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“Kumov Touches the Eternal and Immortal”

November, 21, is the 130^th anniversary of Roman Petrovich Kumov, a Don writer, playwright and journalist.

Literary critics said about Kumov’s work: “His book is an impulse of a Christianly tuned lyric feeling, it is a touching song to nature, in every breath of which the greatness of its Creator is felt, it is a song to the human soul, in which the tunes of a higher world are sounded.” (N.Smolensky, a reviewer for the journal “Otdykh Khristianina” (Recreation of a Christian), 1909).

Roman Kumov was born in 1883, in Stanitsa Kazanskaya, to the family of the Don Cossack Pyotr Kuzmich Kumov, a magistrate. The future writer spent his childhood and youth in Stanitsa Ust-Medveditskaya, where the family moved to take up permanent residence. He got his education in the Ust-Medveditskaya religious school and the Don seminary, and then he entered the Moscow University, law school. On graduating from it in 1910, he came back to the Don as an attorney.

Kumov was fond of ethnography and Don Cossack folklore. He collected materials about the Cossack everyday life, songs, legends and his impressions. He travelled to the remote places of the upper Don. In the First World War the young writer was sent to the front as a medical orderly.

R.P.Kumov began to publish very early, in the Don newspapers, when he was in junior grades of the seminary. His first book of short stories was published in 1909, in Saint-Petersburg. In 1916, he was awarded the First Prize at the literary contest of A.N.Ostrovsky for his drama “The Last Kin of the Korostomyslovs”, which opened for him the way to big literature and big theatre.

The revolution of 1917 destroyed his plans for literary work, and Roman Kumov left Saint-Petersburg for Stanitsa Ust-Medveditskaya. The writer returned to his Cossack theme, published in the newspaper “Severny Don” and in the journal “Donskaya Volna”. At that time he got acquainted with F.D.Kryukov, became the editor of his book of short stories “My Native Country”.

R.P.Kumov experienced a great grief about the events of the Civil War at the Don, and the theme of war was reflected in his creative work. He believed that the main purpose of his writings at that time was to arouse and support as far as possible a spirit of faith in the Russian society immersed in the deadly indifference towards itself and its destiny. He deeply believed in the Russian people and in their especial lot on the earth no matter what happened. At that time the writer conceived a novel about the life of the Don Cossacks and dramatic events of the Civil War –“The Pyramids”. But, unfortunately, his plans remained unrealized: on February, 20, 1919, R.P.Kumov died of typhus at the age of 36. He was buried with military honours at the cemetery of Novocherkassk

Shortly before his passing from life Roman Kumov wrote: ”And God grant we will see our Country in peace, and joy, and glory. And frankly speaking, I really, really believe in it, that is, we will see our Country rising from the dead...”

Galina Govorukhina