A. Druzhinina, student of the Faculty of History and Social Sciences, Leningrad State Regional University. A. S. Pushkin.

Viktor Tretyakevich.

Sergei Tyulenin.

Ulyana Gromova.

Ivan Zemnukhov.

Oleg Koshevoy.

Lyubov Shevtsova.

Monument "Oath" on the square named after the Young Guard in Krasnodon.

A corner of the museum dedicated to the Young Guards is the banner of the organization and the sledge on which weapons were carried. Krasnodon.

Anna Iosifovna, the mother of Viktor Tretyakevich, waited for the day when the honest name of her son was restored.

While studying for three years how the “Young Guard” arose and how it worked behind enemy lines, I realized that the main thing in its history is not the organization itself and its structure, not even the feats it accomplished (although, of course, everything done by the guys causes immense respect and admiration). Indeed, during the Second World War, hundreds of such underground or partisan detachments were created in the occupied territory of the USSR, but the Young Guard became the first organization that they learned about almost immediately after the death of its members. And almost everyone died - about a hundred people. The main thing in the history of the "Young Guard" began precisely on January 1, 1943, when its leading troika was arrested.

Now some journalists write with disdain about the fact that the Young Guard did nothing special, that they were OUN members at all, or even just “Krasnodon lads”. It's amazing how seemingly serious people cannot understand (or don't want to?) that they - these boys and girls - performed the main feat of their lives right there, in prison, where they experienced inhuman torture, but to the end, until death from a bullet at the abandoned pit, where many were dumped while still alive, they remained people.

On the anniversary of their memory, I would like to recall at least some episodes from the life of the Young Guard and how they died. They deserve it. (All facts are taken from documentary books and essays, conversations with eyewitnesses of those days and archival documents.)

They were brought to an abandoned mine -
and pushed out of the car.
The guys led each other by the arms,
supported in the hour of death.
Beaten, exhausted, they walked into the night
in bloody rags.
And the boys tried to help the girls
and even joked, as before ...

Yes, that's right, at an abandoned mine, most of the members of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard", which fought in 1942 against the Nazis in the small Ukrainian town of Krasnodon, lost their lives. It turned out to be the first underground youth organization about which it was possible to collect quite detailed information. The Young Guards were then called heroes (they were heroes), who gave their lives for their homeland. A little over ten years ago, everyone knew about the Young Guard. The novel of the same name by Alexander Fadeev was studied in schools; at the screening of Sergei Gerasimov's film, people could not hold back their tears; motor ships, streets, hundreds of educational institutions and pioneer detachments were named after the Young Guards. More than three hundred Young Guard museums were created throughout the country (and even abroad), and about 11 million people visited the Krasnodon Museum.

And who now knows about the Krasnodon underground? In recent years, the Krasnodon Museum has been empty and quiet, only eight out of three hundred school museums in the country have remained, and in the press (both in Russia and in Ukraine) young heroes are increasingly called “nationalists”, “unorganized Komsomol lads”, and some and even denies their existence.

What were they like, these young men and women who called themselves Young Guardsmen?

The Krasnodon Komsomol youth underground included seventy-one people: forty-seven boys and twenty-four girls. The youngest was fourteen, and fifty-five of them never turned nineteen. The most ordinary, no different from the same boys and girls of our country, the guys were friends and quarreled, studied and fell in love, ran to dances and chased pigeons. They were engaged in school circles, sports clubs, played stringed musical instruments, wrote poetry, many of them were good at drawing.

They studied in different ways - someone was an excellent student, and someone with difficulty overcame the granite of science. There were also a lot of tomboys. Dreamed of a future adult life. They wanted to become pilots, engineers, lawyers, someone was going to enter the theater school, and someone - to the pedagogical institute.

The “Young Guard” was as multinational as the population of these southern regions of the USSR. Russians, Ukrainians (there were Cossacks among them), Armenians, Belarusians, Jews, Azerbaijanis and Moldavians, ready to help each other at any moment, fought against the Nazis.

The Germans occupied Krasnodon on July 20, 1942. And almost immediately the first leaflets appeared in the city, a new bathhouse, already ready for the German barracks, was on fire. It was Seryozhka Tyulenin who began to act. One.

On August 12, 1942, he turned seventeen. Sergey wrote leaflets on pieces of old newspapers, and the policemen often found them in their pockets. He began to collect weapons, not even doubting that they would definitely come in handy. And he was the first to attract a group of guys ready to fight. It initially consisted of eight people. However, by the first days of September, several groups were already operating in Krasnodon, not connected with one another - in total there were 25 people in them. The birthday of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard" was September 30: then the plan for creating a detachment was adopted, specific actions for underground work were outlined, and a headquarters was created. It included Ivan Zemnukhov - chief of staff, Vasily Levashov - commander of the central group, Georgy Arutyunyants and Sergey Tyulenin - members of the headquarters. Viktor Tretyakevich was elected commissar. The guys unanimously supported Tyulenin's proposal to name the detachment "Young Guard". And in early October, all the scattered underground groups were united into one organization. Later, Uliana Gromova, Lyubov Shevtsova, Oleg Koshevoy and Ivan Turkenich joined the headquarters.

Now you can often hear that the Young Guards did nothing special. Well, they put up leaflets, collected weapons, burned and contaminated the grain intended for the invaders. Well, they hung out several flags on the day of the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, burned the Labor Exchange, saved several dozen prisoners of war. Other underground organizations have existed longer and done more!

And do these unfortunate critics understand that everything, literally everything, these boys and girls committed on the verge of life and death. Is it easy to walk down the street when warnings are posted on almost every house and fence that if you don’t hand over your weapon, you will be shot. And at the bottom of the bag, under the potatoes, there are two grenades, and you have to walk past several dozen policemen with an independent air, and everyone can stop ... By the beginning of December, the Young Guard already had 15 machine guns, 80 rifles, 300 grenades, about 15 thousand rounds of ammunition, 10 pistols, 65 kilograms of explosives and several hundred meters of Fickford cord.

Isn't it scary to sneak past the German patrol at night, knowing that for appearing on the street after six in the evening there is a threat of execution? But most of the work was done at night. At night, they burned the German Labor Exchange - and two and a half thousand Krasnodon residents were delivered from German hard labor. On the night of November 7, the Young Guards hung out red flags - and the next morning, when they saw them, people experienced great joy: “We are remembered, we are not forgotten by ours!” At night, prisoners of war were released, telephone wires were cut, German vehicles were attacked, a herd of cattle of 500 heads was recaptured from the Nazis and dispersed to the nearest farms and settlements.

Even leaflets were pasted mostly at night, although it happened that they had to do it during the day. At first, leaflets were written by hand, then they began to be printed in the same organized printing house. In total, the Young Guards issued about 30 separate leaflets with a total circulation of almost five thousand copies - from which Krasnodon residents learned the latest reports from the Sovinformburo.

In December, the first disagreements appeared at the headquarters, which later became the basis of the legend that still lives on and according to which Oleg Koshevoy is considered the commissar of the Young Guard.

What happened? Koshevoy began to insist that a detachment of 15-20 people be singled out from all the underground workers, capable of operating separately from the main detachment. It was in him that Koshevoy was supposed to become a commissar. The guys did not support this proposal. Nevertheless, Oleg, after another admission to the Komsomol of a youth group, took temporary Komsomol tickets from Vanya Zemnukhov, but did not give them, as always, to Viktor Tretyakevich, but issued them to the newly accepted ones himself, signing: “Commissar of the Molot partisan detachment Kashuk.”

On January 1, 1943, three young guards were arrested: Yevgeny Moshkov, Viktor Tretyakevich and Ivan Zemnukhov - the Nazis fell into the very heart of the organization. On the same day, the remaining members of the headquarters urgently gathered and decided: all the Young Guards should immediately leave the city, and the leaders should not spend the night at home that night. All underground workers were informed about the decision of the headquarters through messengers. One of them, who was in the group of the village of Pervomaika, Gennady Pocheptsov, having learned about the arrests, got cold feet and wrote a statement to the police about the existence of an underground organization.

The entire punitive apparatus was set in motion. Mass arrests began. But why didn't the majority of the Young Guards follow the order of the headquarters? After all, this first disobedience, and hence the violation of the oath, cost almost all of them their lives! Probably due to the lack of life experience. At first, the guys did not realize that a catastrophe had happened and their leading trio could no longer get out of prison. Many could not decide for themselves: whether to leave the city, whether to help the arrested, or voluntarily share their fate. They did not understand that the headquarters had already considered all the options and took the only correct one into action. But most of them didn't do it. Almost everyone was afraid for their parents.

Only twelve young guards managed to escape in those days. But later, two of them - Sergei Tyulenin and Oleg Koshevoy - were nevertheless arrested. Four cells of the city police were packed to capacity. All the guys were terribly tortured. The office of the chief of police, Solikovsky, looked more like a slaughterhouse - it was so spattered with blood. In order not to hear the screams of the tortured in the yard, the monsters started the gramophone and turned it on at full volume.

Underground workers were hung by the neck to the window frame, simulating execution by hanging, and by the legs, to the ceiling hook. And they beat, beat, beat - with sticks and wire whips with nuts on the end. The girls were hung by braids, and the hair could not stand it, it broke off. The Young Guards were crushed by the door with fingers, shoe needles were driven under the nails, they were put on a hot stove, stars were cut out on the chest and back. Their bones were broken, their eyes were gouged out and burnt out, their arms and legs were cut off…

The executioners, having learned from Pocheptsov that Tretyakevich was one of the leaders of the Young Guard, decided at all costs to force him to speak, believing that then it would be easier to cope with the rest. He was tortured with extreme cruelty, he was mutilated beyond recognition. But Victor remained silent. Then a rumor was spread among the arrested and in the city: Tretyakevich had betrayed everyone. But Victor's comrades did not believe it.

On a cold winter night on January 15, 1943, the first group of Young Guardsmen, including Tretyakevich, was taken to the ruined mine for execution. When they were put on the edge of the pit, Victor grabbed the deputy chief of police by the neck and tried to drag him along with him to a depth of 50 meters. The frightened executioner turned pale with fear and almost did not resist, and only the gendarme arrived in time, hitting Tretyakevich on the head with a pistol, saved the policeman from death.

On January 16, the second group of underground workers was shot, on the 31st - the third. One of this group managed to escape from the place of execution. It was Anatoly Kovalev, who later went missing.

Four remained in prison. They were taken to the city of Rovenki in the Krasnodon region and shot on February 9 along with Oleg Koshev, who was there.

On February 14, Soviet troops entered Krasnodon. February 17 became a day of mourning, full of weeping and lamentations. From a deep, dark pit, the bodies of tortured young men and women were taken out with a bucket. It was difficult to recognize them; some of the children were identified by their parents only by their clothes.

