Sergei Yesenin: “I didn’t shoot the unfortunate ones in prison…”. - part 3.
In 1915, young, perky, full of vitality, Sergei Yesenin wrote lines that became prophetic:
On that sand
And if I follow the wind,
To love melancholy.
They will lead you with a rope around your neck...
Only seven years will pass, and the prophecy about the death of Sergei Alexandrovich, said by his close friend, poet Nikolai Klyuev, will again sound: “You, doomed to the slaughter... rejoice at your slaughter...” - he wrote in a letter to Yesenin. The poet himself foresaw a tragic death. “I will be a victim...” he said to his literary secretary G. Benislavskaya, and a few days before his death he directly confessed to V. Erlich: “They want to kill me! I feel it like an animal!” Sergei Alexandrovich’s life, according to recent research, ended on December 27, 1925. at the Angleterre Hotel. What happened then in this hotel, how exactly the earthly existence of the great poet ended - the near future will show (we hope). However, today we can say with a high degree of confidence that Yesenin, contrary to the official version, was killed and then hanged. And here the question immediately arises: “Why, exactly, could Yesenin be killed?”
I'm not a villain and I didn't rob the forest,
I'm just a street rake
Didn’t shoot the unfortunate ones in prison,
Smiling at people he meets -
Sergei Yesenin wrote about himself. He wrote simply and sincerely, as he did about everything he had to write about. “I never lie with my heart,” he said in one of his poems. Paradoxically, it was precisely this position that did not suit the Bolshevik authorities, who believed that since a person lives in revolutionary times, he must obey the laws of this time. This worldview was clearly defined by the proletarian poet E. Bagritsky, speaking about his century, he wrote:
"Lie" - lie,
But if he (age) says:
"Kill" - kill...
Sergei Yesenin, raised on Christian and Orthodox values from childhood, preached something different. In one of his youthful letters, he wrote to his soulmate G. Panfilov: “Grisha, I’m currently reading the Gospel and I find a lot of new things in it for myself... Christ is perfection for me,” and in another letter: “Yes, Grisha, love and have pity on people - criminals, scoundrels, liars, sufferers, and righteous people: you could and can be any of them. Love the oppressors and do not brand them with shame, but reveal with affection the illnesses of people’s lives.”
These lines were written before the 1917 revolution, directed against the so-called “oppressors”. It would seem that after the revolution Yesenin changed his views. After all, he welcomed it (“Long live the revolution, both on earth and in heaven!”) and even wrote himself down as its creator:
The sky is like a bell
My mother is my Motherland,
The month is a language
I am a Bolshevik
And as a Bolshevik, he must think and write accordingly. And, in fact, having fallen into spiritual darkness (as did the majority of the Russian people), Sergei Yesenin wrote blasphemous poems corresponding to the revolutionary, atheistic times. So one of them says:
The flesh flows with the same honey
For thousands of years the same stars have been famous,
You taught me, Lord.
Doesn't pray to you, but barks
For pennies from golden aspens
For your curly gray hairs,
Rebellious, robber son.
I shout to you: “To hell with the old!”
It would seem that he had renounced the “old”, in which life was built on Christian mercy and love for one’s neighbor, it seemed that he should become a preacher of a new, revolutionary covenant: if necessary, lie, if necessary, kill...
However, already in 1919, in the small poem “Mare’s Ships,” the poet, addressing the animals, which, in his opinion, have become better than people, says:
I won't go anywhere with people.
How to raise the earth from your beloved
It's better to die together with you,
In the crazy neighbor a stone.
The same poem also contains the following lines:
You are rowing into the land of the future.
Oars of severed hands
Yesenin began to understand that the revolution was built on blood, and began to see the light from the “freedom that blinded everyone.” But with his sensitive, poetic heart, he felt that this insight could become fatal for him. And again the prophetic words sounded in his work:
Only a heart under old clothes
“My friend, my friend, the sight of visions
Whispers to me, who visited the firmament:
Only death closes.”
In 1923, in a letter to A. Kusikov, Sergei Alexandrovich wrote: “I cease to understand which revolution I belonged to. I see only one thing, that neither to the February nor to the October..." Why is this so - he explained in the poem "Country of Scoundrels":
Just talk
Empty fun
Well, what did we take in return?
Well then,
The same thieves
The same swindlers came
Everyone was taken prisoner.
And the law of revolution
Following his ideological insight, spiritual insight also came to Yesenin.
I'm ashamed that I believed in God
It’s sad for me that I don’t believe it now.
These lines, dual in meaning, are known to all admirers of Sergei Alexandrovich’s work. He spoke with great certainty to Isadora Duncan in 1922:
— The Bolsheviks banned the use of the word “God” in print, do you know?
- But the Bolsheviks are right. There is no God. Old. Stupid.
- Eh, Isadora! After all, everything is from God. Poetry and even your dancing,” replied Sergei Alexandrovich, recalled translator Duncan Lola Kinel.
However, Yesenin's return to God was painfully difficult. Even in 1924, in his poems he had not yet separated himself from the bravado characteristic of the intelligentsia of that time. So in the work “Letter to Mother”, Sergei Yesenin writes:
There is no going back to the old ways anymore.
And don’t teach me to pray, don’t.
But a year later, confessional and repentant lines began to sound in his work:
I'm sorry that I
I pray to him at night.
I don't believe in God
And you need to pray...
That's what I need.
When in April-May 1925, in as many as ten issues of the Pravda newspaper, one of Demyan Bedny’s most anti-Christian opuses was published - the poem “The New Testament without Flaw of the Evangelist Demyan”, Yesenin openly defended Orthodoxy, writing the poetic “Message to the “Evangelist” Demyan." And although in it Sergei Alexandrovich again expresses a personal ambivalent attitude towards religion (which, most likely, was a screen for Bolshevik censorship), however, in general, he directly says that no one should trample on the Orthodox faith of the Russian people.
In his message the poet writes:
...When I read in Pravda
I felt ashamed as if I had fallen
The lie about Christ of the lascivious Demyan.
No, you, Demyan, did not insult Christ,
Into the vomit spewed out of drunkenness...
There was a robber, there was Judas.
You didn't hurt him with your pen a lot.
You are blood clots at the cross
You were just missing.
You just grunted at Christ,
He dug his nostrils like a fat hog.
Efim Lakeevich Pridvorov.
(Demyan Bedny’s real name was Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov.)
In May 1925, Yesenin submitted the "Message" for publication to the newspaper "Baku Worker", the editor of which was his close friend P. Chagin. However, he did not dare to publish this work. And then it went on the people's lists. It was read to them, copied by hand and passed on to each other. Copies were widely distributed throughout Russia. For that time, Yesenin’s “Message” played a big role in strengthening the national spirit. For a long time, Yesenin scholars denied the authenticity of this “Message,” citing the words of Ekaterina Yesenina, published in 1926 in the same “Pravda.” “This poem does not belong to my brother.” However, at the end of the 20th century, the original of the poem was found and graphologists confirmed that it was written by Sergei Yesenin. In addition, there are memoirs of P. Chagin, who personally remembered this work from Yesenin.
In 1925, it became finally clear to the Bolsheviks that they could not “tame” Yesenin. He did not become a troubadour of the revolution. “God’s pipe” - this is what Sergei Yesenin said about himself. The Bolsheviks saw in him an ideological and spiritual danger. He was under surveillance, and criminal cases were opened against him, which threatened at any time to develop into political ones (only thanks to his world fame did they not dare to send the poet to the dungeons of the Cheka). Yesenin had a presentiment of a tragic outcome, and this presentiment tormented him. According to the memoirs of Ekaterina Yesenina, praying before the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, he said: “Lord, you see how I suffer, how hard it is for me...”
On December twenty-seventh, Sergei Alexandrovich died tragically. The true reasons for his death were hidden, but many witnesses still did not believe that the poet committed suicide. Ekaterina Yesenina’s husband, poet Vasily Nasedkin, was one of the first to see the corpse in Angleterre and immediately told her: “It doesn’t look like suicide... The brains have leaked out onto the forehead...”
In the Orthodox Church, there were also initially priests who did not believe in suicide. According to N. Sidorina, a researcher of the life and death of Yesenin, funeral services for him were held in three churches: in Moscow, in Leningrad and on Ryazan land. In the Kazan church in the village of Konstantinovo, Sergei Alexandrovich's funeral service was performed in absentia by his spiritual mentor, Archpriest John Smirnov. At that time, funeral services for suicides and memorial services for them were immediately deprived of the priesthood. This means that the testimony of relatives was quite convincing that Yesenin did not commit suicide, but was killed.
But for almost eighty years, the version of suicide was persistently introduced into the consciousness of the Soviet people. And only in 1997, in the newspaper Izvestia, the director of the Special Archive A.S. Prokopenko stated: “Researchers into the causes of Sergei Yesenin’s death have long come to the conclusion that the OGPU was directly involved in the death of the poet. And there are documents about this in the KGB archives, but for seven decades they have not been allowed to read them. For the sake of just removing the sin of suicide from the soul of the great poet, the wicked ones who cut short his life must be named.”
Yesenin was killed by the Bolshevik internationalists for his national identity, for preaching Orthodox values in his work - love of neighbor and mercy, love for the Motherland and the Russian people, for the fact that with his poems the great poet opposed the lack of spirituality instilled by the Soviet regime, and thereby supported the people believe that Orthodox Russia has not sunk into nothingness, which means that the time for its revival will come. For this, Sergei Yesenin was doomed to slaughter.
