TOWER OF BABYLON
tower of babel
There are many people on earth. Everyone had one language, and everyone understood each other. And the people decided to build a city and a tower as high as the sky, visible from everywhere. They wanted to be called by one name, so as not to be scattered over the face of the earth.
People got down to business. They found a plain in the land of Shinar, made bricks and burned them with fire, collected earthen tar instead of lime.
God came down to look at what people were up to, and was alarmed:
Here, one people, and one language for all, and they can do everything. Let's mix their language so that they don't understand each other!
And God did what He wanted.
People stopped building the city, and God scattered them throughout the earth.
The place is called that Babylon - "the gates of God", for there God appeared and confused the language of the whole earth.
Tower of Babel 66. Anyone who reads the story contained in Genesis 11:1-9 without context is inclined to give it an inaccurate interpretation, seeing in it a conscious attempt by people to enter into a contest with God, by some titanic effort to reach heaven, and Moreover -
11:1-9 The Tower of Babel This short story brings a depressing conclusion to the historical period before the age of the patriarchs. Noah's new beginning of the human race was jeopardized by Noah's drunkenness and Ham's indiscretion, and in the "Table of Nations" already
Tower of Babel In Gen. 10:8-12 refers to King Nimrod, "the mighty hunter." “His kingdom at first consisted of: Babylon, Erech, Akkad, Halne in the land of Shinar” (v. 10). “During the excavations, not only the cities of Babylon, Nineveh, but also the city that bore the name of Nimrod were discovered. on the palaces
Tower of Babel Tower of BabelMany people appeared on earth. Everyone had one language, and everyone understood each other. And the people decided to build a city and a tower as high as the sky, visible from everywhere. They wanted to be called by one name, so as not to scatter over the face of the earth. Friendly
Tower of Babel Humanity of that time also felt its unity, primarily because it had one common language. People understood each other and therefore could take on grandiose projects. Then they decided to build a city with a tower to the sky in order to "make a name for themselves"
4. The Tower of Babel “Having correlated the bodies of the earth with the heavens and the higher with the lower, the Chaldeans discovered in the mutual attachments between these parts of the universe (separated from each other only in space, but not in their essence) a harmony that unites them in a kind
Tower of Babel This legend reflects the motif of the fight against God or the desire of a person to be compared with God, for which God punished with a mixture of languages. Researchers attribute the origin of the legend to the deep impression that the great city made on the ingenuous.
Tower of Babel One of the most beloved objects of criticism was a passage in the Bible that tells about the construction of the Tower of Babel. “And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth,” Genesis 11:4. But
Tower of Babel In the habitats of biblical families, building stone is a rarity. It is very difficult to build strong and safe dwellings. For an incredible number of years, the lack of strong and cheap building material has been a big problem. And suddenly: And they said a friend
THE TOWER OF BABYLON In this perspective, for the biblical narrative, the story of the destruction of the Tower of Babel is quite organic. The image of the Tower of Babel has firmly entered our speech. "Babylonian pandemonium" is called stupidity, senseless and fruitless
Tower of Babel Tower of BabelMany people appeared on earth. Everyone had one language, and everyone understood each other. And the people decided to build a city and a tower as high as the sky, visible from everywhere. They wanted to be called by one name, so as not to scatter across the face
Tower of Babel. 9. In all the ancient cities on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, strange-shaped structures of great height were erected. They were made up of cubic or rounded blocks piled on top of each other in tiers, tapering upwards, like stepped pyramids.
Tower of Babel There was a time when the whole world spoke the same language, used the same words. 2 Going east, people found a plain in the country of Shinar and settled there. 3 Then they said to each other: “Let us make bricks of clay and burn them in fire.” (So the brick became
Tower of Babel 1 All over the world there was one language and one dialect. 2 Moving east a, people came out to the plain in Shinar b and settled there. 3 They said to each other: - Let's make bricks and burn them better. They had bricks instead of stone and resin instead of lime
Who has not heard the myth about the legendary Tower of Babel? People learn about this unfinished structure to the skies even in deep childhood. This name has become a household name. But not everyone knows what really exists. This is evidenced by the records of ancient and modern archaeological research.