A wooden obelisk was placed on the mass grave with the names of the dead and with the words:

And drops of your hot blood,
Like sparks flare up in the darkness of life
And many brave hearts will be lit!

The name of Viktor Tretyakevich was not on the obelisk! And his mother, Anna Iosifovna, never took off her black dress again and tried to go to the grave later so as not to meet anyone there. She, of course, did not believe in her son's betrayal, just as most of her fellow countrymen did not, but the conclusions of the commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League under the leadership of Toritsin and the subsequently remarkable novel by Fadeev, which was published in artistic terms, had an impact on the minds and hearts of millions of people. One can only regret that Fadeev's novel The Young Guard did not turn out to be equally remarkable in respecting historical truth.

The investigating authorities also accepted the version of Tretyakevich's betrayal, and even when the true traitor Pocheptsov, who was subsequently arrested, confessed to everything, the charge was not removed from Viktor. And since, according to party leaders, a traitor cannot be a commissar, Oleg Koshevoy was elevated to this rank, whose signature was on the December Komsomol tickets - “Commissar of the Molot partisan detachment Kashuk.”

After 16 years, one of the most ferocious executioners who tortured the Young Guards, Vasily Podtynny, was arrested. During the investigation, he stated: Tretyakevich was slandered, but he, despite severe torture and beatings, did not betray anyone.

So almost 17 years later, the truth triumphed. By decree of December 13, 1960, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR rehabilitated Viktor Tretyakevich and awarded him the Order of the Patriotic War, I degree (posthumously). His name began to be included in all official documents, along with the names of other heroes of the Young Guard.

Anna Iosifovna, Victor's mother, who never took off her mourning black clothes, stood in front of the presidium of the solemn meeting in Voroshilovgrad when she was presented with her son's posthumous award. The crowded hall, standing up, applauded her, but it seemed that what was happening no longer pleased her. Maybe because her mother always knew that her son was an honest man... Anna Iosifovna turned to her comrade, who was rewarding her, with only one request: not to show the film "Young Guard" in the city these days.

So, the stigma of a traitor was removed from Viktor Tretyakevich, but he was never restored to the rank of commissar and the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, which was awarded to the rest of the dead members of the Young Guard headquarters, was not honored.

Finishing this short story about the heroic and tragic days of the Krasnodon people, I would like to say that the heroism and tragedy of the Young Guard are probably still far from being revealed. But this is our history, and we have no right to forget it.

"Young guard"

The heroic history of the underground organization of Krasnodon boys and girls who fought against the Nazis and laid down their lives in this struggle was known to every Soviet person. Now this story is remembered much less often ...

The famous novel Alexandra Fadeeva and the movie of the same name Sergei Gerasimov. In the 90s of the last century, they began to forget about the Young Guard: Fadeev’s novel was removed from the school curriculum, and the story itself was declared almost an invention of Soviet propagandists.

Meanwhile, in the name of the freedom of their homeland, the young men and women of Krasnodon fought against the German invaders, showing stamina and heroism, withstood torture and bullying, and died very young. It is impossible to forget about their feat, says Doctor of Historical Sciences Nina PETROVA- compiler of the collection of documents "The true history of the "Young Guard"".

Almost everyone died...

– Did the study of the heroic history of the Krasnodon Komsomol underground begin during the war years?

- In the Soviet Union, it was officially believed that 3,350 Komsomol and youth underground organizations were operating in the temporarily occupied territory. But we do not know the history of any of them. For example, almost nothing is known about the youth organization that arose in the city of Stalino (now Donetsk). And the young guards really were in the spotlight. It was the largest organization in terms of numbers, almost all of whose members died.

Shortly after the liberation of Krasnodon on February 14, 1943, Soviet and party organs began collecting information about the Young Guard. Already on March 31, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR Vasily Sergienko reported on the activities of this organization to the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev brought the information received to the attention of Joseph Stalin, and the story of the "Young Guard" received wide publicity, they started talking about it. And in July 1943, following the results of a trip to Krasnodon, the deputy head of the special department of the Central Committee of the Komsomol Anatoly Toritsyn(later Major General of the KGB) and instructor of the Central Committee N. Sokolov prepared a memorandum on the emergence and activities of the Young Guard.

How and when did this organization come about?

Krasnodon is a small mining town. Mining settlements grew up around it - Pervomaika, Semeykino and others. At the end of July 1942, Krasnodon was occupied. It is officially recognized that the "Young Guard" arose at the end of September. But we must keep in mind that small underground youth organizations appeared not only in the city, but also in the villages. And at first they were not connected with each other.

I believe that the process of forming the "Young Guard" began at the end of August and ended by November 7th. The documents contain information that in August an attempt was made to unite the youth of Krasnodon Sergei Tyulenin. According to the recollections of teachers, Sergei was a very enterprising young man, thoughtful, serious. He loved literature and dreamed of becoming a pilot.

In September appeared in Krasnodon Viktor Tretyakevich. His family came from Voroshilovgrad (now Lugansk). Tretyakevich was left underground by the regional committee of the Komsomol and immediately began to play a leading role in the activities of the underground organization of Krasnodon. By that time, he had already managed to fight in a partisan detachment ...

- Disputes about how duties were distributed at the headquarters of the organization have not subsided for more than 70 years. Who headed the "Young Guard" - Viktor Tretyakevich or Oleg Koshevoy? As far as I understand, even a few surviving Young Guards expressed different opinions on this matter ...

– Oleg Koshevoy was a 16-year-old boy , joined the Komsomol in 1942. How could he create such a militant organization when older people were nearby? How could Koshevoi seize the initiative from Tretyakevich, joining the Young Guard later than him?

We can confidently say that Tretyakevich, a member of the Komsomol since January 1939, led the organization. Much older than Koshevoy was Ivan Turkenich, who served in the Red Army. He managed to avoid arrest in January 1943, spoke at the funeral of the Young Guards and managed to talk about the activities of the organization in hot pursuit. Turkenich died during the liberation of Poland. From his repeated official statements, it followed that Koshevoy appeared in the "Young Guard" on the eve of November 7, 1942. True, after some time, Oleg really became the secretary of the Komsomol organization, collected membership dues, and took part in some actions. But he was not the leader.

How many people were in the underground organization?

– There is still no consensus on this. In Soviet times, for some reason, it was believed that the more underground workers, the better. But, as a rule, the larger the underground organization, the more difficult it is to maintain secrecy. And the failure of the Young Guard is an example of this. If we take official data on the number, then they range from 70 to 100 people. Some local researchers talk about 130 Young Guards.

Promotional poster for the film "The Young Guard", directed by Sergei Gerasimov. 1947

In addition, the question arises: who should be considered members of the Young Guard? Only those who worked in it constantly, or also those who helped sporadically, performing one-time assignments? There were people who sympathized with the Young Guards, but personally did nothing within the organization or did very little. Are those who wrote and distributed only a few leaflets during the occupation considered underground workers? Such a question arose after the war, when it became prestigious to be a Young Guard and people began to apply for confirmation of their membership in the Young Guard, whose participation in the organization was previously unknown.

- What ideas and motives underlay the activities of the Young Guard?

– Boys and girls grew up in the families of miners, were educated in Soviet schools, were brought up in a patriotic spirit. They loved literature - both Russian and Ukrainian. They wanted to convey to their countrymen the truth about the true state of affairs at the front, to dispel the myth of the invincibility of Nazi Germany. That's why they distributed leaflets. The guys were eager to do something to harm the enemies.

- What damage did the Young Guards cause to the invaders? What do they deserve credit for?

- The Young Guards, not thinking about what their descendants would call them and whether they were doing everything right, just did what they could, what was within their power. They burned the building of the German labor exchange with lists of those who were going to be taken to Germany. By decision of the Young Guard headquarters, over 80 Soviet prisoners of war were released from the concentration camp, and a herd of 500 cattle was beaten off. In the grain, which was prepared for shipment to Germany, bugs were launched - this led to the spoilage of several tons of grain. Young men attacked motorcyclists: they obtained weapons in order to start an open armed struggle at the right moment.

SMALL CELLS WERE CREATED IN DIFFERENT PLACES OF KRASNODON AND IN THE SURROUNDING VILLAGES. They were divided into fives. The members of each five knew each other, but they could not know the composition of the entire organization

Members of the "Young Guard" exposed the disinformation spread by the occupiers, instilled in the people faith in the inevitable defeat of the invaders. Members of the organization wrote by hand or printed leaflets in a primitive printing house, distributed reports of the Soviet Information Bureau. In leaflets, the Young Guards exposed the lies of fascist propaganda, sought to tell the truth about the Soviet Union, about the Red Army. In the first months of the occupation, the Germans, calling on young people to work in Germany, promised a good life for everyone there. And some succumbed to these promises. It was important to dispel the illusions.

On the night of November 7, 1942, the guys hung out red flags on the buildings of schools, the gendarmerie and other institutions. The flags were hand-sewn by the girls from white fabric, then painted scarlet - a color that symbolized freedom for the Young Guards. On the eve of the new year, 1943, members of the organization attacked a German car carrying gifts and mail for the occupiers. The guys took the gifts with them, burned the mail, and hid the rest.

Unbowed. Hood. F.T. Kostenko

- How long did the "Young Guard" operate?

- Arrests began immediately after the Catholic Christmas - at the end of December 1942. Accordingly, the period of active activity of the organization lasted about three months.

Young Guards. Biographical essays on members of the Krasnodon party and Komsomol underground / Comp. R.M. Aptekar, A.G. Nikitenko. Donetsk, 1981

The true story of the "Young Guard" / Comp. N.K. Petrov. M., 2015

Who betrayed anyway?

- Various people were blamed for the failure of the Young Guard. Is it possible today to draw final conclusions and name the one who betrayed the underground fighters to the enemy and is guilty of their death?

- He was declared a traitor in 1943 Gennady Pocheptsov, who was accepted into the organization by Tretyakevich. However, the 15-year-old Pocheptsov had nothing to do with the governing bodies and was not even very active in the Young Guard. He could not know all of its members. Even Turkenich and Koshevoy did not know everyone. This was hindered by the very principle of building an organization proposed by Tretyakevich. Small cells were created in different places of Krasnodon and in the surrounding villages. They were divided into fives. The members of each five knew each other, but they could not know the composition of the entire organization.

Testimony against Pocheptsov was given by a former lawyer of the Krasnodon city government who collaborated with the Germans Mikhail Kuleshov- During the occupation, an investigator of the district police. He claimed that on 24 or 25 December he entered the office of the commandant of the Krasnodonsky district and the head of the local police, Vasily Solikovsky, and saw Pocheptsov's statement on his desk. Then they said that the young man allegedly handed over to the police a list of Young Guards through his stepfather. But where is this list? Nobody saw him. Stepfather Pocheptsov, Vasily Gromov, after the release of Krasnodon, he testified that he did not carry any list to the police. Despite this, on September 19, 1943, Pocheptsov, his stepfather Gromov and Kuleshov were publicly shot. Before the execution, a 15-year-old boy rolled on the ground and shouted that he was not guilty ...