Much research work in the investigation of the death of Sergei Yesenin - identifying the reasons that led to the murder, those who ordered the murder, and the specific perpetrators of the crime - was done by Viktor Kuznetsov, associate professor of the department of literature of the St. Petersburg Academy of Culture, member of the Writers' Union of the Russian Federation. In his work “The Mystery of Yesenin’s Death,” the author wrote: “In the story with Yesenin, the sadists acted ahead. It’s paradoxical, but true: there is not a single convincing evidence that the poet committed suicide. But there is quite a lot of evidence of murder.”
Here is how Kuznetsov describes the incident: “The director of the “staging” of Sergei Yesenin’s suicide in the 5th room of the Angleterre Hotel was Sevzapkino film director Pavel Petrovich Petrov (Makarevich), who, trusting the thugs who dragged the body of the murdered Yesenin through the basement labyrinth from the building the investigative prison of the GPU, located on Mayorova Avenue, 8/23, did not check the 5th hotel room prepared for public viewing.” “As a result, many questions arose: why the rope wrapped around the unfortunate man’s throat only one and a half times, and there was no loop; how Yesenin, bleeding, was able, with cut palms and other wounds, to build such a complex pyramid on the table and climb to the ceiling; what a terrible depressed mark above the bridge of the nose (the official version is a burn); Finally, the deceased’s jacket disappeared somewhere. By the way, I. Oksenov, a well-known radiologist at that time, a member of the Leningrad literary group “Commonwealth” (1925-1929), who saw him, wrote in his “Diary”: “... a crimson stripe was visible along the forehead (the burn was from a hot steam pipe heating, against which he hit his head), his mouth was half open, his hair had developed a terrible halo around his head.” And further: “In the coffin he was no longer so scary. The burn was covered up, eyebrows and lips were drawn in.” Further, Kuznetsov cites the testimony of the then beginning informer, the young poet Pavel Luknitsky: “Yesenin didn’t look much like himself. During the autopsy, his face was corrected as best they could, but still there was a large red spot on his forehead, a nodule in the upper corner of his right eye, an abrasion on the bridge of his nose, and his left eye was flat: it had leaked out” (“Meetings with Anna Akhmatova.” T 1. 1924-1925. Paris: Ymca-Press, 1991).
Photographic materials - evidence of the version of the murder of Sergei Yesenin: All original photographs are stored in the S.A. Museum. Yesenina. Photographs of the poet’s death masks, stored both in museums and private collections, are also presented here.
Photographic materials indicate not only that Sergei Yesenin did not commit self-hanging, but also that before his death he offered strong resistance to the executioners, who inflicted fatal wounds on him.
All photographs are accompanied by questions due to the discrepancy between the images and the official version claiming the poet’s suicide.
What does recognition of the official version of the death of Sergei Yesenin mean for Russia?
Emigrant, historian and writer Mikhail Koryakov categorically stated in 1950: “To spit on Yesenin means to spit on Russia and the Russian people.” Why were the people of Russia deceived, why were they forced to believe in Sergei Yesenin’s suicide? Why were his poems banned? What were the Soviet authorities and the nascent communist system so afraid of?
Allowing people to read Yesenin's poems - for the communist system it meant allowing people to believe in God, which meant losing faith in the Communist Party, and, in the end, for the Communist Party this meant losing its power over the people. Therefore, the young genius Sergei Yesenin was slandered and presented to the people as a rowdy, brawler, drunkard and womanizer, and also mentally ill.
But this turned out to be not enough for the ruling communist regime; it was necessary to make the great Russian poet a sinner - therefore this monstrous crime was committed not only in relation to the physical destruction of the poet, but also the destruction of the conscience of the Russian people. People who believed this lie became accomplices in this crime. At its core, the murder of Sergei Yesenin is a crime against humanity.
Later, Yesenin’s poetry was banned; for reading the poet’s poems, people were prosecuted under Article 58 (an article in the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, which came into force on February 25, 1927 to counter counter-revolutionary activities). The campaign against “Yeseninism” lasted for several decades.
The return of the pure, worthy and proud name of the great Russian poet Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin is the return of the conscience of the people of Russia.
Since the beginning of its history of murder, the communist system has always used the same gangster tactics: it begins by creating negative rumors in society about the person it intends to persecute. If a person was broken spiritually, he no longer posed a threat to the communist system, but if a person remained faithful to some ideals, he had to be destroyed, as they did with Sergei Yesenin, whom the Soviet government put “outside the law.”
“Whoever the person who is outlawed is, he is immediately crossed out, no matter what his past merits may have been. So, there is no need to talk about any doubts about his guilt: this man is turning not just into an outcast, but into a living corpse, whose death was only a matter of time...” said Lieutenant General of Justice A.F. Katusev.