Tower of Babel: the real story
Babylon is known for many of its structures. One of the main personalities in the exaltation of this glorious ancient city is Nebuchadnezzar II. It was during his time that the walls of Babylon and the Procession Road were built.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg - throughout the forty years of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar was engaged in the construction, restoration and decoration of Babylon. He left behind a large text about his work done. We will not dwell on all the points, but it is here that there is a mention of the Etemenanki ziggurat in the city.
Video about the tower in Babylon:
This one, which, according to legend, could not be completed due to the fact that the builders began to speak different languages, has another name - Etemenanki, which in translation means the House of the cornerstone of heaven and earth. Archaeologists during excavations were able to find a huge foundation of this building. It turned out to be a ziggurat typical of Mesopotamia (we can also read about the ziggurat in Ur), located at the main temple of Babylon Esagila.
Tower of Babel: architectural features
For all the time, the tower was demolished and restored several times. For the first time, a ziggurat was built on this site before Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), but before him it had already been dismantled. The Tower of Babel itself appeared under King Nabupalassar, and his successor Nebuchadnezzar took over the final construction of the peak.
The huge ziggurat of Etemenanki was built under the direction of the Assyrian architect Aradahdeshu. It consisted of seven tiers with a total height of about 100 meters. The diameter of the structure was about 90 meters.
At the top of the ziggurat was a shrine covered with traditional Babylonian glazed bricks. The sanctuary was dedicated to the main deity of Babylon - Marduk, and it was for him that a gilded bed and table were installed here, and gilded horns were fixed at the top of the sanctuary. 
At the base of the Tower of Babel in the Lower Temple was a statue of Marduk himself made of pure gold with a total weight of 2.5 tons. The Tower of Babel was built with 85 million bricks. stood out among all the buildings of the city and created the impression of power and grandeur. The inhabitants of this city sincerely believed in the descent of Marduk to their habitat on earth and even spoke about this to the famous Herodotus, who visited here in 458 BC (a century and a half after construction).
From the top of the Tower of Babel, another from the neighboring city, Euriminanki in Barsippa, was also visible. It was the ruins of this tower that for a long time were attributed to the biblical. When Alexander the Great lived in the city, he offered to rebuild the majestic building anew, but his death in 323 BC left the building forever dismantled. Esagila was rebuilt in 275, but was not rebuilt. Only its foundation and the immortal mention in the texts remained a reminder of the former great building.
Tower of Babel: legend and real history
that adorned the ancient city. According to legend, it reached the sky. However, the Gods were angry for the intention to get to heaven and punished people by endowing them with different languages. As a result, the construction of the tower was not completed.
The legend is best read in the biblical original:
1. The whole earth had one language and one dialect.
2 Moving out from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they became bricks instead of stones, and earthen tar instead of lime.
4 And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men were building.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do;
7 Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other.
8 And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city [and the tower].
9 Therefore a name was given to her: Babylon, for there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth.
And now we are looking at photos and videos about the legendary building.
Tower of Babel photo:
annotation: The great book of millennia in a fascinating and accessible presentation.
In 1960, Korney Chukovsky conceived the idea of retelling the Bible for children. He gathered the best translators, and for the little readers managed to keep the simple style of the majestic original. A few years later, a retelling of the Old Testament was printed, but, by order of the authorities, the edition was destroyed. Only many decades later this book saw the light of day.
