Volodymyr Gelfand, like many of his peers whose childhood and youth fell in the 1920s and 1930s, was fascinated by the world of words. The digital era was still almost seven decades away. The prospects of traveling beyond the borders of the Soviet Union were as illusory as flights to other planets in the Galaxy. So, the book remained the only way to discover the world and, in part, gave a small hope for one's own self-expression. One can only assume what else motivated the boy from the banks of the Dnieper to compose his first youthful poems. One way or another, at this age, poetic attempts are an integral part of many people's lives, just like first loves, dreams of a heroic future, and life achievements.
As a schoolboy, Volodymyr attended various literary events that took place in pre-war Dnipropetrovsk, which was large and population, but provincial in character. Sometimes he would dare to give his own speeches and, in a youthful way, he acutely perceived both positive reviews and critical remarks about his own works.
We learn about all this from his diary entries, and the diary itself (dozens of school notebooks, notebooks and separate sheets) turned out to be for the young man, and later an adult man, both a kind of confidant and at the same time a magnum opus that he wrote throughout his life.
The pages of the diaries reflected all human experiences, achievements and defeats. Everything is like each of us. However, the background of human history was adversity – the beginning of the German-Soviet war, leaving his hometown and evacuation into the unknown, mobilization into the Red Army and the terrible trials of the war until its end. But, even in such, often inhuman circumstances, dreams of literary creativity and fame did not leave the young man.
After the end of the war and the delayed demobilization in 1947, Volodymyr Gelfand entered the philological department of the Faculty of History and Philology of Dnipropetrovsk State University. The end of the 1940s is an extremely interesting period, because at this time the generation of graduates of 1941 returned to the student ranks, or rather, sat down for the first time, many of whom, like Volodymyr, were burned by the war and the experience of survival, the emotions of victory and the losses of close and combat comrades.
In 1946, Oles Honchar graduated from the university, and simultaneously with his thesis defense, he burst into Ukrainian literature with the first part of his front-line trilogy “The Standard Bearers.” At the end of March 1948, V. Gelfand, describing a meeting of the university’s literary research group, provided in his diary a description of the teacher’s reaction to the news that O. Honchar had been awarded the Stalin Prize (II degree) for the aforementioned “The Standard Bearers”: “And Honchar is our student, he also received 50 thousand. He is glad that he escaped from here. But he loves university so much. Volodymyr was quite critical of the teacher’s reaction, believing that she was trying to bask in the rays of fame of a talented graduate. But, quite possibly, he was offended by the materialistic approach to assessing the literary work of another laureate of that year, Ilya Ehrenburg, who received the prize for the novel “The Tempest”: “Ehrenburg received 100 thousand…”.
For Volodymyr Gelfand, Ilya Ehrenburg is not just a favorite author. He is a certain literary deity with whom he was lucky to live at the same time, and at the same time an unattainable ideal. From the pages of his diary, we see how often Volodymyr evaluates the works of other contemporary writers through the prism of comparison with the work of I. Ehrenburg.
Literary readings and discussions were part of student life at that time. At the same time, another gifted young man with an equally dramatic fate during the war period, Pavlo Zagrebelny, was a student at the faculty, but a year older. A year younger than V. Gelfand, he nevertheless entered university earlier. It can be assumed that they were acquaintances and had repeated contacts. In favor of this assumption, in particular, address notes in V. Gelfand’s notebook, dated early 1948, speak in favor of this assumption: “Dnepropetrovsk. Karl Marx, 121, apt. 78. Zagrebelny Pavel Arkhipovych.”
No less interesting is the newspaper clipping pasted on the first page of the same notebook – a quote from Nikolai Gogol: “A person who writes should not leave his pen, just as a painter should not leave his brush. Let him write something every day. It is necessary that the hand learns to completely obey the thought.” What is this, if not a motivational motto for a young person who so longs for literary recognition?
In 1949, V. Gelfand married Berta Koifman, a girl he had known since the pre-war years and had maintained contact with throughout the war and transferred to the Philological Faculty of Molotov State University.
Already here, a student of the Russian Philology Department, he looks at the work of I. Ehrenburg not only as a reader but also chooses his works as an object for his student literary studies. The thesis is devoted to the analysis of the novel “The Tempest”. While working on it, V. Gelfand receives permission to go on a business trip to Moscow State University to collect materials and work in libraries. However, looking ahead, we can say that this was not the only purpose of the trip. Somewhere deep in his soul, Volodymyr cherished the hope of meeting his literary idol. Moreover, a wonderful occasion appeared – the writer's 60th anniversary.
In preparation for it, V. Gelfand unsuccessfully tried to offer his articles dedicated to Ehrenburg's legacy, contacting the editorial offices of both central Soviet newspapers and regional ones (including Dnipropetrovsk).
However, during a business trip, he decides to take a desperate step – to visit I. Ehrenburg's Moscow apartment. Now, we have not been able to establish how exactly the ambitious student managed to find the address of the classic living of the Soviet period. However, the fact remains – on February 6, 1951, a brief meeting took place.
Unfortunately, in the future, fate was not as kind to V. Gelfand as it was on that day in early February. He never managed to fully realize his passion for literature. Largely due to life circumstances. In 1955, he returned to Dnipropetrovsk, where he lived for the next 28 years. He worked as a teacher of Russian language and literature, and later of history and social studies. He and his family repeatedly became the objects of open anti-Semitic insults and even persecution. In the 1960s and 1970s, V. Gelfand published essays in Russian and Ukrainian in the local press. However, he never managed to create something great and holistic, which he had dreamed of since childhood.
Only thirty years after his death, thanks to the efforts of V. Gelfand's son, Vitaliy, did the first edition of his father's war diaries appear. To this day, they continue to be one of the most candid testimonies of an “ordinary” person about the horrors of war.
On the birthday of Volodymyr Gelfand, we would like to offer our readers a fragment of a diary entry about the meeting with I. Ehrenburg, which meant so much to a 28-year-old young man full of dreams and plans.
Yehor Vradii