Ivan

Lendl, Ivan, 1960-, Czech-American tennis player. After leading Czechoslovakia to its only Davis Cup championship (1980), he moved to the United States, and became one of the dominant singles players in professional tennis during the 1980s. Lendl was noted for his powerful forehand and serve and for his steely court demeanor, a marked contrast with the behavior of his early rivals Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe. He won eight major titles (the French Open in 1984 and 1986-87, the U.S. Open in 1985-87, and the Australian Open in 1989-90), among a total of 94 professional tour victories.

Vazov, Ivan, 1850-1921, Bulgarian poet, novelist, and playwright, the first professional man of letters in Bulgaria. His work was inspired by the political upheavals of the period from 1890 to 1920 and by indignation over the sufferings of his countrymen before their liberation from Turkish rule. Under Our Heaven (1900), Songs of Macedonia (1914), and It Will Not Perish (1920) contain some of his best poetry. His novel Under the Yoke (1893, tr. 1893) is internationally famous. Vagabonds (1894) is his best-known play. Among his other works are the novels New Country (1894) and The Empress of Kazalar (1902) and the plays Borislav (1909) and Ivaylo (1911). Vazov's patriotic views forced him to flee Bulgaria many times.

Gundulić, Ivan, or Giovanni Gondola, 1588-1638, Croatian poet. Born in Ragusa (Dubrovnik) of an aristocratic Dalmatian family, he became chief magistrate of Ragusa. In his early work he imitated Italian models. His greatest work, the epic poem Osman (1626), concerning the Polish wars against the Turks, reveals early Slavic nationalism and shows the influence of ancient native song. Possessing great lyric ability, Gundulić was considered the foremost figure of the South Slav literary renaissance.

Franko, Ivan, 1856-1916, Ukrainian writer and nationalist. His realistic novels Boryslav Laughs (1881-82) and Boa Constrictor (1878, tr. 1961) portray the harsh existence of Ukrainian workers and peasants. Franko was an ardent political radical who sought to inspire Ukrainian nationalism in works such as Zakhar Berkut (1883, tr. 1944), which deals with Ukrainian history. He treated social and psychological problems in Basis of Society (1895) and the autobiographical In the Sweat of the Brow (1890). Franko's poetic works include poems on social themes as well as purely lyrical poetry (Withered Leaves, 1896) and philosophical contemplations (Semper Tiro, 1906). In Death of Cain (1889) and Moses (1905), Franko draws an analogy between the Israelite search for a homeland and the Ukrainian desire for independence. His dramatic masterpiece is Stolen Happiness (1893). Franko's works, numbering more than 1,000, include volumes of history, criticism, ethnography, politics, and translation.

Cankar, Ivan, 1876-1918, Slovenian poet. Considered one of the great Slovenian literary figures, he was influential in the development of modern satire, symbolic drama, and the psychological novel. The struggle of the outcast poor is a theme of his satirical novel Yerney's Justice (1907, tr. 1926) and many other works. Cankar also wrote satires on politics and culture.

Mĕstrović, Ivan, 1883-1962, Croatian-American sculptor, b. Vrpolje, Croatia (then in Austria-Hungary). He was a shepherd and then an apprentice to a marble cutter, and at 17 he begam attending the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. His figures and reliefs were strongly influenced by Rodin and classical Greek sculpture, and his major works are usually austere and monolithic. Many of Mĕstrović's sculptures are of biblical scenes and other religious subjects, often in wood, bronze, or marble. He also portrayed figures out of Yugoslav history and folklore, and designed a number of churches and other structures. He lived in various European cities before immigrating (1947) to the United States, where he taught at Syracuse (1947-55) and Notre Dame (1955-62) universities, and became (1954) a U.S. citizen.