For children, these biblical stories may seem like fairy tales, for adults they will give the wisdom of centuries, but in any case, the book that underlies world culture will become one of the main ones in your library.
book review:yan on the website of the Labyrinth online store:
From an article about Chukovsky in "Buknik":
"And in the sixties, Korney Ivanovich, started to publish, no less, the Bible for children. Not all, of course, at least selected places in the retelling. Under the name "The Tower of Babel and other ancient legends": Adam and Eve, the Flood, Moses ; fifteen small pieces from the Torah plus the parable of the prodigal son.
A whole team worked on The Tower: translator Tatyana Litvinova, children's poet Valentin Berestov, literary critic Natalia Roskina, hiker biologist and writer Gennady Snegirev. A certain M. Agursky is either a cybernetician and future dissident Malik Agursky, or Alexander Men, who took refuge under the pseudonym. The story of Ruth and Noemi was retold by artist Noemi Grebneva.
They put the last gloss on it - and then they asked “from above” to make one more small edit, literally remove two words: “God” and “Jews”.
There is another version: the book was still published, by the publishing house "Children's Literature" - and then the entire circulation was put under the knife.
As it was in reality, we probably will not know.”
More: http://www.labirint.ru/books/409405/
Photo: Kommersant / Photo archive of the Ogonyok magazine / Oleg Knorring
This year, Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky has a double anniversary: in 1928, Nadezhda Krupskaya declared his "Crocodile" ideologically dangerous and began the fight against "Chukovsky", in 1968 the Central Committee demanded that the circulation of the collection prepared by him "The Tower of Babel and Other Ancient Legends" be destroyed, discovering hidden Zionism in him. In the 40 years between these dates, Chukovsky's books invariably found political overtones and were invariably banned. We tell how adults read Chukovsky's children's fairy tales and what they read in them
"Fly-Tsokotuha" and class enemies
"Mukhina's Wedding" (known to us as "Fly-Tsokotuha") was first published in 1924 by the private publishing house "Rainbow". Six months later, the publisher Lev Klyachko decided to reissue it, but unexpectedly faced Gublit's refusal to issue permission. The reason for the rejection was the anti-Soviet content of the tale: Komarik, Gublit's deputy head Lyudmila Bystrova explained to Chukovsky, is a prince in disguise, and Fly is a princess, name days and weddings are "bourgeois holidays." A separate outrage was caused by the illustrations by Vladimir Konashevich, which seemed to Bystrova to be completely indecent: Fly stands too close to Komarik on them and smiles too coquettishly. Gublit's political vigilance was not accidental: a month and a half before the fairy tale was banned, on June 18, 1925, the Politburo issued a resolution "On the party's policy in the field of fiction", which stated that not only in society, but also in literature, the class struggle continues - and therefore it is necessary to oust the bourgeoisie from the pages of books as well. The petty-bourgeois life of Mushina's name days and weddings was alien to the literature of the nascent proletariat, but the fairy tale still managed to be defended. Chukovsky, however, was indignant: "So you can say that "Crocodile" is Chamberlain in disguise, and "Moidodyr" is Milyukov in disguise." Pretty soon, they will really say about the "Crocodile" that this is an "allegorical description of the Kornilov rebellion", and in the future the political subtext in his works will be discovered with invariable success.
The cockroaches came running
All the glasses were drunk
And the insects -
Three cups
With milk
And a pretzel:
Today Fly-Tsokotuha
Birthday girl!
Fleas came to Mukha,
They brought her boots
And boots are not simple -
They have gold clasps.
"Fly Tsokotukha"
“Harmful already by its lack of ideas, such a trifle becomes definitely harmful when Chukovsky undertakes to give a child some kind of morality. A typical example of it is "Fly-Tsokotuha", where the idyll of a fly's wedding, performed according to the traditions of a real bourgeois wedding, is sung.