- And now there is an established point of view about who was the traitor?

– There are two points of view. According to the first version, he betrayed Pocheptsov. According to the second, the failure did not occur because of betrayal, but because of poor conspiracy. Vasily Levashov and some other surviving Young Guards argued that if not for the attack on the car with Christmas presents, the organization could have survived. Boxes with canned food, sweets, biscuits, cigarettes, things were stolen from the car. All this was taken home. Valeria Borts took the raccoon coat. When the arrests began, Valeria's mother cut the fur coat into small pieces, which she then destroyed.

Caught young underground workers on cigarettes. I sold them Mitrofan Puzyrev. The police were also on the trail of candy wrappers that the guys threw anywhere. And so the arrests began before the new year. So, I think, the organization was ruined by non-compliance with the rules of secrecy, the naivety and gullibility of some of its members.

Before everyone was arrested Evgenia Moshkova- the only communist among the Young Guards; he was brutally tortured. On January 1, they took Ivan Zemnukhov and Viktor Tretyakevich.

After the release of Krasnodon, there were rumors that Tretyakevich allegedly could not stand the torture and betrayed his comrades. But there is no documentary evidence for this. Yes, and many facts do not fit with the version of the betrayal of Tretyakevich. He was one of the first to be arrested, and until the very day of his execution, that is, for two weeks, he was severely tortured. Why, if he already named everyone? It is also unclear why the Young Guards were taken in groups. The last group was taken on the night of January 30-31, 1943 - a month after Tretyakevich himself was arrested. According to the testimonies of the Nazi accomplices who tortured the Young Guards, the tortures did not break Victor.

The version about his betrayal also contradicts the fact that Tretyakevich was thrown into the mine first and still alive. It is known that at the last moment he tried to drag the chief of police Solikovsky and the head of the German gendarmerie Zons into the pit with him. For this, Victor received a blow on the head with a pistol handle.

During the arrests and investigations, policemen Solikovsky, Zakharov, as well as Plokhikh and Sevastyanov tried their best. They mutilated Ivan Zemnukhov beyond recognition. Yevgeny Moshkov was doused with water, taken outside, then put on the stove, and then again taken for interrogation. Sergei Tyulenin was cauterized with a red-hot rod. When Sergei's fingers were thrust into the door and closed it, he screamed and, unable to bear the pain, lost consciousness. Ulyana Gromova was suspended from the ceiling by her braids. The guys broke their ribs, cut off their fingers, gouged out their eyes ...

Ulyana Gromova (1924–1943) The suicide letter of the girl became known thanks to her friend Vera Krotova, after the release of Krasnodon, she went around all the cells and discovered this tragic inscription on the wall. She copied the text onto a piece of paper...

“There was no party underground in Krasnodon”

Why were they so brutally tortured?

- I think that the Germans wanted to enter the party underground, that's why they tortured me like that. And there was no party underground in Krasnodon. Not having received the information they needed, the Nazis executed members of the Young Guard. Most of the Young Guards were executed at mine number 5-bis on the night of January 15, 1943. 50 members of the organization were thrown into a mine shaft 53 meters deep.

–In print, you can find the number 72 ...

- 72 people - this is the total number of people executed there, so many corpses were raised from the mine. Among the dead were 20 communists and captured Red Army soldiers who had nothing to do with the Young Guard. Some of the Young Guards were shot, someone was thrown into the pit alive.

However, not everyone was executed that day. Oleg Koshevoy, for example, was detained only on January 22. On the road near Kartushino station, he was stopped by the police, searched, found a pistol, beaten and sent under escort to Rovenki. There he was again searched, and under the lining of his overcoat they found two forms of temporary membership cards and a self-made seal of the Young Guard. The police chief recognized the young man: Oleg was the nephew of his friend. When Koshevoy was interrogated and beaten, Oleg shouted out that he was the commissar of the Young Guard. Lyubov Shevtsova, Semyon Ostapenko, Viktor Subbotin and Dmitry Ogurtsov were also tortured in Rovenki.

The funeral of the Young Guard in the city of Krasnodon on March 1, 1943

Koshevoy was shot on January 26, and Lyubov Shevtsova and all the others on the night of February 9. Just five days later, on February 14, Krasnodon was released. The bodies of the Young Guards were taken out of the mine. On March 1, 1943, a funeral was held in the park named after Lenin Komsomol from morning to evening.

- Which of the young guards survived?

- Anatoly Kovalev was the only one who fled on the way to the place of execution. According to the memoirs, he was a brave and courageous young man. Little has always been said about him, although his story is interesting in its own way. He signed up for the police, but served there for only a few days. Then he joined the "Young Guard". Was arrested. Mikhail Grigoriev helped Anatoly escape, who untied the rope with his teeth. When I was in Krasnodon, I met Antonina Titova, Kovalev's girlfriend. At first, the wounded Anatoly was hiding from her. Then his relatives took him to the region of Dnepropetrovsk, where he disappeared, and his further fate is still unknown. The feat of the Young Guard was not even marked with the medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War", because Kovalev served as a policeman for several days. Antonina Titova waited for him for a long time, wrote memoirs, collected documents. But nothing has been published.

ALL DISPUTES ON SPECIFIC ISSUES AND ABOUT THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE IN THE ORGANIZATION SHOULD NOT SHADOW THE GREAT FEAT accomplished by the young underground workers of Krasnodon

Ivan Turkenich, Valeria Borts, Olga and Nina Ivantsov, Radik Yurkin, Georgy Arutyunyants, Mikhail Shishchenko, Anatoly Lopukhov and Vasily Levashov were saved. I will say a special word about the last one. On April 27, 1989, employees of the Central Archive of the Komsomol met with him and Tretyakevich's brother Vladimir. A tape recording was made. Levashov said that he fled near Amvrosievka, to the village of Puteinikov. When the Red Army arrived, he declared his desire to go to war. In September 1943, during an inspection, he admitted that he was in the temporarily occupied territory in Krasnodon, where he was abandoned after graduating from intelligence school. Not knowing that the story of the "Young Guard" had already gained fame, Vasily said that he was a member of it. After the interrogation, the officer sent Levashov to the barn, where some young man was already sitting. They started talking. At that meeting in 1989, Levashov said: "After only 40 years, I realized that it was an agent of that Chekist when I compared what he asked and what I answered."

As a result, Levashov was believed, he was sent to the front. He liberated Kherson, Nikolaev, Odessa, Chisinau and Warsaw, took Berlin as part of the 5th shock army.

Roman Fadeeva

– Work on the book “Young Guard” Alexander Fadeev started in 1943. But the original version of the novel was criticized for not reflecting the leading role of the Communist Party. The writer took into account the criticism and revised the novel. Has historical truth suffered from this?

- I think that just the first version of the novel was successful and more in line with historical realities. In the second version, a description of the leading role of the party organization appeared, although in reality the Krasnodon party organization did not show itself in any way. The communists who remained in the city were arrested. They were tortured and executed. It is significant that no one made any attempts to recapture the captured communists and young guards from the Germans. The guys were taken home like kittens. Those who were arrested in the settlements were then taken in sledges for a distance of ten or more kilometers. They were accompanied by only two or three policemen. Has anyone tried to beat them back? No.

Only a few people left Krasnodon. Some, such as Anna Sopova, had the opportunity to escape, but did not use it.

Alexander Fadeev and Valeria Borts, one of the few survivors of the Young Guard, at a meeting with readers. 1947

- Why?

“They were afraid that relatives would suffer because of them.

- How accurately did Fadeev manage to reflect the history of the "Young Guard" and in what way did he deviate from historical truth?

- Fadeev himself said about this: “Although the heroes of my novel have real names and surnames, I did not write the real history of the Young Guard, but a work of art in which there is a lot of fictional and even fictional faces. Roman has the right to do so." And when Fadeev was asked whether it was worth making the Young Guard so bright and ideal, he replied that he wrote as he saw fit. Basically, the author accurately reflected the events that took place in Krasnodon, but there are also discrepancies with reality. Thus, the traitor Stakhovich is written out in the novel. This is a fictional collective image. And it was written from Tretyakevich - one to one.

Dissatisfaction with the way certain episodes of the history of the Young Guard were shown in the novel began to be expressed in full voice by the relatives and friends of the victims immediately after the book was published. For example, the mother of Lydia Androsova turned to Fadeev with a letter. She claimed that, contrary to what was written in the novel, her daughter's diary and her other notes never made it to the police and could not be the reason for the arrests. In a reply letter dated August 31, 1947 to D.K. and M.P. Androsov, Lydia's parents, Fadeev admitted:

“Everything that I wrote about your daughter shows her as a very devoted and persistent girl. I deliberately made it so that her diary allegedly fell into the hands of the Germans after her arrest. You know better than I do that there is not a single entry in the diary that speaks of the activities of the Young Guard and could serve the Germans for the benefit in terms of revealing the Young Guard. In this regard, your daughter was very careful. Therefore, by allowing such a fiction in the novel, I do not put any stain on your daughter.

- Parents thought otherwise ...

- Certainly. And most of all, the inhabitants of Krasnodon were indignant at the role assigned by the writer Oleg Koshevoy. Koshevoy's mother claimed (and this was included in the novel) that the underground gathered at their house on Sadovaya Street, 6. But the Krasnodon people knew for sure that German officers were quartered with her! This is not Elena Nikolaevna's fault: she had decent housing, so the Germans preferred it. But how could the headquarters of the "Young Guard" meet there ?! In fact, the headquarters of the organization was going to Arutyunyants, Tretyakevich and others.

Koshevoy's mother was awarded the Order of the Red Star in 1943. Even Oleg's grandmother, Vera Vasilievna Korostyleva, was awarded the medal "For Military Merit"! The stories in the novel about her heroic role are anecdotal. She didn't do anything. Later, Elena Nikolaevna wrote the book "The Tale of the Son." Or rather, other people wrote it. When she was asked at the Komsomol regional committee whether everything in the book was true and objective, she replied: “You know, writers wrote the book. But from my story.

- An interesting position.

- Even more interesting is that Oleg Koshevoy had a living father. He was divorced from Oleg's mother, lived in a neighboring town. So Elena Nikolaevna declared him dead! Although the father came to the grave of his son, mourned him.

Koshevoy's mother was an interesting, charming woman. Her story greatly influenced Fadeev. It must be said that the writer held meetings with relatives of not all the dead Young Guards. In particular, he refused to accept Sergei Tyulenin's relatives. Elena Nikolaevna regulated access to the author of The Young Guard.

