a video lecture and a presentation of the book of St. Petersburg University of the Humanities and Social Studies “Daniil Granin and the Youth: University Texts” were arranged. On the same day, the electronic exhibition “Daniil Granin and the Youth” was opened in the Presidential Library. The converted into digital format photographs depict the writer during the presentation of his books My Lieutenant, Faddies of My Memory, Intellectuals and Evenings with Peter the Great. The exposition is available on the Presidential Library’s portal.