"Wonder Tree" and boots
The Miracle Tree was first published at the height of the NEP, in 1924, and immediately caused discontent. The head of the children's literature department of the OGIZ, Klavdiya Sverdlova, was indignant in the magazine "On Post" that the poem gives the child wrong ideas about work and social tasks. The same point of view was shared by Nadezhda Krupskaya, the main fighter for the socialist purity of children's literature. In a closed review for the Main Department of Social Education, she accused Chukovsky of making fun of the state's attempts to provide poor children with shoes and emphasizes social inequality in the new country - the bourgeois Murochka and Zinochka receive shoes with pom-poms from the state, and wretched and barefoot children get felt boots and sandals. However, even with the end of the NEP, when the problem of social inequality faded into the background, the Miracle Tree was not rehabilitated. In 1928, shortly after Nadezhda Krupskaya launched a new campaign against Chukovism and accused the writer in Pravda that his Krokodil did not give children “positive” knowledge, the State Academic Council (GUS) banned the release of a new editions of the Miracle Tree. This time the problem was not in shoes with pom-poms: against the backdrop of the discussion of the first five-year plan, the fairy tale that scarce goods grow on trees seemed to the academic council too frivolous and not in line with the tasks of socialist education of children. At that time, it was still possible to joke about the presentation of such high political demands to children's literature, and the satirical magazine Begemot mocked in the same 1928: “The GUS fiercely bit into fairy tales. / The kids are crying: grief with GUS. / The whole drama is that Gusa's taste / Does not match the taste of children.
Who needs boots
Run to the miracle tree!
Bast shoes are ripe
The boots are ripe
What are you yawning
Do you not cut them off?
Rip them, you bastards!
Rip, barefoot!
You won't have to again
Flaunt in the cold
patch holes,
Bare heels!
"Wonder Tree"
“Many families don’t have boots, but Chukovsky so frivolously resolves such a complex social issue”
Crocodile and Leningrad
" Crocodile". Illustrations by Re-Mi, 1919
According to Nadezhda Krupskaya, "Crocodile" embodied everything that had to be fought in children's literature: firstly, it did not provide any useful knowledge, and secondly, it had a dubious political meaning. And even if it didn’t have an obvious political meaning, Krupskaya argued, it certainly had a hidden one, and if it didn’t exist, then it’s even worse - it means that the whole fairy tale was just a set of nonsense, and Soviet people should not talk nonsense from childhood and not read any nonsense. They tried to discover the political meaning in the fairy tale several times, but they did it most successfully in 1934 - shortly after the murder in Smolny of the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Sergei Kirov. After Krupskaya's performances in 1928, The Crocodile was banned for six years, but in 1934 it was unexpectedly allowed to be included in a collection of fairy tales and even published as a separate book. New editions were prepared throughout the year, but on December 23, Glavlit banned the publication of "Crocodile" (both in book and in collection): a fairy tale that described the suffering of animals and their involuntary life awaiting liberation in modern Leningrad, as well as the painful death of a loved one, as son, a cheerful crocodile, against the background of the murder of Kirov, was read at least ambiguously. The discouraged Chukovsky offered to publish at least the first part, in which the Crocodile violating public order is expelled from the northern capital, but the chairman of the Children's Commission, Nikolai Semashko, refused: in the current political situation, even the lines “Very glad / Leningrad” seemed criminal to him - Leningrad was supposed to be in mourning. The politically unreliable "Crocodile" was completely banned for the next few years - in 1935, the circulation of the fifth edition of Chukovsky's popular book on children's language "From two to five" had to be delayed in order to clean out all the quotes from the disgraced fairy tale.
Do you remember, lived between us
One funny crocodile...
He is my nephew. I him
He loved like his own son.
He was a prankster and a dancer,
And the mischievous, and the laugher,
And now there in front of me
Exhausted, half dead
In a dirty tub he lay
And, dying, he said to me:
"I do not curse the executioners,
Neither their chains nor their scourges
But you, traitors friends,>
Damn I send."
"Crocodile"
“Leningrad is a historical city, and any fantasy about it will be taken as a political allusion. Especially such lines: "Our brothers are in hell there - / In the Zoological Garden. / Oh, this garden, a terrible garden! / I would be glad to forget it. / There, under the whips of executioners / A lot of animals are tormented." All this seemed like an innocent joke a month ago, but now, after Kirov's death, it sounds allegorical.
