A portrait of Alexander Pushkin was presented to Vitaly Zakrutkin by relatives from Leningrad, along with other birthday gifts. For Zakrutkin, as for many Russian writers, Pushkin was the most significant reference point — literally the air he breathed. Much of Zakrutkin’s life was intertwined with Alexander Pushkin. In the Far East, in Blagoveshchensk, a student at the pedagogical institute and future writer defended his diploma thesis titled “Pushkin’s Work and Our Modernity”. This occurred in the summer of 1933. That same year, Zakrutkin enrolled in graduate school at the Alexander Herzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad, where he studied the works of the great poet.

In 1936, the graduate student Zakrutkin successfully defended his dissertation on Pushkin’s poem “The Robber Brothers” and received the academic degree of Candidate of Philological Sciences in Russian Literature. Following this achievement, he was assigned to Rostov-on-Don, where he became the head of the Russian Literature Department at the pedagogical institute.

Vitaly Zakrutkin delivered a series of lectures to students titled “The Golden Age of Russian Literature”, in which the works of Alexander Pushkin held a central position. Zakrutkin recited Pushkin’s poems in theaters, palaces of culture, open park areas, and along the Don embankment. To a significant extent, the popularity of Pushkin in pre-war Rostov could be attributed to the efforts of Vitaly Zakrutkin.

And even at the front, in moments of rest, the journalist read to the soldiers: