Goodbye, Boys!

Radio adaptation of Boris Balter’s book.

The novella “Goodbye, Boys!” brought Boris Balter (1919–1974) literary fame and reader recognition. Three friends just graduating from school. First steps, first love. The city of their youth. The sea. A full life of feelings and events—one that is about to be swept up by war.

Boris Balter is a Russian writer, translator, and literary scholar. Born in Samarkand. He took part in the Soviet-Finnish and Great Patriotic wars. In 1968 he was expelled from the Party after signing a letter in support of the human rights activists Yuri Galanskov and Alexander Ginzburg.

In 1948–1953 he studied at the Gorky Literary Institute in the seminar of Konstantin Paustovsky, after which for several years he led the literary department of the Khakass Scientific Research Institute of Language, Literature, and History in Abakan. He wrote books, articles, translated from Uzbek and Tajik, and edited collections of poetry. In 1964, based on the novella “Goodbye, Boys!” Balter co-authored with Vladimir Tokarev and published a lyric drama of the same name, and in co-authorship with Mikhail Kalik wrote the screenplay for the film of the same title. The novella was translated into French.