GRANIN, DANIEL ALEKSANDROVICH

GRANIN, DANIEL ALEKSANDROVICH (pseudonym of D.A. German ; 1918– ), Soviet author. Granin, who was born and raised in Petrograd, became an engineer and worked for a number of years at various industrial enterprises. After serving in the Red Army in World War ii, he turned to literature. His favorite theme was the clash between the professional and personal integrity of a scientist or a technocrat and the powerful political pressures exercised by the Communist bureaucracy. Granin's early works include Variant vtoroy ("Second Version," 1949) and the novel Iskateli (1954; Those Who Seek, 1956). The publication of his story Sobstvennoye mnenie ("One's Own Opinion") in 1956 was one of the most significant events of the post-Stalin "thaw." He justified his advocacy of independent thought as serving, in the final analysis, the best interests of the Soviet state. But it provoked the anger of Party bureaucrats because it was taken, not unreasonably, as implying that the party's policy of thought control was harmful to the country. Granin's best-known novel is Idu na grozu (1962; Bison, 1990), which has been credited with providing the best portrait of the world of Soviet scientists. With Ales Adamovich he wrote A Book of the Blockade (1982) about the siege of Leningrad, and with William Styron he edited The Human Experience: Contemporary American and Soviet Fiction and Poetry (1989).

bibliography:

V.M. Akimov et al. (eds.), Russkiye sovetskiye pisateli prozaiki (1959), 571–9, includes bibliography.

[Maurice Friedberg]