"Domok" and fists
"Home". Illustrations by Sergei Chekhonin, 1929
One should not think that the political subtext was sought and found exclusively in the author's fairy tales of Chukovsky: vigilant reading did not escape his literary adaptations of folk art. At the end of 1929, a collection of folk lyrics "Domok" was published, named after the famous children's song that helped children learn animals and train their memory. The song was not published for the first time, back in 1924 it was published in the collection "Fifty Pigs", but the new edition turned out to be extremely untimely. Against the backdrop of collectivization gaining strength, the unification of individual farms into collective farms and the confiscation of livestock from wealthy peasants, the song about how to buy chicken, duck, goose, ram, goat, pig and horse at the market and “make a house” sounded mockingly. So much so that Literaturnaya Gazeta did not even bother with a revealing review, but simply listed everything that the family bought at the market, adding only two sentences: “There is no need to talk about the ideology of this book - it is clear and so. But it should be noted: the most talented masters of word and drawing drive into the head of a child the most talented masters of words and drawing, and in 35 thousand copies. An article in Literaturnaya Gazeta was published on January 13, 1930, and already in February a resolution was issued “On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization” - in this situation, fight for the text, which had previously been accused of praising “kulak accumulation”, it was pointless. Chukovsky himself understood this - in his diaries, where he recorded in detail all attempts to defend this or that text, there are no traces of the struggle for Domok. And although the folk children's songs in the processing of Chukovsky were later reprinted more than once in the USSR, he never again tried to include the dubious "Domok" in these collections.
Let's go, wifey
House to make.
Let's go, dove
Walk to the market.
Let's buy, wifey,
Our horse is gigi, gogo!
Our pig is grunt-grunt, grunt-grunt!
Kozynka, then jump-jump, jump-jump!
The lamb is tent-matry!
Goose gaga-gaga!
Duck from the toe is flat,
Hen on the hay -
Bale-turyuryuk!
“At Chukovsky and his associates, we know books that develop superstition and fears (“Barmalei”, “Moydodyr”, “Wonder Tree”), praising the bourgeoisie and kulak accumulation “Fly-sokotuha”, “Domok”)”
"Let's defeat Barmaley!" and allies
Accused for 20 years of lack of ideas and propaganda of nonsense, Chukovsky eventually composed a fairy tale with a clear political meaning. It was written in the evacuation in Tashkent “We will overcome Barmaley!” - an attempt to tell children about the war and fascism in an understandable language. The tale was first published in the late summer of 1942. Coinciding with the beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad, the release of poems about the courageous and stubborn opposition of little Aibolitiya to the cruel kingdom of Svirepiy brought Chukovsky all-Union fame: the book was published in the republics, Goslitizdat included an excerpt from it in an anthology of Soviet poetry for the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, the author was included in the list of contenders for the Stalinist premium. However, after a year and a half, the attitude towards the fairy tale changed dramatically: in the spring of 1943, Stalin personally crossed it out of the anthology for the anniversary of the revolution, and from ideologically useful it instantly turned into politically harmful. Public condemnation took place a year later - in the article "Vulgar and harmful concoction of K. Chukovsky", published in Pravda on March 1, 1944. An attempt to tell about the world war with the help of animals, seating them in real bombers and arming them with real machine guns, seemed inappropriate and seditious to the author - director of the OGIZ Pavel Yudin: "Once this" confusion "was unassuming and amusing. But when the author wanted to mobilize these kittens, to connect his favorite images with events of world-historical significance, the confusion turned out to be completely bad. " Separate indignation was caused by the fact that Barmaley was called a "cannibal" in a fairy tale, thus, it was no longer only about frogs, hares and camels, but and about people, which meant that what was happening ceased to be a fairy tale.However, it seems that the real reason was in the ambiguous image of Aibolithia itself, inhabited by hard-working but harmless animals, unable to defeat the enemy without the help of neighboring Chudoslavia, entering the war at a decisive moment. in 1942, with the beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad, the idea of the need for the help of the allies to defeat Germany was more than ever an act real, then after its completion, their role in the victory of the USSR began to be gradually hushed up. And although Yudin specifically emphasized that in Chukovsky's tale, the Soviet Union personifies not Aibolitia, but Chudoslavia, the very situation in which the country that received the main blow is not able to resist the enemy without the help of allies turned out to be inappropriate. In the same 1944, "We will defeat Barmaley!" removed from the already made-up collection "Wonder Tree". The next time it was published only in 2001.