Winds, winds, oh snowy winds,
Notice my past life.
I want to be a bright boy
Or a flower from a meadow border.
I want to listen to the shepherd's whistle
Die for yourself and for everyone.
Star bells in ears
Evening snow is falling.
Its fogless trill is good,
When he drowns the pain in a blizzard.
I would like to stand like a tree
When traveling on one leg.
I would like to hear horses snore
Hugging with a nearby bush.
Raise your lunar paws,
My sadness goes to heaven like a bucket.
(s. Yesenin. 1919).
Later, in this regard, a lot of sinister things were written about the poet. One of the first to start was V.F. Khodasevich: “I remember this story. At the same time, in the spring of 1918, one famous fiction writer, also a broad soul, but not wise<А.Н.Толстой>, decided to celebrate his name day. He convened the entire literary Moscow: “Come yourself and bring the public.” About forty people gathered, if not more. Yesenin also came. He brought a bearded brunette in a leather jacket. The brunette listened to the conversations. Sometimes he would put in a word - and not a stupid one. It was Blumkin, who killed Count Mirbach, the German ambassador, about three months later. Yesenin was apparently friends with him. Among the guests was the poetess K. Yesenin liked her. He began to look after me. He wanted to show off - and innocently suggested to the poetess: “Do you want to watch how they shoot? I’ll arrange this for you through Blumkin in a minute.’” (magazine “Modern Notes”, Paris, 1926, vol. 27, pp. 311-312). This story, from the pen of I.A. Bunin, received the following interpretation: “... Yesenin, among other ways to seduce girls, had this: he invited the girl to watch the executions in the Cheka, - I, they say, can easily arrange this for you "(Newspaper "Renaissance", Paris, 1927, August 11, No. 800). O. E. Mandelstam perceived this line completely differently: “There is a wonderful Russian verse, which I never tire of repeating in the Moscow dog nights, from which the horned evil spirits crumble like an obsession. Guess, friends, this verse: he writes in the snow with runners, he squeals with a key in the castle, he shoots frost into the room: ... He did not shoot the unfortunate ones in the dungeons.
Here is the symbol of faith, here is the poetic canon of a real writer - the mortal enemy of literature" (O. E. Mandelstam, Works in two volumes, vol. 2, M., 1990, pp. 93-94).
The poem “I will not deceive myself,” written in 1922, is an appeal not only from the poet to his fans, but also from a person to the authorities, which actually no longer needed Yesenin. What is the use of a poet with his lyrics when they write “Odes of the Revolution” (Mayakovsky) or “Wonderful Collective” (Demyan Bedny).
Sergei Yesenin cannot write odes to the new government, “The Ballad of Twenty-Six” stands apart, the poem was written not for the soul, but to replenish the wallet - literally for every line.
In the lines below, Sergei shouts to the authorities that he is not like that, he:
“I didn’t shoot the unfortunate ones in the dungeons.”
The poet's scandalousness had roots in Yesenin's character and addiction to alcohol. He is not ashamed of this; in his opinion, there is no great sin in this, since he does not bring harm to others. The state does not want to keep at its breast a poet who does not glorify those in power. The authorities don’t need a reason - you can’t, don’t want or aren’t able.
So it turns out that:
"Every tattered horse
He nods his head towards me.”
But there is no support from the state. Here you should not think that Yesenin is worried about his material well-being and is ready to bend. The poet is more confused by misunderstanding - he and those who are building a new life live in different worlds, according to different laws.
For a poet, it is important to realize that poems are accepted and are beneficial. Yesenin does not have this, hence the semi-confession “I will not deceive myself” comes to light.
I won't deceive myself
Concern lay in a hazy heart.
Why am I known as a charlatan?
Why am I known as a brawler?
I'm not a villain and I didn't rob the forest,
He didn’t shoot the unfortunate people in the dungeons.
I'm just a street rake
Smiling at people he meets.
I am a Moscow mischievous reveler.
Throughout the Tver region
In the alleys every dog
Knows my easy gait.
Every tattered horse
He nods his head towards me.
I'm a good friend to animals,
Each verse of mine heals the soul of the beast.
I wear a top hat not for women -
The heart cannot live in stupid passion, -
It’s more comfortable in it, reducing your sadness,
Give gold oats to the mare.
I have no friendship among people,
I submitted to another kingdom.
It's on everyone's neck here
I'm ready to give away my best tie.
And now I won’t get sick.
The hazy pool in my heart cleared up.
That's why I became known as a charlatan,
That's why I became known as a brawler.
("I won't deceive myself")
x x x
I won't deceive myself
Concern lay in a hazy heart.
