20 June 1892
In the Courland province (present-day Latvia), in the family of a teacher, he was born Sergey Tretyakov — Soviet poet and publicist. Founder of the "literature of fact" and documentary theater.
We know the price of sweat,
Bondage and kick,
We grew up working
At the plow and the machine
He became close to the Futurist poets during his student years, while studying law at Moscow University. He considered himself a revolutionary poet and was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. In the summer of 1917, he was elected to the Moscow City Duma.
In 1919, escaping mobilization, he went to Vladivostok, where he published his first book of poems, “Iron Pause.”
He participated in the work of the government of the Far Eastern Republic, which fought against the White Guards and was supported by the Kremlin.
In 1922, he returned to Moscow. Gradually, he abandoned fiction in favor of fact—he began shortening his sentences, switching to slogans, marches, and chants.
Iron and blood have become brothers
They are free to cut the girth of revenge.
And late in the pits the dogs were fighting
Over the delicious meat of soldier's liver
His plays were staged by Meyerhold and Eisenstein. His most popular poem, "Roar, China!"—about the struggle of Chinese dockworkers against British colonialists—was performed worldwide.
In the 20s he became close to Mayakovsky and collaborated with the magazine LEF (Left Front of the Arts).
He lectured on Russian literature at Peking University. In Europe, he encountered Brecht and was one of the first to translate him into Russian.
He traveled extensively around the country, campaigning for Soviet power and publishing reports about peasants and workers.
In July 1937, he was arrested in the Kremlin hospital as a "Japanese spy." He confessed to 13 years of espionage, allegedly passing on to agents materials from his travels around the country and photographs of factories and plants.
He was executed on September 10, at the age of 45. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.
Tretyakov's testimony was not verified during the investigation. There is no objective evidence of guilt in the case.
(from the rehabilitation certificate)
But there will be nothing to shoot and cut,
And the earth will thunder, as if spitting: away, you!
And the iron will become crumbly ore,
And the rebels will become the fat of the soil.