But suddenly cranes flew to him:
“We brought you bright joy!”
There is a wonderful country in the east,<..>
She never surrenders to the enemy.
And she has many mighty knights,
But all nobler, stronger and braver
Valiant Vanya Vasilchikov.
He sends you, doctor, cordial greetings
And so he says: "If an evil ogre
Will burst into your Aibolity, -
He will immediately come to your aid
And he will crush the fierce enemy.
With all his rabid hordes!”
"Let's defeat Barmaley!"
“It turns out that frogs, hares, camels stood up for poor people. These are no longer artistic fantasies, but awkward, charlatan nonsense. The fairy tale of K. Chukovsky is a harmful concoction that can distort modern reality in the minds of children”
"Dog Kingdom" and the Gulag
In 1946, one of the few remaining cooperative publishing houses in the country, Sotrudnik, commissioned by the Central Department Store of Glavosobtorg, published Chukovsky’s Dog Kingdom, a prosaic retelling of an English fairy tale about the re-education of two hooligans by dogs, as a separate book. Prior to this, the tale was published once - back in 1912 in the luxurious children's almanac "The Firebird", compiled by Chukovsky with the involvement of the best artists and authors: Sasha Cherny, Alexei Tolstoy, Sergei Chekhonin, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Sergei Sudeikin. Then the collection was almost not noticed, but after 34 years, a single reprinted fairy tale from it made a whole commotion. The mouthpiece of party discontent was the newspaper of the Department of Propaganda and Agitation "Culture and Life" - the head of children's institutions of the Ministry of Agricultural Engineering E. Vatova in the article "Vulgarity under the flag of children's literature" stated that the corrective labor policy of the autocratic dog Ulyalyay Eighteenth, who re-educates boys who bullied over dogs, feeding them with leftovers and forcing them to carry dogs - this is a libel on modern reality and propaganda of zoological morality. The mention of "zoological morality" was relevant - a few months earlier, explaining the meaning of the decree on the magazines "Zvezda" and "Leningrad", Zhdanov made similar accusations of Zoshchenko's story "The Adventures of a Monkey": "At the end of the work, this boy Alyosha, who took the monkey, he taught her to behave in everyday life with dignity, decently, in such a way that she could teach not only small children, but also adults how to behave. After all, this is a hooligan mockery of the Soviet order. This man has no right to teach Soviet people, and the morality that Zoshchenko reads through the mouth of a monkey is smuggled out in the following words: “Our monkey ran faster, runs and thinks: “I shouldn’t have left the Zoo, breathe more freely in a cage.” got into a human, Soviet environment and thinks: “In a cage, you can breathe more freely.” This means that the Soviet way of life, the Soviet order is worse than the Zoo.” In Vatova’s retelling, “The Kingdom of the Dogs” turned out to be no better than Zoshchenko, or even worse: in Zoshchenko, at least no one mocked people, and in Chukovsky, gendarme dogs stuff boys into a kennel, put tight collars on them, and put them on a short iron chain , as a result of which they become smart and cultured and return home. Such re-education was too blatantly reminiscent of the Gulag to pass unnoticed: it was published in a circulation of 50,000 copies. copies of The Kingdom of the Dogs were immediately withdrawn from all libraries and shops and included in the list of dangerous books not to be distributed in the bookselling network, where it remained until the very collapse of the USSR.