Another thing is noteworthy. Parents and grandmothers strive to preserve the drawings and notes made by their children and grandchildren at different ages. And Elena Nikolaevna, being the head of the kindergarten, destroyed all Oleg's diaries and notebooks, so there is no way to even see his handwriting. But verses written by Elena Nikolaevna's hand, which she declared belonged to Oleg, were preserved. There were rumors that it was she who composed them herself.

We must not forget the main

- Surviving Young Guards could bring clarity to controversial issues. Did they meet after the war?

- All together - never. In fact, there was a split. They did not agree on the question of who should be considered the commissar of the Young Guard. Borts, Ivantsovs and Shishchenko considered them Koshevoy, and Yurkin, Arutyunyants and Levashov - Tretyakevich. At the same time, in the period from 1943 until the end of the 1950s, Tretyakevich was considered a traitor. His older brother Mikhail was relieved of his post as secretary of the Luhansk Regional Party Committee. Another brother, Vladimir, an army political worker, was declared a party penalty, he was demobilized from the army. Tretyakevich's parents also experienced this injustice hard: his mother was ill, his father was paralyzed.

In 1959, Viktor was rehabilitated, his feat was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. However, in May 1965, only Yurkin, Lopukhov and Levashov from the Young Guard came to the opening of the monument to Tretyakevich in the village of Yasenki, Kursk Region, where he was born. According to Valeria Borts, in the 1980s the Komsomol Central Committee gathered the surviving members of the Krasnodon underground organization. But there are no documents about this meeting in the archive. And the disagreements between the Young Guards were never eliminated.

Monument "Oath" on the central square of Krasnodon

- What impression did films about young underground workers make on you? After all, the story of the "Young Guard" has been filmed more than once.

- I like Sergei Gerasimov's film. The black-and-white film accurately and dynamically conveyed that time, the state of mind and the experiences of the Soviet people. But on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory, veterans and the whole country received a very strange “gift” from Channel One. The series "Young Guard" was announced as a "true story" of an underground organization. On the basis of what this supposedly true story was created, they did not bother to explain to us. The heroes of the Young Guard, whose images were captured on the screen, must have turned over in their graves. The creators of historical films need to carefully read documents and works that correctly reflect a bygone era.

- Roman Fadeeva, who has been part of the school curriculum for many decades, has long been excluded from it. Do you think it might be worth bringing it back?

- I like the novel, and I advocate that it be included in the school curriculum. It correctly reflects the thoughts and feelings of young people of that time, their characters are truthfully given. This work rightfully entered the golden fund of Soviet literature, combining both documentary truth and artistic comprehension. The educational potential of the novel is still preserved. In my opinion, it would be good to republish the novel in its first version, not corrected by Fadeev himself. Moreover, the publication should be accompanied by an article that would briefly outline what we were talking about. It must be emphasized that the novel is a novel, and not the history of the Young Guard. The history of the Krasnodon underground must be studied according to documents. And this topic is not closed yet.

At the same time, one should not forget about the main thing. All disputes on specific issues and on the role of individuals in the organization should not cast a shadow on the greatness of the feat accomplished by the young underground workers of Krasnodon. Oleg Koshevoy, Viktor Tretyakevich and other young guardsmen gave their lives for the freedom of the motherland. And we have no right to forget about it. And further. Speaking about the activities of the "Young Guard", we must remember that this is not a feat of loners. This is a collective feat of the Krasnodon youth. We need to talk more about the contribution to the struggle of each young guard, and not argue about who held what position in the organization.

Interviewed by Oleg Nazarov

To be honest, in high school I was "sick" of Fadeev's novel, I watched a film by Sergei Gerasimov several times, I was very worried that I was sick when the class went on an excursion to Krasnodon, collected books and information about the "Young Guard". It was not an "ideological call", but sincere admiration for the feat of their peers. It was then that information would be made public that Fadeev, in a hurry to fulfill the “order of the party,” made Viktor Tretyakevich the prototype of the traitor Stakhovich, which later became one of the reasons for the writer’s suicide. Then the "recent historians" will delve into the activities of the organization, look for "fried facts" and write that half of the story was invented by the ideologists of the party and Fadeev. But after all, no one can dispute the existence of the Young Guard organization and the fact that dozens of young 18-year-olds fought and died a martyr's death. It will later become known that in a hundred cities and villages, Komsomol underground organizations operated, where thousands of the same young guys fought with the occupiers and died just as heroically. For example, in the same period in Dnepropetrovsk there was an underground youth organization of the Amur-Nizhnedneprovsk region, where the leaders were Pavel Morozov and Galina Andrusenko. The Dnepropetrovsk people derailed the echelons no less (the city is a large railway junction), posted leaflets no less, killed policemen, freed prisoners of war, etc., and just like the Krasnodon guys, they were extradited and shot after long interrogations and torture. They were no less worthy of becoming national heroes, but "according to the order of the party" fame went to the "Young Guard". For example, while studying in this city, I learned about the underground in Dnepropetrovsk from a book by local historian and writer Vladimir Dubovik. The history of the Dnepropetrovsk underground was the theme of our graduation performance. Even then I thought - why the whole world knows about the Krasnodontsy, and the guys from Dnepropetrovsk only in 1976 "thought" of erecting a monument, and practically nothing was known about their activities. I am writing all this only to the fact that in that Soviet "totalitarian-propaganda" time, we learned about the heroism of those whom we were told about, and many heroes remained unknown to us and sometimes nameless. Therefore, the artists, both in paintings and in graphics (thanks to Fadeev's novel), sang only the Young Guards. That's why this collection came up.

Pavel Sokolov-Skalia Krasnodontsy. 1948

Semyon Livshits The Young Guard listen to Moscow.

Semyon Livshits Young Guards.

It was in Krasnodon

Who's sneaking up the street
Who doesn't sleep on a night like this?
The leaflet beats in the wind
The stock exchange is on fire.
Enemies will not find peace
Can't remember at all:
Above the city government
Someone raised a red flag.
The power of the feat of the saint
The youth always leads.
We are Oleg Koshevoy
Let's never forget.
It was in Krasnodon,
In the formidable glow of war,
Komsomol underground
Rose for the honor of the country.
And through the centuries
This glory will carry
Grateful Russia
And our great people.

Vsevolod Parchevsky The first leaflets.

Valerian Shcheglov Illustration for the novel The Young Guard.

Moses Volshtein and Alexander Filbert The flag over the school.

Song about Krasnodon

These nights, friends
We cannot forget.
The steppe is all around and you can't see it.
Krasnodon, Krasnodon,
You are plunged into darkness.
Enemies are above you.

Heart, keep quiet
What a rustle in the night
What's the rustle in a stormy night?
These are true friends
In the darkness of Donetsk nights
Collected by Oleg Koshevoy.

Bold thoughts are not melting,
Friends swore an oath
Made a formidable oath of the heart.
And for your truth
In a merciless fight
Komsomol members stand to the end.

And smoke billows
Above the fire at night
And the traitor's groan is heard.
Krasnodon, you are not sleeping,
You harbor anxiety
You did not surrender to the enemy, Krasnodon!

People silently look
How they fly over the steppe
Flocks of free steppe pigeons
Heart, knock louder
Every feat in the night
Warms the soul of Donetsk people.

Krasnodon, Krasnodon, -
City of bright names
Your glory will not vanish!
In every heart forever
Your fearless Oleg
And his fighting friends.

A. Varshavsky On the eve of the uprising.

Fedor Kostenko Unconquered.

Moses Volshtein and Alexander Filbert Reprisal.

Young Guards.

I dream: over the military Krasnodon
A cold month rose in the winter sky,
And under the feet of a bottomless abyss
A hole gaping black failure.

As the night is bright... and the moon is getting cold in the sky,
Throwing a pale yellow light on the snow.
I know the name of each of you,
I'm with you... but I'm not here yet, am I?

I'm like a shadow, I'm just a pathetic ghost!
There is nothing I can do to help you.
Now the shimmer of your young lives
Put out this icy night.

So was it all for nothing?
Death snarls from the black void.
Stars of ice will go out the passionless brilliance -
The end of hope and the end of dreams.

Not! Hell no, you were right!
Darkness is replaced by light.
Yes, the kats will now inflict reprisals,
But they will answer for her.

And I, through a dream, as through a cotton wool fog,
I scream, piercing the echo of time:
"Ninth... Ninth, guys!
The damned war will end!"

Valerian Shcheglov Arrest of Ulyana Gromova. Illustration for the novel The Young Guard.

Glebov U. Gromova reads Lermontov's poems in the chamber.

Valerian Shcheglov Illustration for the novel The Young Guard.

Listen comrades...

Listen, comrades!
Our days are ending
We are closed - locked
From four sides...
Listen, comrades!
Says goodbye
Young guard,
City of Krasnodon.

Everything we're supposed to
Passed, gone.
Few of them are left
A matter of minutes.
Soon we, exhausted,
Tied and twisted
For a fierce reprisal
The Germans will lead.

We know, comrades,
Nobody will let us out
We know that rapists
Complete their
But when would I return
Our youth all over again
We would again for the motherland
They gave her away.

Listen, comrades!
All the things we didn't do
All that we did not have time
On your way -
Faithful in your hands
Into your brave hands
In the hands of the Komsomol
We are transmitting.

Revenge for the offended
Revenge the humiliated
Vile murderer
Revenge every hour!
Revenge for the abused
For the dead, the stolen,
For yourself, comrades,
And for all of us.

Let the rapist rush about
In fear and despair
Let your Germans
He will not see!
It bequeaths to you
In the mournful hour of farewell
Young guard,
City of Krasnodon.

Mikhail Poplavsky Oleg Koshevoy during interrogation.

Oskolkov Young Guard. 1970

Valentin Zadorozhny Krasnodontsy. They are immortal.

***
We'll stay here
In the swept mass of birch.
Spread out
Embracing, like loved ones, tousled snow.
And the trees grow
High above the years and thunderstorms!
And under our weight
Forest sunsets are redder.

The war has done
Scattered on the pebbles of the fortress.
But the snub-nosed full face is more visible in pre-war albums:
Do not grieve for us -
We are forever missing.
And remember us young.
Remember us.

Daria Veryasova

"Young Guard", Krasnodon, Lugansk region.

Viktor Tretyakevich "Young Guard", Krasnodon, Lugansk region.
Hero of the Soviet Union Oleg Koshevoy "Young Guard", Krasnodon, Lugansk region.
Hero of the Soviet Union Ulyana Gromova "Young Guard", Krasnodon, Lugansk region.
Hero of the Soviet Union Ivan Zemnukhov "Young Guard", Krasnodon, Lugansk region.

