Nikolai Nikitin

Nikolai Nikolaevich Nikitin was born on July 27, 1895, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Young Nikitin studied at a Gymnazium in St. Petersburg. From 1914-1918 he studied at the Law Department of St. Petersburg University, then studied at the Department of Philology and History of the same university. At that time he wrote his early poems and prose. From 1918-1919 he served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. In 1920 he resumed literary studies at the seminars of writer Yevgeni Zamyatin.

In 1921 Nikitin joined the literary group Serapionovy Bratya (The Serapion Brothers). The group was initiated in February of 1921, by Yevgeni Zamyatin who professed that "true literature can be created only by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics" at his literary seminars with aspiring writers. They took their name from the story of E.T.A.Hoffmann titled 'Serapion Brothers', which emphasized artistic freedom. The group included Mikhail Zoshchenko, Lev Lunts, Konstantin Fedin, Vladimir Pozner, Viktor Shklovskiy, Mikhail Slonimsky, Vsevolod Ivanov, Elizaveta Polonskaia, Nikolai Tikhonov, and Veniamin Kaverin. The Serapion Brothers was under patronage of critic and writer Yuri Tynyanov. They also attended seminars of Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy. They lived in the famous artistic community known as 'Dom Iskusstv' (House of Arts) in a former aristocratic palace on the Nevsky Prospect in St. Petersburg. The writers of the group were non-conformists and were in opposition to the official Moscow-based Soviet literature. Their leader Yevgeni Zamyatin fearlessly criticized the Soviet policy of "Red Terror" and intimidation of intellectuals. Some writers of the Serapion Brothers' group were under severe criticism and were censored. Nikitin distanced himself from Serapion Brothers and turned to the Soviet official literature and politics.

Nikitin chose to comply with the Soviet official line in literature and served the Soviet propaganda. In 1932 he became a member of the Soviet Writer's Union and joined the Communist party of the USSR. He adopted the methods of "socialist realism" in his writings. He eventually made a political career, inside the Soviet Writers' Union. Nikitin was a friend of Nikolai Tikhonov and Konstantin Fedin, who enjoyed the support of the powerful Soviet politician Andrei Zhdanov, which made them immune from the political attacks on the Soviet intellectuals. Nikitin opposed the writers of younger generation of the 60's at the time of "Thaw" that was initiated by Nikita Khrushchev.

His novel 'Severnaya Avrora' (The Northern Aurora 1950), about the Red Army battles against the Antanta intervention in the Northern Russia during the Russian Civil War, was his best known work. He also worked as a film-writer. Nikitin was awarded the Stalin's Prize in 1951 and received other Soviet awards and decorations. He died on March 26, 1963, in Russia, Soviet Union.