Boris Polevoy
Boris Nikolayevich Polevoy, born Boris Kampov, was a Soviet writer, journalist, screenwriter and war correspondent. He was born on 17 March 1908 in Moscow and died on 12 July 1981 in Moscow. He used the pen name Polevoy, a variation derived from translating Latin campus to the Russian pole, meaning field.
He is best known for The Story of a Real Man, a novel about World War II fighter pilot Aleksey Maresyev. The book was very popular and was later turned into an opera by Prokofiev. It was first published in English in 1952 and rereleased in 1970. The hero of the story was honored with an asteroid named after him.
Polevoy came from a family with a legal background and church ties; his father was Nikolay Petrovich Kampov, a lawyer from a Russian Orthodox priest family. He studied at the Tver Industrial Technical College and worked as a technologist at a textile factory before turning to writing. He began his journalism career in 1928 with the support of Maxim Gorky.
During World War II, Polevoy served in the Red Army, eventually reaching the rank of colonel, while also working as a war correspondent for Pravda from the late 1930s to 1945. He reported on the atrocities at Auschwitz after its liberation, one of the first such reports published in Pravda.
Politically, Polevoy was a longtime Communist Party member (from 1940 until his death). He served as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR from 1951 to 1966, was chief editor of the youth magazine Yunost from 1962 until his death, and sat on the board of the Union of Soviet Journalists. He also participated in the Soviet Peace Committee and the World Peace Council.
Polevoy exchanged letters with American writer Howard Fast, who had left the Communist Party. Their correspondence became public, and Polevoy later responded to Fast’s statements.
His work gave him wide influence in Soviet culture; he remained popular with readers throughout his life and held various honors, including Hero of Socialist Labour, Stalin Prize, three Orders of Lenin, two Red Banners, the Red Star, and the Gold Medal of the World Peace Council.
Polevoy was married to Yulia Osipovna in 1939, and they had two sons and a daughter.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 00:24 (CET).