Writer and scientist, doctor of historical sciences, professor, academician, chairman of the board of the Writers' Union of Russia, honored worker of culture, member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, deputy head of the World Russian People's Council.
Born in 1933 at the Pestovo station in the Leningrad (now Novgorod) region. Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Kiev University.
Author of over 100 scientific articles and monographs. Winner of many literary and social awards. He was awarded the Orders of Honor, the Red Banner of Labor, two Orders of the Badge of Honor, and many medals. Awarded by the Russian Orthodox Church.

On the morning of March 1968, Sergei Pavlov assembled the Bureau of the Central Committee. Since I am a candidate for the bureau, I also appeared there. The secretaries and members of the bureau of the Central Committee of the Komsomol Vadim Sayushev, Boris Pugo, Gennady Yanaev, Marina Zhuravleva, Alexander Kamshalov, Oleg Zinchenko, Rakhman Vezirov, Suren Arutyunyan, Yuri Torsuev came, Gennady Eliseev, the head of the department, there was someone else. Pavlov, without entering into lengthy discussions, announced: “Yuri Verchenko left us from the Young Guard, he became the head of the department of culture of the city committee, it is necessary to appoint a new director of the publishing house. Kamshalov and Ganichev are asking." I, indignant, began to get up: "I'm not asking anywhere." And the fact that Verchenko left, I did not know. Pavlov waved his hand: “Yes, I know, you are not asking for anywhere, but we offer Ganichev out of two candidates. He graduated from Kyiv University, worked in Ukraine, was in the student department, met with many rectors, academicians, students, was responsible for our press - more than a hundred newspapers and magazines. Now I have gained experience in the department, traveled around the Union, worked with young writers, held a seminar with Sholokhov himself, and knows others, reads a lot, is not afraid of foreign correspondents. He glared with a grin at Yanaev, who was in charge of foreign meetings. One day Sergey Pavlovich "fused" a correspondent of the American "News Week" to me, with whom everyone did not want to communicate. Everyone was afraid of their brother, but either because of my youth, or because of naivety, I spoke smartly and without fear to the journalist. And that one, perhaps, liked such openness in 1967, and he gave a rather lengthy article a conversation with me, adding even a few quite decent photographs, which were accompanied by a comment: “A young blue-eyed thirty-year-old strong blond spoke calmly, was confident in the victory of communism, was busy with many things associated with literature, art, etc.”

In general, everything was more or less true here, without "imperialist slander". I was then blond, and I believed in communism as in a great brotherhood of people.

The "Young Guard" was considered a second-rate district, the secretaries saw themselves in the Central Committee of the party, well, in extreme cases, in the "Komsomolskaya Pravda". Arriving home, I began to consult with Svetlana. Am I doing it? After all, I made inquiries: there are five thousand people there, there is a huge printing house, and a construction department, and a garage for a hundred cars, houses in management, recreation centers. And most importantly - there is a publishing house, more than fifteen editorial offices, twenty magazines (then all magazines were part of the structure of the publishing house). The people there are smart, experienced, sharp, and seem to be independent. One V. Zakharchenko (“Youth Technique”) is worth something, and the legendary A. Mityaev from Murzilka, and the silent S. Zhemaitis from the editorial office of science fiction, and the pillars of the Komsomol, communist word Kim Selikhov (“Komsomol Life”), Dima Abramov ( "Young Communist") and others. I've already dealt with them - don't put your finger in your mouth! And how much malice and irony! And yet, it turns out, solid accounting, economic and production departments. Can I manage all this?

You'll manage, and most importantly, literature, - Svetlana encouraged. - consult with Verchenko, Melentiev, read literature, get acquainted with criticism.

I knew them - they were my predecessors, and I even replaced Verchenko in the department. We then laughed that I was following in his footsteps. Yes, Verchenko taught me a lot. He was a very kind and gentle person, attentive to everything that gave rise to accusations against him either "from the left" or "from the right." The "Sixties" accused him of "indulging the Stalinists" and dogmatists. Those on the “right”, on the contrary, talked about the incredible breadth of views, the publication of “leftists”, including a large number of Jews (look, he also has a Jewish wife, Mira). His wife really was Jewish, but our man, Soviet, responsive to human pain, attentive.

I also called Melentiev, he was then in transcendental heights, deputy. Head of the Department of Culture of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The jump from the publishing house to this position was unprecedented, but many said that it was thanks to Andrei Pavlovich Kirilenko, the former Sverdlovsk secretary, and now the fourth person in the party after Brezhnev, Kosygin and Suslov. Like it or not, but Yura Melentiev, to be honest, deserved it in himself, he was smart, well-read, erudite, candidate of sciences.

My acquaintance with the publishing house began with the printing house, where its director, the most experienced printer Pavel Alexandrovich Osetrov, felt that the young director should plunge into the atmosphere of the printing house. He took me to the shops. He walked, nodded benevolently, introduced me to the workers, printers, packers, mechanics. He spoke kind words to everyone, carefully inquired about family life, shook his head sadly, if someone did not get an apartment, then he himself came to the trade union committee and petitioned. No one doubted that they would give it, because the plant was building its own housing.

I never stopped thinking about what a publishing house should be like. After going through school with Nikonov, reading a lot in the books that Ilya Glazunov and Vladimir Soloukhin gave me, I understood that the publishing house should work for the youth, for their education. We are obliged to restore the connection of times (later such a book, by Fyodor Nesterov, was published by our publishing house). It is clear that we, the children, pupils of the Victory, had to preserve its spirit in the young, convey its breath to the young, and prevent its disappearance. "Fathers and sons" - it seemed then that the problems of their fundamental divergence did not threaten us. And only today we felt what forces were thrown at our young generation, how much money was spent to change the ideals. We saw that this was happening in the West, but it seemed to us far from our reality, although we were aware of the danger of this.

So, "Young Guard" is a Soviet, Russian publishing house, a publishing house for preserving traditions (in this we were strengthened by the famous letter "Take care of our shrines", published in the magazine "Young Guard" in 1965). This is a military-patriotic publishing house, a publishing house of world culture, a publishing house of advanced science and technology, a youth publishing house

Well, so where do you start?

In principle, I know how to get into the business, gradually looking closely. And so he did, holding weekly editorial meetings - “big meetings” - in order to imagine how the editorial work was going, at what stage the work with the manuscript, the readiness of proofs and layouts. And the point is not only and not even so much in the technological process, but in the author, his claims, in his ideological positions. The point is not in his intransigence, not in editing, but in the fact that often the manuscript was not ready for delivery, not proofread, stylistic and even grammatical errors were made. And here we, that is, the publishing house, considering ourselves the second reference publishing house after Hoodlit, could not lose our mark. The book should be not only useful, necessary, but also serve as a model of literacy and aesthetics. Of course, this was not always possible, there were blunders. But special control was established by the censorship of books. I won't say that it was ubiquitous and ubiquitous, but as a director, I had to deal with censors at the main stage of the release. Two censors even sat in our publishing room. Well, who wants to drag themselves to their rooms for comments. These two women, embarrassed, informed me that in such and such a book there is immorality and, in general, it should hardly be released to young people. I take it, read it, and sometimes I see reinsurance behind it, sometimes sensible remarks. In the second case, I painlessly eliminate these pages with the author, in the first case I say: you are hardly right, these are observations from life, and it is not worth delaying the publication. The censors agreed in principle, but asked me to write that I "take over" the publication of the book. Of course, I wrote to them, and more than once. Everyone was happy, although the book was sometimes criticized in the party press. It is more difficult when the censors did not agree and dragged the book to the authorities. They were the all-powerful Romanov and Fomichev - people, I would say, smart, decisive and experienced. Anything happened. I will give a few examples. When Chingiz Aitmatov's book "The White Steamboat" was published, someone up there was tempted that the "White Steamboat" was not our ship, there was some kind of hopelessness on it and it was not worth releasing the book. I had to go to Fomichev, who listened to me with sad eyes, and in order to save the book, I said that we would cut some places, but we would publish the book. Fomichev agreed, but noted that "you will answer if anything ...". I shortened a few lines, published the book, and Genghis received another award for it. A more serious conversation was about "Farewell to Matera" by V. Rasputin. Fomichev did not agree with the interpretation, said that if you want, go to the Central Committee of the party, prove it. I had to go there. Mikhail Zimyanin, who is in charge of ideology, somehow reluctantly, like in other words, said: “Well, why are you always against the construction of a hydroelectric power station ...” I had to prove that the book was not about that at all, but about the loss of native places, morality. Mikhail Vasilyevich, understanding everything himself, apparently fulfilling Suslov's will, said: “Well, look there, cut it down a bit and release it. - slyly flashed his eyes and said: - Well, now you take everything upon yourself. “Yes, Mikhail Vasilievich,” and he recalled his dreary remark at the first meeting with me: “Do you know what is most important in a newspaper or a publishing house?” I thought about it and answered: "Her ideological and artistic level, her personnel ...". But he shook his wise head and said either jokingly or seriously: "The main thing is to know who is behind whom." I didn’t understand then what he was talking about, but after working at Komsomolskaya Pravda I felt it to the fullest. The lines about the fog in Matera were shortened, the book came out, and they were restored in the next edition. Censorship did not watch the following issues.

Well, a very curious case was with the oldest writer Marietta Shaginyan. "Four lessons from Lenin" was the title of her essay. She wanted to give society the lessons of "pure Leninism." It was then one of the moves of social thought: to give a "purified" teaching of Lenin. Yegor Yakovlev published his notes on the same, the book “One Hundred Winter Days” about the last days of Lenin’s life was written by the deputy. editor-in-chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda Valentin Chikin, where he drew attention to Lenin's latest works, believing that they paved the way for the future. Valentin received the Lenin Komsomol Prize for this book. The poem "Longjumeau", about Lenin's Parisian emigration, was written by Andrei Voznesensky, having received gratitude from the authorities and paving the way for himself abroad.

Ninety-year-old Marietta, an absolute literary and social authority, brought us her "Four Lessons ...". However, the censors came and sent him to Fomichev.

You know, - he said, embarrassed, - they called from the Central Committee and said that they could not miss Marietta's book.

But this is a book about Lenin!

But you know, they called from there and said that it was necessary to remove the section where Marietta says that the first name of Lenin's mother is Blank and she is Jewish.

The situation was peak, and I knew that Marietta is a stubborn and stubborn writer, and she does not focus much on the fact about the Jewishness of Lenin's mother.

Well, like this, - finished Fomichev, - go and do what you want, but the book will not come out in this form.

The next day, Marietta came to the publishing house:

So, are you selling a book?

Marietta Sergeevna, I said. - You are known and loved in the Central Committee, but this section, about Lenin's mother, is advised to be removed.

Who are they to demand that? I've been in the archives.

But they demand, Marietta Sergeevna.

Everything, - she answered decisively, - I'm turning off, - and decisively turned off the hearing aid.