Mazepa, Ivan, c.1640-1709, Cossack hetman [leader] in the Russian Ukraine. He was made hetman (1687) on the insistence of Prince Gallitzin, adviser to the Russian regent, Sophia Alekseyevna, and he aided Gallitzin in his campaign against the Tatars (1689). Mazepa was able for some years to maintain Ukrainian autonomy while keeping good relations with Czar Peter I. Under Mazepa's direction, churches were built and libraries and educational institutions were established. He did not, however, attain his goal of uniting all Ukrainian lands (see Ukraine) with his territory, which lay on the left bank of the Dnieper River. Eventually, Peter's harsh demands on Ukraine threatened Cossack autonomy. When the Northern War between Russia and Sweden began (1700), the hetman established secret contact with pro-Swedish elements in Poland. Peter, who trusted Mazepa, refused to believe reports of his treason. In 1708, however, Mazepa openly joined Charles XII of Sweden when the latter's army advanced into Ukraine. The hetman found himself with few enthusiastic followers in this venture; most Ukrainian Cossacks remained loyal to the czar. After the Swedish defeat at Poltava (1709), Mazepa and Charles fled to Bender, where Mazepa died. According to a legend, Mazepa, in his youth, was tied to the back of a wild horse and sent into the steppes by a jealous husband. This legend was described in Lord Byron's poem, Mazeppa.

(born Nov. 9, 1818, Oryol, Russia—died Sept. 3, 1883, Bougival, near Paris, France) Russian novelist, poet, and playwright. His years at the University of Berlin convinced him of the West's superiority and the need for Russia to Westernize. He lived in Europe after circa 1862. He is known for realistic, affectionate portrayals of the Russian peasantry and for penetrating studies of the Russian intelligentsia who were attempting to move the country into a new age. His most famous early work is “The Diary of a Superfluous Man” (1850), which supplied the epithet “superfluous man” for the weak-willed intellectual protagonist common in 19th-century Russian literature. He gained fame with the short-story cycle A Sportman's Sketches (1852), which criticizes serfdom. His dramatic masterpiece, A Month in the Country (1855), and the novel Rudin (1856) followed. His interest in change and intergenerational differences is reflected in the controversial Fathers and Sons (1862), his greatest novel. Turgenev's work is distinguished from that of his contemporaries by its sophisticated lack of hyperbole, its balance, and its concern for artistic values. His greatest work was always topical, committed literature, having universal appeal in the elegance of the love story and the psychological acuity of the portraiture.

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(born Sept. 26, 1849, Ryazan, Russia—died Feb. 27, 1936, Leningrad) Russian physiologist. He is known chiefly for the concept of the conditioned reflex. In his classic experiment, he found that a hungry dog trained to associate the sound of a bell with food salivated at the sound even in the absence of food. He expanded on Charles Sherrington's explanation of the spinal reflex. He also tried to apply his laws to human psychoses and language function. His ability to reduce a complex situation to a simple experiment and his pioneering studies relating human behaviour to the nervous system laid the basis for the scientific analysis of behaviour. After the Russian Revolution, he became an outspoken opponent of the communist government. He won a 1904 Nobel Prize for his work on digestive secretions.

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(born Dec. 28, 1897, Lodeino, near Veliky Ustyug, Russia—died May 21, 1973, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Soviet general in World War II. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Konev led the first counterattack of the war. He defeated Heinz Guderian's advance on Moscow and halted large German forces in 1942 and 1943. In 1944 his army was the first to march onto German soil; with the forces of Georgy K. Zhukov, it captured Berlin. After the war he served as commander in chief of Soviet ground forces (1946–50) and later of Warsaw Pact forces (1955–60).

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Russian Ivan Vasilyevich known as Ivan the Terrible

(born Aug. 25, 1530, Kolomenskoye, near Moscow—died March 18, 1584, Moscow) Grand prince of Moscow (1533–84) and first tsar of Russia (1547–84). Crowned tsar in 1547 after a long regency (1533–46), he embarked on wide-ranging reforms, including a centralized administration, church councils that systematized the church's affairs, and the first national assembly (1549). He also instituted reforms to limit the powers of the boyars. After conquering Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556), he engaged in an unsuccessful war to control Livonia, fighting against Sweden and Poland (1558–83). After the defeat and the suspected treason of several Russian boyars, Ivan formed an oprichnina, a territory separate from the rest of the state and under his personal control. With a large bodyguard, he withdrew into his own entourage and left Russia's management to others. At the same time, he instituted a reign of terror, executing thousands of boyars and ravaging the city of Novgorod. During the 1570s he married five wives in nine years, and, in a fit of rage, he murdered his son Ivan, his only viable heir, in 1581.