Why am I known as a charlatan?
Why am I known as a brawler?
I'm not a villain and I didn't rob the forest,
He didn’t shoot the unfortunate people in the dungeons.
I'm just a street rake
Smiling at people he meets.
I am a Moscow mischievous reveler.
Throughout the Tver region
In the alleys every dog
Knows my easy gait.
Every tattered horse
He nods his head towards me.
I'm a good friend to animals,
Each verse of mine heals the soul of the beast.
I wear a top hat not for women -
The heart cannot live in stupid passion, -
It’s more comfortable in it, reducing your sadness,
Give gold oats to the mare.
I have no friendship among people,
I submitted to another kingdom.
It's on everyone's neck here
I'm ready to give away my best tie.
And now I won’t get sick.
The hazy pool in my heart cleared up.
That's why I became known as a charlatan,
That's why I became known as a brawler.
Yesenin! Golden name. Murdered youth. Genius of the Russian land! None of the Poets who came into this world had such spiritual strength, enchanting, omnipotent, soul-grabbing childish openness, moral purity, deep pain-love for the Fatherland! So many tears were shed over his poems, so many human souls sympathized and empathized with every Yesenin line, that if it were counted, Yesenin’s poetry would outweigh any and much more! But this method of assessment is not available to earthlings. Although from Parnassus one could see that the people have never loved anyone so much! With Yesenin’s poems they went into battle in the Patriotic War, for his poems they went to Solovki, his poetry excited souls like no other... Only the Lord knows about this holy love of the people for their son. Yesenin’s portrait is squeezed into wall family photo frames, placed on the shrine along with icons...
And not a single Poet in Russia has ever been exterminated or banned with such frenzy and tenacity as Yesenin! And they banned, and kept silent, and belittled, and threw mud at them - and they are still doing this. It is impossible to understand why?
Time has shown: the higher Poetry is in its secret lordship, the more embittered the envious losers are, and the more imitators there are.
Another great gift of God from Yesenin - he read his poems as uniquely as he created them. They sounded like that in his soul! All that remained was to say it. Everyone was shocked by his reading. Please note, great Poets have always been able to read their poems uniquely and by heart - Pushkin and Lermontov... Blok and Gumilyov... Yesenin and Klyuev... Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam... So, young gentlemen, a poet mumbling his lines on a piece of paper from the stage is not a Poet, but an amateur... A poet may not be able to do many things in his life, but not this!
The last poem, “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye...” is another secret of the Poet. In the same year, 1925, there are other lines: “You don’t know that life in the world is worth living!”
Yes, in the deserted city alleys, not only stray dogs, “lesser brothers,” but also big enemies listened to Yesenin’s light gait.
We must know the real truth and not forget how childishly his golden head was thrown back... And again his last wheeze is heard:
“My dears, good ones...”
We did not shoot, we did not betray, but each of us felt like an accomplice. And no poems, no self-justifications helped us.
Don't lie to me, I didn't crucify Christ -
I didn't even make a cross,
I didn't even forge a nail
And I didn’t laugh as I passed by,
I didn't even look out the window,
I just heard people buzzing.
I felt cold even by the fire.
And my fingers were strangely stuck together.
The walls were saturated with fear and suspicion. A friend told me that in one conversation he suggested:
Druskin has a lot of guests - I'm afraid they send an agent provocateur there.
The owner of the house objected:
Why send? He knocks himself.
And I wasn't even offended. After all, shortly before this, a quatrain appeared in my notebook:
The doors are reluctantly unlocked,
Every glance burns with suspicion...
I don't trust you or myself -
God saves man, who save himself.
I want to tell you about one case. Dima Polyanovsky came to me - an unusually handsome man, about whom bad things were slowly being told. He had a telephone, but he always showed up without ringing and, while talking, absentmindedly sorted through the books on my table.
It was a clear January day in 1953, and Dima said something about the doctors’ case. I tried to translate it to something else, but he passionately and persistently began to convince me that this was the beginning of an evil government anti-Semitic campaign and called everything by its proper name.
I didn't object, but I didn't support it either. And suddenly his face changed:
What am I talking about! What an idiot I am - why am I chatting here! And he began to beg:
Leva, don’t give me away... If anyone finds out, I’m dead... I beg you... We have always been friends... Don’t give me away...
At first I was indignant, then I tried to calm him down. But he became more and more excited, turned white, and sweat covered his face. He looked into my eyes and grabbed my hands.
Don’t tell... Don’t give it away... I’ll disappear... And he knelt in front of me.
Until now, I have only read about this in books, and I still don’t know whether it was hysteria or a provocation.
I don't remember how I got rid of him. But to this day I can’t spit out of disgust and pity.
I wasn't much better. More and more often I followed Tyutchev’s advice:
“Be silent, hide and conceal...”