How I liked this gesture, how sometimes I wanted to turn off my hearing aid, but I didn’t have one. I wrote to her: "Go to Demichev (then he was secretary for ideology)." Marietta, looking proudly at me, said decisively:

Well, I'll go!

For a long time she had to walk around the offices until a discovered (although long known) fact appeared in the press.

How to start a patriotic, spiritual, Russian business in a publishing house? Of course, from the series "Life of Remarkable People". I understood that it was necessary to change the proportions, dedicate as many books of national history as possible to the devotees of Russian culture and science. There was a lot of hypocrisy and deceit in this series, the authors were lured and treated kindly. Yury Korotkov, in charge of the editorial staff, was a magnificent actor, he made scandals in front of the editors and authors, and then he came alone and apologized, explaining everything with his unstable character. But the point was not that it was necessary to feed future dissidents, they were fed anyway, but those who shouted about how the Soviet government oppressed them during perestroika, received all the main contracts and money for the ZhZL series. And in Politizdat, where they left ZhZL for the series "Fiery Revolutionaries", the fees were twice as much as in the Young Guard.

My trip to the USA, where I was sent by the Committee of Youth Organizations (CIO), also pushed me to change. The agenda of the seminar was "On the future of Atlanticism". The seminar was held at Georgetown University (a privileged university, akin to our MGIMO), and was filled with speeches by world famous people. Speakers were Averell Harriman, ambassador to the USSR during the war, and Edward Kennedy, brother of the late president, who showed us some attention and invited us to the dacha where their nearly 100-year-old mother wanted to greet the Russians. Fulbright, the well-known head of the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee, spoke at the time. (His assistant confidentially told us that he had never voted against the Soviet Union.) There were also “leftists” brought by the wind from Europe - “revisionist and pelican”, the well-known radical Dutschke, their theorist Marcuse, Hungarians, Czechs who fled from their countries . It must be said that Europe was in a fever of revolutionary fever. Bombs were set off by the Red Brigades, Parisian students went on strike. Yes, and in America it was restless, the walls of houses are painted with paintings of the Black Panther - an organization symbolizing black radicalism. And at the main building of the university, a five-meter red poster hung, on which a daring sailor was painted with the caption: "Long live the Baltic Fleet - the beauty and pride of the revolution." There seemed to be a smell of revolution in the air. Echoes of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the death of Luther King were still heard in the country. But, to be honest, I could not figure it out exactly, because I did not know English. I came with a clear purpose: to make a report "On the fate of Atlanticism" and to get acquainted with the publishing business. I delivered my report without doubting the strength of the Warsaw Pact and the doom of Atlanticism. By the way, I had a lot of supporters from Europe - French, Italians, Norwegians. But in the second (publishing) business, I was helped by our ambassador Dubinin, whom I admired as a diplomat of the old Soviet, Russian school of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Yes, I admire the old school of diplomats. They knew a lot about the host country, but also about their own country and its history. He reviewed in my presence all the books that I brought, asked about the dispute between the "Young Guard" and "New World", Sholokhov and Simonov, about new poetic and prose names. Then he called someone and said, as I later found out, that a well-known publisher was visiting him and that he and the American publishers should meet. And he also said that there is a Russian book store nearby, which is run by the publisher Kamkin. Curious!..

I remember the first dialogue with a group of publishers. They asked:

How many book titles does your publishing house publish?

500–600 titles!

ABOUT! And tell me, what is their total circulation?

40-50 million!

And the most sarcastic question for me:

What is your salary?

I understood that I was burning, I did not look solid, but I remembered their formula:

This is a trade secret.

I also went to the Russian bookstore and was delighted to see our books. Then I looked at the other sections. There were also books on the history, culture, philosophy of Russia, written by emigrants, as well as pre-revolutionary publications. As a historian, I could not tear myself away from the books, which, of course, did not come out in our country. There seemed to be few books of frankly caricature, anti-Soviet content, calling for an uprising, but there were ideological publications that did not accept socialism and Soviet power, there were those trying to build bridges. There is also Doctor Zhivago, and Solzhenitsyn's chapters published abroad, books by Sinyavsky and Daniel, and White Clothes by Dudintsev. I was surprised that Aksenov's "Oranges from Morocco" and Yevtushenko's poems were not in the Soviet section. A little to the side stood the books of Ivan Ilyin, Solonevich and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, etc., The Assassination of the Tsar, Trotsky's speeches. Wealth!

While I was walking, an elderly man was looking at me, who came up and asked:

You are from Russia?

Yes, I'm from the Soviet Union.

And I'm Viktor Kamkin, the owner of the store.

Without hiding, I said:

I am a publisher, Valery Ganichev.

Kamkin revived:

And what publisher?

- "Young guard".

Oh, you have wonderful books. I buy them from the International Book.

He invited them to drink coffee and said that he was one of the last to retreat in the Far East.

Do you know Volochaevka?

Certainly. We even sing in the song:

And they will remain, as in a fairy tale,
Like beckoning lights
Stormy nights of Spassk,
Volochaev days.

Our song is white, only the words are different.

I did not agree, but the owner said:

I had a Soviet general from the delegation here and also recalled the battle near Volochaevka. I then asked him: does he remember how machine guns hit them from the left? The general remembered and asked: “How do you know?” - "Yes, I was on the left." That general and I talked for a long time and drank real Russian vodka, grieved that we were on opposite sides. And you, - he moved on to publishing, - why have your wonderful ZhZL still not published biographies of Pushkin, Suvorov, Kutuzov, Bagration, Derzhavin, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Nekrasov, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Ushakov, Kornilov ( of course he was talking about the admiral)? After all, without them there is no Russian history. Well, well, - he opened up, - let there be revolutionaries, Russia would not exist without them either.

I myself understood this, but it was necessary to find another to replace the careless Korotkov - a decisive, erudite Russian person. I told Kamkin that we were thinking about it. By the way, the second and third time I was in America, I stopped by his store. And this time I was offered something to take as a keepsake. Of course, I didn’t take anything “ardent”, I knew that they were checking at customs, and although I had a KMO paper that I was bringing literature from the USA necessary for working with youth, I didn’t want to get into the KGB lenses and took Russian Poetry in exile”, a wonderfully structured book, which someone later “borrowed” from me, as it turned out, forever.

The publishing house was waiting for business. Slava Nikolaev, the first secretary of the Leningrad regional committee of the Komsomol, a graduate of the Military Mechanical Institute, where many stars of the Soviet rocket science and defense industry studied, an amazing system specialist, bookworm and book collector, advised me, having learned that I was looking for the ZHZL editorial office, to look at the Leningrad candidate of sciences, historian and writer Sergei Semanov. I made inquiries and called Slava. Is he a "sixties" supporter of the "thaw"? No, this disease has passed - he is passionate about Russian history, Russian culture. Semanov arrived, we talked for two hours, turned out to be a like-minded person, a brilliant erudite. I submitted his candidacy for the secretariat (this was a mandatory procedure, because it gave a Moscow residence permit and the right to an apartment). Everything went well. The ZhZL series changed its face under him. The first and long-awaited book was the book by Oleg Mikhailov "Suvorov", written in an easy, lively speech with a number of historical documents. Then "Derzhavin" appeared in the series, and later "Dostoevsky", and "Peter I", and "Aksakov", and "Skovoroda".

ZhZL books about Kurchatov and Korolev appeared. The youth received artistic biographies of S. Kirov, G. Dimitrov, K. Rokossovsky, M. Kutuzov, L. Tolstoy, D. London, F. Nansen, V. Shishkin, N. Roerich. In the ZHZL series, a collection of biographies "Generals of the Great Patriotic War", "Border guards", "Innovators", "Athletes", etc. was published. The book "Rublev" by Valery Sergeev meant a lot to us. The series became a noticeable phenomenon, and Russian writers, who had previously been pushed aside by nimble bookmakers, also reached out to it. "Fiery revolutionaries", supported in some departments of the Central Committee of the party, migrated to Politizdat.

I will not say that ZhZL lived easily, but S. Semanov was a good strategist, although a rather weak tactician, scattered, sometimes did not follow the passage of books. But on the other hand, ZhZL turned into a hotbed of patriotic, sovereign, Russian national thought, where the best Soviet principle echoes the past and its traditions.

Dozens, if not hundreds of books were published on the main areas of life. 100,000 books “On the choice of a profession”, “On golden hands, arithmetic and dreams” enjoyed particular success, books “To a young technician”, “Young agronomist”, “Young cosmonaut” were published. I kept in my safe books on gray paper, but with drawings, issued by the Young Guard during the war: “How to knock out a tank”, “How to prepare a combustible mixture”, “Learn to shoot”, etc. So in these years it was necessary to teach how to shoot at targets: work, study, education. If today's educators groan that young people do not want to go into working professions, then they should remember that they are not called there, and they are not shown how to work. I recently heard from the head of the Space Center that young people do not want to go there, there is no competition when applying for studies. And if all the screens are filled with top models, puny managers, and only shots and frantic music rush from there, then who will become astronauts, who needs it? And we literally bombarded youth audiences with books about astronauts. With a difficult feeling, I remember how the news of the death of Y. Gagarin came to our house at night. He was the hero, the ideal of the generation, and all the books about him diverged instantly. Books about the first cosmonaut were published, and he and all the other cosmonauts performed in Komsomol audiences, were universal favorites of young people. Yura Gagarin, Valya Tereshkova, Andrian Nikolaev were elected members of the Komsomol Central Committee. I was friends with Yura Gagarin (God, who wasn't he friends with?).

I cannot but recall two outstanding performances by Yuri Alekseevich, which I witnessed and organized. The first time was when we asked him to speak at the All-Union Conference of Young Writers and prepared a text for him. He took the text without offending us, and then put it aside and spoke about his impressions in space, about the best books. The hall stood up and applauded, chanted, seeing him off. But historical, perhaps underestimated, was his speech on December 25, 1965 at the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, dedicated to educating the young in military and revolutionary traditions. After all, then, from that moment, the grandiose "Travel to the places of military glory" began. A thread - or even a whole rope - of a spiritual connection between generations has been firmly stretched. Again, we prepared a speech, and again he put it aside, and before that he asked me about the letter “Take care of our shrines” in the Young Guard, about the fate of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, about the All-Russian Society for the Preservation of Monuments, which we created, and said unforgettable words that the Cathedral of Christ the Savior should be restored, for this is also a monument to the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812. After all, everyone still had the memory of the Great Patriotic War. This is among the broad masses, but among the ideologists of that time it caused panic: “Who allowed it?” Probably Gagarin agreed at the top? There is no doubt that at the very top, in space, he received such a visionary, future-oriented "permission", a blessing on the word about the restoration of the holy temple of Russia. It was a historic performance.

And the saddest thing: two days before his last flight, he signed for publication at our publishing house a book written with his colleague V. Lebedev "Psychology and Space". The book came out soon, but Yura was gone.