When they woke up, they found on their straw only stinking, rotten leftovers, the bones of some kind of fish, eggshells, and a crust of bread hard as a stone. They were so hungry that they greedily pounced on the stale crust. But then two dogs came running and took away this crust from them. For a long time they cried from resentment and hunger, but then Barboska came running, let them off the chain, harnessed them to the cart, sat down in it and let's drive them with a whip.
"Dog Kingdom"
“In our opinion, this is an anti-artistic and anti-pedagogical work. K. Chukovsky, as in his previous fairy tales "Let's overcome Barmaley!" and "Bibigon", makes serious mistakes"
Secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee V. Ivanov, December 1946
"Cockroach" and Stalin
"Cockroach". Illustrations by Sergei Chekhonin, 1923
The habit of looking for and finding political subtext in Chukovsky's works turned out to be contagious and gradually spread not only to party workers, but also to opponents of the regime. Thus arose the myth that Chukovsky described Stalin in The Cockroach. There was no real basis for such an interpretation: The Cockroach was published in 1923, and was written two years earlier - that is, before Stalin began to play a key political role. In 1930, at a party congress, Stalin himself even used the image of a cockroach to describe the essence of his struggle with the right opposition, stating that Bukharin and his henchmen represent an ordinary cockroach in the form of a thousand angry animals and predict the death of the Soviet Union due to imaginary dangers that are not worth eaten egg - Chukovsky even jokingly accused him of plagiarism. In 1933, after Mandelstam’s poem “We live without smelling the country beneath us,” the comparison of Stalin with a cockroach ceased to be comic, but the fact that Chukovsky’s Cockroach was also related to Stalin was first discussed much later. Judging by Chukovsky’s diaries, he himself first heard about such an interpretation of his fairy tale in 1956, after the XX Congress of the CPSU and Nikita Khrushchev’s report “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences”, from the writer Emmanuil Kazakevich. Evgenia Ginzburg in The Steep Route claims that she first saw a parody of the leader in the fairy tale, rereading it in 1952 in a special settlement, and literary critic Lev Kopelev writes in his memoirs that in the late 1940s such an anti-Stalinist interpretation of the Cockroach was given to him in Marfina friend Gumer Izmailov in a special prison - apparently, such an interpretation was popular in the camps.
"Tower of Babel". Illustrations by Leonid Feinberg, 1990In 1962, Detgiz began preparing a collection of paraphrases of biblical texts for children. The initiative was at first glance unexpected: an anti-religious campaign launched by Khrushchev was underway in the country, religion was again officially recognized as a remnant of capitalism in the minds and behavior of people, and the fight against this remnant was an essential part of communist education. The new collection, however, had nothing to do with religion, it was released for educational purposes. With the beginning of the thaw, the party leadership faced an unexpected problem: during the years of Soviet power, a generation of people who were completely unfamiliar with biblical stories had grown up. “It is scary to let our people abroad and here into museums, our youth: they do not understand ancient or religious plots. They stand in the art gallery and ask: “Why are there so many mothers here and for some reason they don’t have female babies in their arms, only boys?” The writer Gennady Fish was indignant at the editorial board of Detgiz. To raise the cultural level of Soviet viewers, it was decided to clear the biblical stories from everything divine and present them in the form of "Legends and Myths of Ancient Greece" - a collection of common plots that have become an integral part of European culture. Chukovsky was offered to prepare the collection, specifically stipulating that the book should not turn into religious propaganda, and therefore not in retellings there should be the words "Jews" and "God" (Chukovsky came up with the idea to replace it with "The Wizard of Yahweh"). The collection was supposed to be released in 1967, but did not come out - events in the Middle East intervened. On June 5, the Six-Day War began, ending with the victory of Israel over Arab countries supported by the USSR Under these conditions, the problem of religious propaganda faded into the background - stories of suffering x Jews now looked like political propaganda. For six months, Chukovsky wrote to various authorities and, having agreed with the new demand - not to mention Jerusalem united during the Six-Day War, he finally received permission, and in January 1968 the book was signed for publication. However, it never reached readers - the Central Committee considered the collection to be a glorification of the by no means mythical exploits of the Jewish people and, in general, was not allowed to release it as a gift to the Zionists. In addition, the book was somehow found out in China, which was gripped by the "cultural revolution", and criticized the Soviet Union for such revisionism. The already printed edition of The Tower of Babel and Other Ancient Legends was destroyed, for the first time the book was published only in 1990.