And no matter how scary it may be, he peered into the faces of his best friends with a sudden burn: isn’t that the one? and not this one?
With anger and contempt for myself, I immediately brushed aside vile thoughts, but they returned both during the hours of conversation and in the evenings of the festive feast.
Bread was a cheerful, round-faced guy,
He came straight from the bakery to us.
With a head brown from the heat,
It smoked in contented chunks
And, moving the tablecloth with friendly elbows,
We feasted in living joy.
Free conversation flowed like a stream,
The neighbor, laughing, interrupted the neighbor,
The bottle wandered along the table...
Suddenly, as if some shadow passed by.
And everything changed gradually -
The table changed, the walls stretched out,
The tablecloth hung, wet with tears.
The bread became stale, the dishes did not clink...
And we didn’t know which of us was Judas,
And who is Christ?
This question remains open to this day.
The scale has changed, but not the essence. Sharansky was convicted, Yuri Orlov is in prison. By the time this book comes out, time will pass and other names will be substituted.
As for special mental hospitals, they came into operation after Stalin’s death.
Well, whoever remembers the old is out of sight. This is not a joke, this is a very real threat.
Up there they would give a lot for everyone to be perplexed, as in Solzhenitsyn’s brilliant story:
“37th year? What happened in '37? Spanish War?
Now let’s open the third edition of the Small Soviet Encyclopedia.
“Morozov Pavel (Pavel Trofimovich) - (1918–1932) - schoolboy, pioneer. Born and lived in the village of Gerasimovka (now Verkhne-Tavdinsky district of the Sverdlovsk region). Together with poor peasants, he participated in the confiscation of grain from the kulaks during the period of collectivization. He was killed with his fists."
Where about the father?
After all, this is precisely what the emphasis was on. There are newspaper articles, poems, stories, plays about this.
Don't look, don't peer - not a word.
And let me end with a ditty that I heard from mocking youth:
Father lies on the floor
All pink with blood -
This is his son playing
In Pavlik Morozov.
NEEDS A GREAT -
We need a great one.
Sometimes it appears in newspapers:
“The great Soviet artist Alexander Gerasimov has died.”
“The great Soviet sculptor Evgeniy Vuchetich has died.”
“The great Soviet composer Dmitry Shostakovich has died.” (And they didn’t lie - he was truly great. And as for that half-forgotten incident when the composer fainted in Arkhangelsk at a newsstand, having seen the basement “Confusion instead of music” in Pravda, then why stir up intimate, almost intra-family relationships?)
The worst situation was with poetry.
At first - quite confidently - we settled on Prokofiev. This was a remarkable figure. He was born in the Ladoga town of Kobony into a fishing family and began as a peasant poet, in the spirit of the young Yesenin. However, he never rose above this level.
He wrote enthusiastically, lyrically, and he even wrote some really good poems, which I still love today.
“And the star, like a swallow, sat down
To your high porch."
Soon Prokofiev composed a poem about Lenin:
“So the oak tree does not hold onto the ground,
How we held on to him.”
There was probably no speculation about this yet. Well, about Lenin and about Lenin. Who didn’t write about him then? But the poem spread across all newspapers and almanacs and became a textbook.
And then the province went to write! Works poured in like a stream - patriotic and pseudo-folk. (Sayings, jokes, ditties, nursery rhymes - everything that just came to mind):
“A raven sits on an oak tree,
Looking through a spyglass..."
Prokofiev's work quickly turned into self-parody. Almost every poem of his used the word “Russia” one or more times. In the little book I counted it 87 times. Evil tongues claimed that Alexander Andreevich paid five rubles for a fresh rhyme to “Russia”.
At the same time, there was rapid advancement up the hierarchical ladder. He was a member of the regional committee, a deputy of the Supreme Council, a laureate of the Stalin Prize (by the way, for the poem “Russia”), secretary of the Writers' Union of the USSR, first secretary of the Leningrad Writers' Organization, and a member of a number of editorial boards. Isn't that enough? You can’t list everything!
Prokofiev did not become an intellectual; his culture did not increase by a penny. He remained a man of the people, turned into a general and swollen with exorbitant importance.
He loved flattery, loved to drink with other people's money, and one day he got so drunk that he couldn't get the key into the keyhole and slept all night, standing with his forehead against the doorframe.
To his credit, he was not an anti-Semite. He said about me:
The guy needs to be allowed to live.
But he strangled the young ones mercilessly. And he didn’t like Moscow “innovators”. It is he who has the poem “Oh, you little Moscow staircase!”, where he vehemently opposes the line breakdown introduced by Mayakovsky.
A Russophile, a communist, a conservative, a man not entirely mediocre - he was quite suitable for the role of a great one.