The pride of the publishing house were books about heroes, about heroic deeds, about the Great Patriotic War. And here the editorial board of military sports literature, headed by Volodya Taborko, played a special role.

Here are two legends sitting in my office - Mikhail Yegorov and Meliton Kantaria, those who raised the flag over the conquered Reichstag. Sign the layout. I ask: “How are you, how are you?” Meliton is solidly silent, and Yegorov replies categorically: “Well, I work at a dairy factory, as a foreman, I got an apartment.” - “And before that, what wasn’t there?” - "Yes, yes." He learned from the Smolensk people, they huddle: "Yes, he drinks a lot." This is our stupid Russian habit of treating the hero as an ordinary phenomenon. There is no way to surround a person with warmth, care, understanding. Yes, as I found out, he did not drink much, he simply did not please the authorities. And to the district authorities - well, what kind of hero, what kind of banner of Victory? And one is known throughout the country.

Egorov sees that I’m getting excited, he reassures me: “No, really everything is in order, the shift is good.” Meliton is silent: the authorities of Abkhazia erected a three-story mansion for him. Together with them we examine the sheets of their joint book. I propose to drink in conclusion a glass of cognac for success. Meliton refuses, Yegorov laughs: “Well, you are a magician, yesterday they drained half a liter together.”

I raise my glass, thank them, and, frankly, tears well up: “Well, our glory, our heroes are next to you.” I'm talking about it. Yegorov waves his hand: “Yes, you will publish a book about those who together raised the flag of Victory on different towers of the Reichstag. After all, we did it together with them, everyone took risks, and we were chosen for the award. I am like a Russian, Smolensk, and he is like a Georgian. It was necessary for Stalin to do something pleasant. I answer: “Yes, you brought joy and admiration not only to Stalin, but to the whole world.” A book about the heroes who stormed the Reichstag, Colonel V.M. We released Shatilov. The stern and honest warrior named other heroes along with Yegorov and Kantaria.

We have published more than one book about war heroes, including Komsomol members. I remember that the Minister of Culture, at that time N. Mikhailov, who was the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol after Kosarev before the war and after the war, told me how Stalin called him in August and September 1941 and asked which of the heroes of the Komsomol he knew, and strictly ordered to find them and tell about them. This is how the Heroic Komsomol members appeared in the public consciousness. Here they are, the famous books of the war years about Lisa Chaikina, Sasha Chekalin, Len Golikov, the essay "Tanya" (about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya). Books were published in at least a hundred thousand copies, and therefore the country knew about the young heroes of the Komsomol members. We had for ourselves an internal brilliant landmark. Books about young heroes were prepared and published - this is how a special series of books "Young Heroes" was organized. The book “A medal for battle, a medal for labor” (about young soldiers and underground workers, about the sons of regiments and young heroes of the home front), “Pioneersheroes” was published.

I remember Deputy editor-in-chief Rais Chekryzhov. She spent days and nights in our rooms, met with authors, worked with editors, and was responsible not only for the political department, but for all editorial offices.

Here is the edition of the serious and lively popular science literature for youth "Eureka". After all, they came up with a name for themselves (together with the management of the publishing house) that is attractive. Yes, and the books were amazing in success and did not come out with a circulation of less than 100 thousand. I. Akimushkin's book "The World of Animals" had to be published three times in increased circulation. To be honest, I did not know that in our country so many people like to read about animals. Why in the country - this book was published in Japan, East Germany, Bulgaria. The books "Crazy Ideas", "Physics is my profession" enjoyed success. The book of the famous writer Sergei Narovchatov "Unusual literary criticism", as well as "According to the law of the letter" by L. Uspensky, was a stunning success. They turned the eyes and minds of the young reader to the humanities.

Once a quarter, all the secretaries of the regional committees and the Central Committee of the Komsomol of the republics gathered at our place. I gave them an overview of published literature, guided them in this sea of ​​books, asked for help in promoting the book, and on behalf of the publishing house handed over the most interesting publications. We had money for it. In general, we created a powerful propaganda department, whose workers visited Komsomol construction sites, in big cities and small villages, with border guards and fishermen, teachers and polar explorers. Many trips made it necessary to publish the books “It was on the Angara”, “City at Dawn” (Komsomolsk-Amur), “KamAZ”, “Road Home”, “BAM”. And it was not only about financial profit, but about the cultural and spiritual impact on young people.

I think that in these years, such books as “August 1, 1914” by Professor N.N. Yakovlev, the fantastic novel "The Bull's Hour" by Ivan Efremov, an anthology of Russian poetry about Russia "On the Russian Land" and a book by a modest teacher Fyodor Nesterov from the University. Patrice Lumumba's Link of Times. I'll tell you about each of them.

In 1972, he unexpectedly received a note from A. Solzhenitsyn: “I wrote the book “August 1914”. Is she interested in you?" Of course I'm interested. But immediately a “turntable” sounded from the Central Committee of the CPSU from Belyaev: “Did you receive a note from Solzhenitsyn? Don't answer him." And in the evening, the head of the KGB department, Philip Bobkov, came himself. Let's get acquainted. Unexpected question:

Do you have anything about the First World War.

Yes, we are preparing a historical book "August 1, 1914" by Professor Yakovlev about how the world war began.

The censors did not notice one important historical, factually proven detail, that in all the parties of the February and October revolutions Masons were at the head. And among the Octobrists, among the monarchists, among the Socialist-Revolutionaries, among the Mensheviks. And absolutely transcendent information: in the party of the Bolsheviks, the RSDLP (b), Masons Kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotsky, and others were also at the helm. and in the Bolsheviks. Take your pick, gentlemen. It was a bolt from the blue both in historical science and in society's approach to the revolution.

How so? - the hardened domestic dogmatists-historians cried out.

Where did you look? shouted guards of all stripes.

We felt the impending scandal, we even knew that Academician Mints, a specialist in the October Revolution, a monopolist on it, together with five frisky doctors, compiled a devastating review of the book and declared “August 1 ...” a slanderous, provocative book. What about the guiding forces of the revolution, its headquarters, the working class? And then some Masons. Yes, they have not been in our history so far, even this word has not been used.

Mintz and Co. sent a letter of protest to Pravda. They didn't accept it. Then they don't want to go to the Kommunist magazine. And then - it was almost already their defeat - in the journal "Issues of Political Self-Education". They scored there, but ... We managed to squeeze through our friends positive notes about the book in Pravda, in Soviet Russia. In general, there would be no happiness, but misfortune helped. The KGB, the agitprop, were apparently afraid that Solzhenitsyn would write about this too, and instructed the censors not to give either positive or negative reviews.

I hit another 100,000 copies and rejoiced at Barbara Tuckman's wonderful book The Guns of August, which John F. Kennedy is said to have read 19 times before the Cuban Missile Crisis. He studied how world wars start. And our society began to distinguish from that time who the Masons are, where and when they existed.

Well, the second book, which played a big role then, also, I hope, historical, is not a very noticeable publication of a teacher at the University. Patrice Lumumba F. Nesterov "The Link of Times". Under this, God knows what original name, an idea extremely important for society was hidden. The author quietly and consistently argued that our history is one from Christian, princely, tsarist times, the time after the October Revolution, the Great Patriotic War to the present day. This was extremely important. We are a people with a single history; there was every device, but there was only one people. The dogmatists decided to remain silent, but the great methodological principle was voiced.

To be frank, I didn’t get involved in big political fights, and my friends took care: “You are in a responsible creative business.”

Well, okay, we published books that were outstanding for patriotic self-awareness. Pavel Aleksandrovich Osetrov conjured at that time over the Quiet Don. We were preparing to publish it on the best rice paper, inviting our best printers and even someone from Polygraphprom. I wanted to adequately decorate with illustrations, because there used to be brilliant illustrations by Vereisky, Korolkov, whom Sholokhov loved (“look, look how Don wrote out, and the bridle, it’s a hunt to take”), but we couldn’t give Korolkov’s: he, along with the retreating Vlasovites ended up in America. And then Vsevolod Ilyich Brodsky asked me to look at the paintings by the artist Rebrov, which they put in the two-volume Sholokhov in the 70s. And when they were put up in the office, I immediately declared: “This is the Quiet Don!” Rebrov was overjoyed. But all the same, at a meeting with Sholokhov, I managed: “How is he?” Puffing on the invariable cigarette in his mouthpiece, he asked: “Did you watch? Liked?" - "I liked it very much." - "Well, well, we will believe Valera Ganichev." I proudly told Brodsky: "We take, we break the drawings into chapters." "The Quiet Flows the Don" in one volume, solemnly beautiful, has become an adornment of all book exhibitions, library and foreign expositions.

And at that time, a slanderous campaign was unfolding that Sholokhov wrote off The Quiet Flows the Don, took away other people's plots and characters. Well, there was also the propaganda slander of all the radios: “Voice of America”, “Freedom” ... There was petty anti-Soviet malice: how can such a brilliant work appear in the Soviet Union, a country of darkness, obscurantism, in an evil empire? And of course, simple human envy and ambitions of small writers.

And around the writer's literary affairs blazed. A group of writers responded to an article by critic Dementiev in Novy Mir: M. Alekseev, P. Proskurin, I. Stadnyuk, A. Ovcharenko, A. Ivanov - only eleven people. They were called by critics - a group of eleven. The controversy went on. But here it seems to be over. Tvardovsky left the "New World", but after that the Central Committee of the Komsomol dismissed Anatoly Nikonov from the "Young Guard". No, they weren't fired. Anatoly Ivanov, Vladimir Chivilikhin, Pyotr Proskurin, Vladimir Firsov stubbornly requested the Central Committee of the party and protested against his dismissal. Demichev first called somewhere, then received the writers and, not letting them start, said: “Yes, no one fires Nikonov, here the Central Committee of the Komsomol approves him as the editor-in-chief of the magazine“ Around the World ”. Of course, this was a concession to Russian writers. "Around the World" is a magazine with a million copies, in color, but it is clear that Anatoly is being taken away from the political arena into a quiet backwater. Well, okay, anyway, otherwise the pogrom of Russian editors and leaders continued: they removed the director Esilev from the Moskovsky Rabochiy, the doctor of sciences and the rector of the Moscow Pedagogical Institute Nozdrev, the commander of the Military Publishing House, General Kopytin, were getting close to us.

We, N. Starshinov, V. Kuznetsov, G. Serebryakov, prepared and published an outstanding book for that time “On the Russian Land. Russia in Russian Poetry. The remarkable artist V. Noskov made memorable engravings, which later became an independent image of Russia. The sublime and heartfelt introduction was made by the remarkable Russian poet Alexander Prokofiev, subjected to constant attacks. To say that the book sold out immediately would be an understatement. The book scattered instantly, became a model for publications. We were not limited “Russians” in it, but almost all poets of different nationalities had poems about Russia, but agitprop was merciless. Who allowed? Why only Russian, and where is the Soviet land? Well, we published dozens of books about the Soviet land, and for the first time we used Russia in the title, taking a line from the "Tale of Igor's Campaign".