“People rejoiced at the new laws. They realized that this was the beginning of a new life. And Moses felt that death was approaching him. He showed the people which way to go in order to build life in a new way. This land was visible behind the mountain. Moses said goodbye to everyone and went to die. He walked and thought that there is no greater happiness than to live for people.
"The Tower of Babel and Other Ancient Legends"
“There was Yasinovskaya about the Tower of Babel. The Central Committee workers rebelled against this book, because it contains Moses and Daniel. “Moses is not a mythical figure, but a figure in Jewish history. Daniel is food for the Zionists!”
The sons of Noah had many children, and again many people came from them on earth. But it was soon discovered that people after the flood were no better than before the flood. Then there was one language and one dialect throughout the whole earth.
One day people gathered together and said to each other: "Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth." Puffed up and wanting to glorify themselves, people zealously took up construction. But the Lord was not pleased with this. He looked at the city and the tower they were building. and said: “Behold, one people and one language for all .., and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do. Let us go down and mix their language there so that one does not understand the speech of the other.” (Remember, God also once said in the plural, "Let us make man...")
The Lord confused the language of the people so that they did not understand each other and could not continue building the tower. Therefore, that place began to be called "Babylon", that is, "mixing." Then God scattered the people from there all over the earth.
GENESIS 11:1-9
Abraham.
This picture shows one great man - Abram. Later, God called him Abraham, which means "father of many nations." He loved the Lord very much and was devoted and obedient to Him. God Himself called him His friend. The Lord also tells us in Scripture: "You are my friends if you do what I command you" (Gospel of John 15:14).
One day the Lord said to Abraham: “Get out of your country, from your kindred and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great; I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Abraham did as the Lord told him. He took with him Sarah - his wife, Lot - his brother's son, all the property that they had acquired, and all the people they had in their homeland, in Haran, and went out to go to the land of Canaan indicated by the Lord. Continuing on their way, they came to a place called "Oak grove More". There the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, "I will give this land to your offspring."
GENESIS 12:1-7
Abraham and all who were with him walked through the land of Canaan, which the Lord showed them, until they came to the neighborhood of Bethel and stopped there.
Abraham was very rich. He had gold, silver, and many cattle. His nephew Lot also had many tents, flocks and herds. After some time, they began to live closely together, since both had a lot of property. Soon a dispute began between their shepherds. Then Abraham said to Lot: “Let there be no strife between me and you, between my shepherds and your shepherds; for we are relatives. Is not the whole earth before you? Separate yourself from me. then I'm to the left.
Lot began to examine the ground around. He noticed that the Jordanian region was very fertile and well irrigated with water. Having chosen this place for himself, he separated from Abraham and pitched his tents to the city of Sodom. The inhabitants of this city were very evil and sinful before the Lord. But Lot was seduced by beautiful fields and green pastures for his cattle and began to live in the company of wicked people. As a result, many disasters befell him. When choosing a place of residence, he did not consult with God, as it should always be done, but of his own free will he chose Sodom.
Abraham settled near the oak forest of Mamre and built an altar there to the Lord.
GENESIS 13:1-18