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known as Ivan the Great

(born Jan. 22, 1440, Moscow—died Oct. 27, 1505, Moscow) Grand prince of Moscow (1462–1505). Determined to enlarge the territory he inherited from his father, Ivan led successful military campaigns against the Tatars in the south (1458) and east (1467–69). He subdued Novgorod (1478) and gained control of most of the remainder of Great Russia by 1485. He also renounced Moscow's subjection to the khan of the Golden Horde (1480) and won a final victory over the khan's sons in 1502. Stripping the boyars of much of their authority, he laid the administrative foundations of a centralized Russian state. Ivan IV the Terrible was his grandson.

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Russian Ivan Antonovich

(born Aug. 23, 1740, St. Petersburg, Russia—died July 16, 1764, Shlisselburg Fortress, near St. Petersburg) Infant emperor of Russia (1740–41). The grandnephew of Empress Anna, Ivan was proclaimed her heir and then emperor, with his mother as regent, when he was only eight weeks old. In 1741 they were deposed by Elizabeth, daughter of Peter I, and for the next 20 years he remained in solitary confinement in various prisons. In 1764, when an army officer tried to free Ivan to restore him to power and remove Catherine II, who had seized the throne in 1762, Ivan was assassinated by his jailers.

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Russian Ivan Alekseyevich

(born Sept. 6, 1666, Moscow, Russia—died Feb. 8, 1696, Moscow) Nominal tsar of Russia (1682–96).When his brother Tsar Fyodor III died, Ivan, a mentally deficient chronic invalid, was proclaimed coruler with his half brother Peter I, with Ivan's sister Sophia as regent. After Sophia's overthrow in 1689, Ivan was allowed to retain his official position, though he never participated in governmental affairs, devoting the bulk of his time to prayer, fasting, and pilgrimages.

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(born Dec. 28, 1897, Lodeino, near Veliky Ustyug, Russia—died May 21, 1973, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Soviet general in World War II. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Konev led the first counterattack of the war. He defeated Heinz Guderian's advance on Moscow and halted large German forces in 1942 and 1943. In 1944 his army was the first to march onto German soil; with the forces of Georgy K. Zhukov, it captured Berlin. After the war he served as commander in chief of Soviet ground forces (1946–50) and later of Warsaw Pact forces (1955–60).

Learn more about Konev, Ivan (Stepanovich) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Nov. 9, 1818, Oryol, Russia—died Sept. 3, 1883, Bougival, near Paris, France) Russian novelist, poet, and playwright. His years at the University of Berlin convinced him of the West's superiority and the need for Russia to Westernize. He lived in Europe after circa 1862. He is known for realistic, affectionate portrayals of the Russian peasantry and for penetrating studies of the Russian intelligentsia who were attempting to move the country into a new age. His most famous early work is “The Diary of a Superfluous Man” (1850), which supplied the epithet “superfluous man” for the weak-willed intellectual protagonist common in 19th-century Russian literature. He gained fame with the short-story cycle A Sportman's Sketches (1852), which criticizes serfdom. His dramatic masterpiece, A Month in the Country (1855), and the novel Rudin (1856) followed. His interest in change and intergenerational differences is reflected in the controversial Fathers and Sons (1862), his greatest novel. Turgenev's work is distinguished from that of his contemporaries by its sophisticated lack of hyperbole, its balance, and its concern for artistic values. His greatest work was always topical, committed literature, having universal appeal in the elegance of the love story and the psychological acuity of the portraiture.

Learn more about Turgenev, Ivan (Sergeyevich) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Sept. 26, 1849, Ryazan, Russia—died Feb. 27, 1936, Leningrad) Russian physiologist. He is known chiefly for the concept of the conditioned reflex. In his classic experiment, he found that a hungry dog trained to associate the sound of a bell with food salivated at the sound even in the absence of food. He expanded on Charles Sherrington's explanation of the spinal reflex. He also tried to apply his laws to human psychoses and language function. His ability to reduce a complex situation to a simple experiment and his pioneering studies relating human behaviour to the nervous system laid the basis for the scientific analysis of behaviour. After the Russian Revolution, he became an outspoken opponent of the communist government. He won a 1904 Nobel Prize for his work on digestive secretions.