Therefore, when he was unexpectedly “taken for a ride” at the Leningrad re-election meeting, Moscow was very angry:
You don’t need it, but Russia does!
Alexander Andreevich took his defeat hard.
There is a wonderful episode in I.E.’s short and expressive story.
The evening after the re-elections, Prokofiev, drunk, sat in the restaurant of the Writers' House and cried. The faithful squire Anatoly Chepurov stood nearby and consoled him. And suddenly Prokofiev turned to his comforter and spat in his face. Chepurov took out a handkerchief, carefully wiped Prokofiev’s lips, and then dried himself.
I said that Alexander Andreevich took his defeat hard. This is not true: it simply killed him.
Lilya saw Prokofiev shortly before the end: a mortally offended voice, an apoplectic face, shaking hands - you couldn’t recognize him!
A stroke soon followed, followed by a second one - and the poet was gone.
When I think about him, I feel a sense of regret. Maybe if it weren’t for this dizzying official takeoff, something would have happened. It came from Kornilov! Although the talents are, of course, unequal.
Prokofiev died and the position remained vacant.
Who should be chosen as great?
You cannot rely on the “mighty handful”.
Yevtushenko moves from one chair to another with such speed that it simply flashes in his eyes: “Babi Yar”, then “My ideology is the district committee”, then a telegram to the government about Czechoslovakia, then a loyal poem about BAM.
Voznesensky? Well, it is, of course, currency. But it’s difficult for the Soviet reader - “he would like something simpler.”
And with the third - Akhmadulina - it’s completely bad. She graduated from the Literary Institute, where (in Brodsky’s words) nightingales are turned into parrots, but, unfortunately, she remained a nightingale: unyielding. Yes, and daring, oh, daring! In the Central Committee of the party (just think, in the Central Committee of the party!) in response to the accusations she said:
I am a poet, not a serf girl!
We stopped at Dudin. Russian, member of the CPSU, fought.
Too often he passes out drunk, but he has a party character:
“Good-natured Misha Dudin,
Gives one hundred points to anyone:
Misha Dudin, son of Judin -
He will kiss and sell."
And what poet? Yes, none! A strong professional. The poems are neither bad nor good - long, boring, patriotic. Does not have creative individuality.
I remember something funny.
One day, Irina Tarsanova, his wife, came to see us at the Komarov House of Creativity.
Oh guys! You'll never guess what I have. After lunch I’ll run in and read.
There was a time of special enthusiasm for samizdat and she intrigued us terribly. What surprise did she have in store: the latest Chronicle of Current Events or an unfamiliar story by Solzhenitsyn?
We pestered her and she still split:
Okay, I'll tell you. Misha wrote two poems this morning, and I stole them - let’s read them!
Now Dudin was placed on the throne.
For his sixtieth birthday, they organized two anniversary parties for him - in the large hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic and in Moscow, at the Central House of Writers.
There were many speeches, a lot of nonsense was said, and Kaisyn Kuliev called Mikhail Alexandrovich a great Russian poet throughout the country.
And then Dudin read poetry and in the most pathetic place, also in front of the whole country (oh, this is television!), with a quick, furtive movement he scratched his butt.
It must have been very itchy.
DIRECT ROAD TO THE CAMP –
Many people wrote letters to the future. A letter to Mayakovsky’s descendants is known; the poet Robert Rozhdestvensky also wrote a letter to them.
According to Rozhdestvensky, people of the thirtieth century should only do what to think about us (no, not about the Great Patriotic War, that would have been clear!), and admire us today () and erect monuments to us.
And Mayakovsky cut directly:
"Dear
comrades descendants,
in today's
petrified shit..."
I am absolutely sure that Mayakovsky would not have survived 1937; they would have paid off with him even for his most righteous works - for example, for the introduction to the poem “At the top of my voice.”
Yes, if I were to write “today’s petrified shit” about Soviet life, I would have a direct road to the camp, regardless of the rest of the content.
And then, how is it - “through the heads of poets and governments”? Over the heads of the leaders, or what?
What about other poems? How to feel about the expression “Karla-Marla’s beard”?
No, poetic intuition worked here: Mayakovsky shot himself on time, out of a sense of self-preservation.
DANIIL ALEXANDROVICH GRANIN –
I could give a detailed portrait of Daniil Granin, but I really don’t want to. I will limit myself to a few details.
In my opinion, he is a bad writer. And the journalist is capable. I like his book about Australia “A Month Up
Unfortunately, he himself has two faces.
Before the Solzhenitsyn case, Granin was considered the standard of decency. The hour of severe testing has come. Everyone voted for expulsion, but Daniil Alexandrovich abstained. But that's where it ended. One menacing call from Smolny was enough for a telegram to fly to Moscow: “I join the opinion of the majority.”
