Leonid (Leon) Vilkomir was born in 1912 in old Bukhara (Uzbekistan). His father, Wulf Vilkomir, was a government official. After finishing school, he began to work at the Borets (“The Fighter”) factory. There, he joined the Shturm (“Onslaught”) literary society. In 1930, his poems were published for the first time. In those years, young people in the USSR were encouraged to work on great industrial projects, which were supposed to spearhead the "building of socialism." Swept up by this tide, Vilkomir moved to Nizhniy Tagil (in the Urals), to take part in the construction of a rolling stock factory. He also wrote about the lives of workers in the Ural region for the Tagilskiy Rabochiy (“Worker of Tagil”) newspaper.
In the spring of 1932, he joined the staff of the daily newspaper of the Uralvagonstroi factory. Its editorial board lacked an office, and they had to work in an unheated barrack, which gave virtually no protection from the elements in the harsh winter. Vilkomir wrote and published essays about the Komsomol activists, their everyday work and accomplishments. He also contributed some materials about the “enemies of the people,” the favored targets of Stalin’s repressive social policies. Soon, Vilkomir became the secretary of the editorial board, and hired Anna Lytkina as a typist. He eventually married her.
Because of the rudimentary tools at the board's disposal, the process of publishing the newspaper was very challenging. After the layout, they had to walk to the city of Nizhniy Tagil, regardless of the weather conditions, to print the proofs at the local printing house; then, they had to walk back to the editorial office, check the proofs, and then carry them to the city a second time, to produce the final prints of the issue. Thus, these enthusiasts needed to walk a total of 18 kilometers each day.
Vilkomir was a member of the literary association of Nizhniy Tagil, and he continued to write and publish both newspaper articles and poetry. The reaction of the official critical establishment to his work was not always friendly. Thus, after the assassination of the prominent Soviet politician Sergei Kirov (which would be used by Stalin as a pretext for persecuting his real and imaginary enemies), Vilkomir was strongly criticized for his poem about Kirov. The young poet's work became the subject of a lengthy, hostile article titled “Malicious Traces in Poetry.”
In 1934, Vilkomir enrolled in the Literature Institute as a correspondence student. In 1938, he was drafted into the Red Army, and began to work for the military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (“The Red Star”).
Immediately following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, Vilkomir volunteered for frontline service, and was given the rank of senior political officer. As a war correspondent, he arrived on the Leningrad Front in September 1941. His very first essay from the frontline was titled “On a Dive Bomber,” and it described a true event. He wrote:
“Major Sandalov allowed me to fly a mission aboard a dive bomber. I served as the second gunner. Next to me sits the radio operator. He is protecting the tail, while I am sitting near the machine gun. <…> The fighters accompanying us enter the clouds, to check if there are any enemies lurking there. Having descended, we began to shoot the fascists with our machine guns.”
David Ortenberg, Time Has No Power. Moscow, 1975, p. 291.
Vilkomir believed that, in order to write truthfully about the war, he had to take part in battle and partake of the experiences of the other soldiers. Naturally, this was his own choice, since the newspaper's editorial board did not require its correspondents to get involved in combat. The editor-in-chief of Krasnaya Zvezda, David Ortenberg, recalls that Vilkomir wrote no poetry during the war, focusing exclusively on his work as a frontline correspondent.
In the spring of 1942, Vilkomir was awarded the Order of the Red Star. That was a hard time for the Red Army, which was in retreat on several fronts. That summer, Vilkomir was sent to the city of Novocherkassk in southern Russia, to write about aerial warfare. As he had done many times in the past, he asked the commander of an air regiment for permission to take part in the action. The commander agreed. This time, Vilkomir flew at the head of the formation, accompanied by the most experienced pilot. In the ensuing battle, the plane was shot down, and both men were killed. The date of Vilkomir's death was July 19, 1942.
Related Resources
A poem by Leonid Vilkomir
We will prevail. The words are mine;
Mine is the blue expanse of heaven;
Mine are the trees, the shrubs, the stalks;
And mine are all the doubts and dreams.
So let the earth heave, shake, and toss;
Let it oppress, and rage, and howl —
It will not make me bow my head,
Like a ship's mast amid the storm.
I'll live my life the way I want;
I will soar up like a free bird;
I'll make the eyes behold the heights,
I'll grow like grass beneath the feet.
I'll flood the deserts like a stream,
I'll glitter like a star at sea;
I'll run through mountains like a road.
I'm human, I can do it all!
1941