Learn more about Pavlov, Ivan (Petrovich) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Oct. 10, 1870, Voronezh, Russia—died Nov. 8, 1953, Paris, France) Russian poet and novelist. He worked as a journalist and clerk while writing and translating poetry, but he made his name as a short-story writer, with such masterpieces as the h1 story of The Gentleman from San Francisco (1916). His other works include the novella Mitya's Love (1925), the collection Dark Avenues, and Other Stories (1943), fictional autobiography, memoirs, and books on Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov. He was the first Russian awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1933) and is among the best stylists in the language.

Learn more about Bunin, Ivan (Alekseyevich) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Oct. 10, 1870, Voronezh, Russia—died Nov. 8, 1953, Paris, France) Russian poet and novelist. He worked as a journalist and clerk while writing and translating poetry, but he made his name as a short-story writer, with such masterpieces as the h1 story of The Gentleman from San Francisco (1916). His other works include the novella Mitya's Love (1925), the collection Dark Avenues, and Other Stories (1943), fictional autobiography, memoirs, and books on Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov. He was the first Russian awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1933) and is among the best stylists in the language.

Learn more about Bunin, Ivan (Alekseyevich) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Ivan's Childhood (Иваново детство, Ivanovo detstvo), sometimes released as My Name Is Ivan in the US, is a 1962 Russian film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It is based on the 1957 short story Ivan (Иван) by Vladimir Bogomolov, with the screenplay written by Mikhail Papava and an uncredited Andrei Tarkovsky. The film features child actor Nikolai Burlyayev, Valentin Zubkov, Yevgeni Zharikov, Stepan Krylov, Nikolai Grinko and Tarkovsky's wife Irma Raush.

The film tells the story of orphan boy Ivan and his childhood during World War II. His family was killed by German soldiers. He escapes and is adopted by a unit of the Soviet army on the Eastern front. He is adamant to fight on the front line, and taking advantage of his small size, is able to get reconnaissance jobs that require him to cross the front line. Ivan's Childhood was one of several Soviet films of the late 1950s, such as The Cranes Are Flying and Ballad of a Soldier, that looked at the human cost of war and did not glorify the war experience as did films produced before the Khrushchev Thaw.

Ivan's Childhood was Tarkovsky's first feature film and won him critical acclaim and made him known internationally. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1962 and the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1962. Famous filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman, Sergei Parajanov and Krzysztof Kieślowski praised the film and cited it as an influence on their work.

Plot

The background of Ivan’s Childhood is the Eastern front during World War II, when the Soviet army was fighting the invading German Wehrmacht. The film features a non-linear plot with frequent flashbacks.

At the centre of the story is Ivan (Nikolai Burlyayev), a 12 year old Russian boy. Through a series of dream sequences and conversations between different characters it is revealed that Ivan’s parents and his sister have been killed by German soldiers. He however got away and joined a group of partisans. Sometime later the group was trapped in a forest surrounded by German troops. To keep Ivan out of their hands they put him on a plane. After the escape he was sent to a boarding school. But he ran away and joined an army unit under the command of Gryaznov (Nikolai Grinko).

In the army unit Ivan is adamant to fight on the front line. Taking advantage of his small size he is able to get reconnaissance jobs for which grownups would be unsuitable. Ultimately Gryaznov and the other soldiers want to send him to a military school. They give up their idea as Ivan resists being send away from the front line, up to the point where he tries to run away from the army unit and join the partisans. The film also reveals that the reasons for Ivan’s determination to fight is his desire to avenge the death of his family.

The film also depicts the lives of the soldiers that Ivan meets, and a subplot involves the romantic life of Kholin (Valentin Zubkov) and his hopeless advances towards the army nurse Masha (Valentina Malyavina). Much of the film is set in an army dugout where the officers await orders, fearing death, planning assaults and talking apparent trivia while Ivan impatiently and nervously awaits his next reconnaissance mission.