The decision to join the majority was made once and for all, and the writer, like a bun, rolled off on his measured and verified path.
The trouble with Solzhenitsyn was, however, not the only one. Once in his youth, he angered the “owners” with the story “Own Opinion.”
At a government meeting with writers, Molotov even asked:
Is this Granin who has his own opinion? The joke was sinister, but everything worked out.
Granin, as an intelligent person, gave no more reasons for irritation. Vice versa. In the story “The Picture” he wrote about the atrocities of the past:
“It didn’t start with us, but it ended with us.”
Such evidence of devotion does not go unnoticed.
To the aspiring writer Sergei D. Granin advised:
You need to find a small gap between meanness and nobility, and work in this gap.
To my friend Boris S., who was released from prison and could not find a job anywhere, he suggested:
And you contact the KGB. There are completely different people there now - honest, educated, friendly. They will definitely help you.
He himself does not help anyone.
His sister Irina, my childhood acquaintance, spent her entire life begging, fought like a stick on ice, raised her son, idolized her brother, but he didn’t lift a finger to somehow make her fate easier.
In his house she is a poor relative, sitting on the edge of a chair and ready to disappear at the first sign.
One day Ira came to me on Sunday. Several people were sitting with me - new acquaintances.
In the kitchen, Ira whispered to Lila:
You know, don’t tell them that I’m Donya’s sister, otherwise they’ll be embarrassed.
We sat and drank tea.
And suddenly one of the guests said:
I read Granin's new story in a magazine - such shit!
Yes, he’s shit himself,” the neighbor supported.
By God, it wasn't our fault. Everything worked out naturally.
Then Ira asked with tears:
Why are they doing this to him?
The twelfth issue of Novy Mir, 1977, published the stunning work of Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin, “Chapters from the Siege Book.”
Writers walked around apartments with a tape recorder and recorded stories of people who survived the siege. They changed almost nothing: they sorted the material and built the composition. That is why the book turned out to be so truthful. Literary connections are purely of a service nature and are almost not remembered.
But sometimes (very rarely) there are false testimonies:
Page 71: The height of the famine, with dead or dying people in every room.
“The car was destroyed by a shell, the bread was lying there, they collected it and no one took it for themselves.”
“Heavy shelling began. I somehow crawled to the bakery. Some are lying on the floor, some are hiding behind the counter. But
no one touched anything. There were loaves of bread - and no one said anything.”
It is not true. It would be unnatural, inhumane. The feat of the Leningraders is so enormous that it does not need to be tinted with lies.
No need? Why?
“Everything is propaganda, the whole world is propaganda!”
The British would have eaten it, the Americans would have eaten it, but the Soviet people gave every morsel to the state.
And one more thing is striking in this book. Workers, intellectuals, doctors, teachers, Hermitage employees testify - and they are all Russian. It was as if there were no Jews at all in the besieged city.
This is, of course, no accident. Daniil Aleksandrovich's sister Ira has a Jewish identity in her passport. And for Daniil German, in addition to his last name, his nationality has also been changed. Either he is a Belarusian, or someone else - in any case, not a Jew.
It’s more convenient in our country.
In recent years, Granin has matured and become venerable. He is always calm, taciturn, and some kind of evil force emanates from him.
He recently celebrated his sixtieth birthday in grand style.
There was a nervous whisper throughout the Writers' Union:
And he was invited...
But he didn’t invite me...
At this evening, a very tipsy Viktor Konetsky, in the presence of 120 guests, made a toast: “We all know that Daniil Alexandrovich has not been granted much from God, and only through his great labor...”
Everyone pretended not to notice anything, including Granin. But I don’t envy Konetsky.
One summer, having met the writer N., Granin told him that the widow of the wonderful poet Vaginov lived from hand to mouth. The only person who sometimes supports her is Nikolai Semenovich Tikhonov.
Granin asked:
Maybe you, G.S., will take part in this noble cause?
Hearing this, Lilya and I howled:
And what a painting by Filonov hanging in his living room! Priceless!
How much did he buy it for?
N. hesitated, glanced warily at the wall behind which the Rytkheu lived, and said in a whisper:
He didn't buy it, it's a gift. He received it for helping Filonov’s sister get into a good nursing home.
I remember I was sitting in a stroller at the gates of the Komarovsky cemetery. The friends who accompanied me went to bow to Akhmatova, and I waited, placing my hand on Huck’s shaggy head.
It was the first clear day after a rainy week.
Leva, can I help you?
I looked up: Granin. What is he doing?
“No, thank you,” I answered, perplexed. He nodded and moved on.
And then I noticed that the pillow that was placed under my side had slipped out, fallen and was lying in the dirt. So that's what it's about!
Huck, pick it up,” I said.
And my dog willingly helped me.
