The famous film based on his book was released 8 years after the death of the author. He made the name of the writer famous, and then contributed to his mention in many jokes. From the distance of the past years, he is often represented as a thoughtless and cruel fighter for the embodiment of the party line, which acted in the wild both in war and in literature.
Only a careful look will help to discern other facets in the personality of a person by the name of Furmanov. Dmitry Andreevich lived a short life, different from the fate of many contemporaries by the obvious presence of giftedness and similar to them by the need to constantly choose the path to the cruel era of historical change.
Start
He was born in 1891 in a large family in the village of Sereda, Kostroma province. His father came from the Yaroslavl peasants, but was in his own way an enterprising person. When Dmitry was 6 years old, the family moved to Ivanovo-Voznesensk. Soon, a tavern opened at the station, owned by his father, Andrei Semenovich Furmanov. Dmitry Andreevich then recalled the environment surrounding him in childhood as a drunken whirlpool, in which it was easy to disappear.
After Dmitry graduated from the city school in 1903, his father sent him to a trade school, and in 1909-1912 he lived in Kineshma, where he studied at the school. From an early youth, he developed a habit, possibly becoming the main reason for the appearance of a writer by the name of Furmanov. Dmitry Andreevich kept a detailed diary all his life, where he entered the impressions of what he had read, from the people he met. Subsequently, selective spots from it were published and praised by critics for the wealth of literary and historical material.
First experiences
In the newspaper Ivanovsky Listok in 1912, a poem dedicated to the literature teacher of the Kinesham School appeared. This was the first publication under which the signature of “Furmanov” was. Dmitry Andreyevich wrote many poems in his life, especially in his youth, but did not consider himself a poet.
Furmanov’s desire to engage in literary work gradually took shape. This desire made him transfer from the law faculty of Moscow University, where he entered in 1912, to a historical-philological one. The onset of World War I was an event that made learning a matter of secondary importance. The military biography of Furmanov begins. Dmitry Andreevich enlisted as ensign in a medical train, and in 1915 he got to the front.
Political self-determination
Furmanov’s patriotic romanticism, like many, after being aware of the meaning and nature of the war is replaced by disappointment. It is clearly traced in the diary; they are full of Furmanov’s poems appearing on its pages. Dmitry Andreevich is overwhelmed with a premonition of an imminent change in the fate of the country.
After demobilization, he finds himself in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where, as throughout the country, a revolutionary wave is rising. When in February 1917 it sweeps away the autocracy, Furmanov faces the need to choose among a variety of political trends.
The path to Bolshevism
At first he finds himself in the ranks of the Social Revolutionaries, then he becomes the organizer of a group of maximalists. He is convinced that a new world can only be built through the most decisive transformations that allow the use of violent measures against those who cling to the old way of life. At the same time, Furmanov is engaged in regular work in the Council of Workers' Deputies.
The apotheosis of extremely revolutionary views for him is the emergence in the city of anarchist organizations, the leader of which is Furmanov. Dmitry Andreevich, whose biography will later be associated with the Bolshevik party, is finally determined after a meeting and collaboration with Mikhail Frunze, dispelling his latest anarchist illusions.
In 1919, he went with the Frunze detachment to the front, where he was appointed commissar of the 25th division.
Chapaev
When writing his most famous work - “Chapaev”, written in 1923, he uses his diary entries, which he did not stop all the time he spent in the Chapaev’s division. The book is significantly different from the famous film, shot based on its motives in 1934. The combination of harsh realism of the narrative and romantic generalizations, embodied with an amazing skill for the young writer, was highly appreciated by readers and the greatest masters of literature. Gorky noted in a letter to Furmanov the originality of the author’s intention and confidence in its implementation.
Furmanov’s military fate threw him on various fronts of the civil war. Its reflection is novels and novels, marked as major phenomena of Soviet literature of the 20s. The novel "Mutiny" (1925) is dedicated to the suppression of the kulak uprising in Kazakhstan, the story "Red Landing" (1921) describes a unique river raid behind the rear of the white troops in the Kuban.