Towards the end of the film, the soldiers and Ivan attempt a dangerous reconnaissance over the front line. As Ivan goes ahead of the group he disappears without a trace. The final scenes of the film then switch to Berlin under Soviet occupation after the fall of the Third Reich. One of Ivan's former officer friends finds a Nazi prison where a document shows that Ivan was caught and executed by the Germans. As the officer reaches the execution room, we see a final flashback of Ivan's childhood: Ivan runs across a beach after his sister in beautiful sunlight. The film's final image is that of a dead tree on the beach.

Production

Ivan's Childhood was Tarkovsky's first feature film, shot two years after his diploma film The Steamroller and the Violin. The film is based on the 1957 short story Ivan (Иван) by Vladimir Bogomolov, which was translated into more than twenty languages. It drew the attention of the screenwriter Mikhail Papava, who changed the story line and made Ivan more of a hero. Papava called his screenplay Second Life (Вторая жизнь, Vtoraya Zhisn). In this screenplay Ivan is not executed, but sent to the concentration camp Majdanek, from where he is freed by the advancing Soviet army. The final scene of this screenplay shows Ivan meeting one of the officers of the army unit in a train compartment. Bogomolov, who is not satisfied with this ending, intervenes and the screenplay is changed to the original version of Bogomolov.

Mosfilm gave the screenplay to the young film director Eduard Abalov. Shooting was aborted and the film project was terminated in December 1960, since the first version of the film drew heavy criticism from the arts council, and the quality was deemed unsatisfactory and unusable. In June 1961 the film project was given to Tarkovsky, who had applied for it after being told about Ivan's Childhood by cinematographer Vadim Yusov. Work on the film resumed in the same month. The film was shot for the most part near Kaniv at the Dnieper River.

Tarkovsky continued his collobaration with cinematographer Vadim Yusov, who was the cameraman in Tarkovsky's diploma film The Steamroller and the Violin. Nikolai Burlyayev had played a role in Andrei Konchalovsky's student film The Boy and the Pigeon. Konchalovsky was a friend and fellow student of Tarkovsky at the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), and thus Burlyayev was also cast for the role of Ivan. He had to pass several screen tests, but according to Burlyayev it is unclear whether anyone else auditioned for the role.

Political Context and Political Protest

Tarkovsky made Ivan's Childhood in the social and political context of Stalinist purges (murders) being in recent memory. At the time of the making of Ivan's Childhood, the purges had been replaced by imprisonment for artists who exercised artistic freedom or freedom of speech. They were banished to gulags in Siberia.

Tarkovsky included overt political protest in the first instant of Ivan. Like Columbia Pictures in America, with its logo of the statue lady liberty and heroic music preceding each film, Soviet films started with the Mosfilm image of a cheap statuette rotating on a turntable, normally with equally heroic music. The Mosfilm rotating statuette (pictured at right) had a heroically posed male and female holding a hammer and sickle, as archetypal iconic Communists. The film begins with an idyllic forest scene, with coo-coo birds calling in the background. However, Tarkovsky began the coo-coo forest sound while the Mosfilm image was still rotating on the screen, before the corresponding forest visual image began, whereby a “coo-coo” sound was briefly superimposed over the icon of Communism.

Remarkably, Tarkovksy was not sent to the gulag, but was instead heavily funded for the making of his next feature film, Andrei Rublev, where his bold political protest continued.

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Responses

Ivan's Childhood was one of Tarkovsky's commercially most successful films, selling 16.7 million tickets in the Soviet Union. Tarkovsky himself was not pleased with the film; in his book Sculpting in Time, he criticizes Nikolai Burlyayev and writes at length about subtle changes to certain scenes that he regrets not implementing. However, the film received numerous awards and international acclaim on its release, winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. It attracted the attention of many intellectuals, including Ingmar Bergman who said: "My discovery of Tarkovsky's first film was like a miracle. Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had, until then, never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully at ease.

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote an article on the film, defending it against a highly critical article in the Italian newspaper L'Unita and saying that it is one of the most beautiful films he had ever seen. Filmmaker Sergei Parajanov and Krzysztof Kieślowski praised the film and cited it as influence on their work.

References

External links

• Criterion Collection essay by Dina Iordanova
• The short story Ivan by Vladimir Bogomolov