But the future "perestroika" liberals launched an attack from all sides. It is now clear that Comrade Yakovlev coordinated the actions. Once he called me to the park near the garden of the Central Committee and began to instruct me how to behave. I listened, nodded, pretended to understand. Arbatov, director of the Institute of America, has already done this kind of brainwashing to me in Czechoslovakia (“be wider and more liberal”). I was quite broad, and moderately liberal. But he was also, and for a long time, a Russian patriot. But with the release of the book "On the Russian Land" we were no longer forgiven for the direction. What else is Russian land?

Sovetskaya Rossiya, the newspaper of the Central Committee of the CPSU, suddenly published a devastating letter about the book. "They printed a harmful edition." And the harmfulness lay in the publication of Yazykov's poem "To the Non-Ours" (the spirit of the poem was, of course, deeply Russian, and even accusatory, which many of the future "perestroika" perceived as a denunciation). Yazykov is a friend of Pushkin, and his "To the Non-Ours" is consonant with Pushkin's "Slanderers of Russia". And we could walk with our heads held high after a book. But the letter was signed by Academician D.S. Likhachev. In addition to scientific authority, it was felt that he also had another, invisible power. S. Semanov, quick at conclusions, said: "Mason of old." I did not come to such immediate conclusions, but when the book was pointed out as harmful and it was signed by an academician and two doctors of science, I began to look for the roots and ways to solve this problem. Then I remembered that a year ago I was in Leningrad, when the witty erudite Slava Nikolaev, as secretary of the Komsomol regional committee, invited E.S. Tyazhelnikov, First Secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee, and Director of the Young Guard Publishing House. We performed in Smolny, where D. Likhachev, D. Granin, G. Tovstonogov, A. Freindlich sat. Of course, I knew them, but I saw that the great artist N. Gorbachev, director of the conservatory and conductor V. Chernushenko, academician F. Uglov, artist Moiseenko and others were still sitting in the hall.

E. Tyazhelnikov spoke about the "Lenin test" of the youth. They clapped politely. I got excited, fell upon pacifism, at the poems of E. Yevtushenko, told about Marshal G. Zhukov, that we would engage in military-patriotic education and generally guard the interests of the country, fight against foreign ideology, that is, with the ideology of capitalism. Hall clapped. Suddenly, a man stood up from the other side of the table and walked in front of the presidium, came up to me and shook my hand firmly, saying: "The Leningrad regional party committee supports such a patriotic line." It was P. Romanov, the then secretary of the regional party committee. Later it became clear to me why in 1984 numerous forces of the press and television were thrown to discredit and destroy it. In the eyes of Likhachev, he did not feel approval. Then, when the attack of the “perestroika” in 1972 bogged down, I called D. Likhachev: “Dmitry Sergeevich, you are a former prisoner, you know very well what it’s like to “get” into a party newspaper! You say that the poem was criticized by Herzen, but we know that Zhukovsky praised him, and besides, Yazykov, a friend of Pushkin, learned a lot from his colleague.

Dmitry Sergeevich was embarrassed and promised to write any preface for books about Russian history that were not censored. So he sent an article to the book "ZhZL" "Russian writers of the XVII century" by D. Zhukov. Well, thanks for that. But since then, we no longer considered D. Likhachev the only authority in the “Russian region”.

Sergei Semanov, assessing this situation, later said that by the middle of 1972 the "perestroika" grouped. They captured the middle stratum of the Central Committee and felt at ease in scientific research institutes and in many international organizations. The ponderous statesmen frightened them when they exploded with applause in the Palace of Congresses when Stalin's name was called, they stood up to greet Marshal of Victory Zhukov. As well as the appearance of a patriotic article by Golikov, a front-line soldier, an assistant to Brezhnev since the war, and the head of the Central Committee of the party, Irakli Chkhikvishvili, in the magazine of the Central Committee Kommunist with a favorable mention of Stalin.

Alexander Yakovlev, head of the propaganda department of the Central Committee of the party, had to open the offensive. True, there was a hitch: he was and. o., although everywhere he declared himself the head of the department. The former head of the department, the staid patriot Stepanov, was "removed" as an ambassador to troubled Yugoslavia, clearing a place for Yakovlev. Yakovlev developed a vigorous activity, gave the command to "saddle" all patriotic publications. Anatoly Sofronov became stern: "They are tight, bastards." In the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, the magazine "Young Guard" was smashed, Nikonov was removed (later they announced that they had translated). Boris Pankin (Komsomolskaya Pravda) stood up three times at the bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League when discussing the issue of the Young Guard publishing house and demanded that the director of the publishing house, that is, me, be punished for the wrong line. Pankin was known for his connections with Yakovlev and is said to have helped him write the famous article "Against Anti-Historicism". However, members of the bureau S. Nikolaev, O. Zinchenko, V. Fedulova, S. Aratyunyan did not let him do it. E. Tyazhelnikov, who was then the first secretary, behaved in a balanced way, did not allow me to be removed from the post either then or later. For which I am grateful to him, this native Urals. He felt who was behind the truth.

And Yakovlev decided to arrange a "public flogging." As I remember now, on November 5, on the eve of the October Revolution, in the assembly hall of the Academy of Social Sciences, which was then on the Garden Ring, all the secretaries of the regional committees and republics of the Komsomol of the country gathered. Such a forum has not been going for a long time. Concentrated, not looking at anyone, he ascended the podium. We, members and candidate members of the bureau, sat on the stage. In his hollow voice, Yakovlev announced: "I want to introduce you to some new trends in ideological work." There was nothing new there in the beginning, there was a set of ideological clichés. Emphasis on the need to strengthen "class education". And only at the end he noted the unjustified exaggeration of the successes of the Great Patriotic War. He fell upon a group of writers and critics who profess this and sing of the past, admire traditions. P. Palievsky, O. Mikhailov, A. Lanshchikov, D. Zhukov, S. Semanov, M. Lobanov and others were named. "My God! All of our authors.

Yakovlev turned around spectacularly, pointing at me with his hand, and said: “Here is Valery Ganichev sitting, seemingly an intelligent man, and according to the books in the Young Guard, which he publishes, there are crosses, churches everywhere, rickety huts! Is this the Soviet Union? They let out only “pochvenniks”, some “guzheedov” (he used this word, launched by Boris Polev). We are an industrial power, and we need a class approach.” Then he trampled on the wrong ideological trends in our life, in our media. Dead silence reigned in the hall. Severe criticism, and even from the mouth of a candidate member of the Central Committee, the head of the department, almost doomed to punishment - well, if only the withdrawal. Then the whole presidium left the stage.

Yakovlev, covered with red spots, was silent. Everyone else was silent as well. A few days later, a speech with the headline "Against Anti-Historicism" was printed on two spreads in Literaturnaya Gazeta. The Aurora shot was fired, but the assault on the Winter Palace did not take place, or, in truth, the shot rang out from the other side. Thousands of indignant letters rained down on the Central Committee of the CPSU from people who wrote angrily that he wanted to cross out the Patriotic War and our past in general. What only destroying epithets were not in the letters. Pyotr Sozontovich Vykhodtsev, Doctor of Sciences, Head of the Department of Soviet Literature at Leningrad University, sent us his justification, also, as was customary then, from the positions of Lenin and ideologically justified. We handed it over to Demichev, and he reproduced it among the members of the Politburo. The letter was convincing, and then there was the assistant to the general secretary, the one-armed Golikov, who reported that the Central Committee was bombarded with letters from indignant front-line soldiers.

The Secretary General ordered an urgent gathering of the secretaries and members of the Politburo and, frowning, turned to Suslov: “Did you read the article before it came out?” The wise gray cardinal replied: “I didn’t see it in my eyes.” The General Secretary angrily blurted out: “Well, then remove this asshole. You see, he decided to change the line of the party.” "Asshole" was immediately removed and appointed deputy editor-in-chief of the proficient "Profizdat".

On the same evening, Yakovlev went to the Kuntsevo Party Hospital, warned about the conversation by the first assistant to the Secretary General, Genrikh Tsukanov, who gradually persuaded the chief to forgive Yakovlev and send him as ambassador to Canada: he fought with the Americans. Yes, he fought - books exposing American imperialism kept pouring out from under his pen.

We must pay tribute, Brezhnev treated the veterans well. After Khrushchev, who was distrustful of the soldiers of the Patriotic War, it seemed that a turning point had come. Yes, perhaps, but it was necessary to stir up society. Yes, it was not only about military education, it was necessary to convey to the mind and heart of everyone that this is our common victory - fathers and mothers, our history and culture. This was probably the most harmonious period in the life of the country - there were no problems of fathers and children in their mass confrontation.

When Volodya Tokman and I held the All-Union seminar of propagandists in Arkhangelsk, we took the participants to Kholmogory, where Lomonosov was born, to Solovki, to a monastery that had not yet been opened, but to a closed Gulag camp. Everything had to be known to people, everything could be seen. With Volodya, we wrote a note "On the education of the young on the monuments of history and culture." It was unexpected and new. But after all, in 1965 we already participated in the plenum "On the education of youth on the basis of military and revolutionary traditions", paying tribute to all the heroes and founders of the state. Then it was met with enthusiasm, and Gagarin's proposal at the plenum in December to restore the Cathedral of Christ the Savior as a monument to the victors of 1812 made many think. We went even further, offering to participate in the revival of other churches (so far as cultural monuments), as well as centers of cultural heritage, naming Kholmogory and Pustozersk, where Archpriest Avvakum was imprisoned. Well, that was too much! Marina Zhuravleva (Secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol) came running with an old encyclopedia: "Look, he's a priest, and even an obscurantist." I reassured him: “He is one of the best Russian publicists and orators, and now it is almost written for you: “A fighter against the tsarist regime.” Pavlov reassured her, told us: “Productively. Keep working, but most importantly, a trip to the places of military glory. Yes, this campaign was a colossal spiritual find: it gathered under its banners at first one hundred thousand, then a million, and then up to 20 and more millions of young people. They studied military reports, collected letters from soldiers, looked after the graves of the dead, talked with veterans of the front and rear, and wrote down what they said. The chiefs of the All-Union Staff were Marshals Bagramyan, Konev, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, pilot-cosmonaut Beregovoy. They took this seriously, signed orders, were at the final parade of many thousands - the holiday of the winners. The publishing house had to provide them with a book, an appeal, a poster, which appeared at that time.

An outstanding feat of the editors was the creation of a voluminous, diverse, beautiful book “The Great Patriotic War: a brief illustrated history of the war for youth” with a foreword by Marshal Baghramyan, with parting words from the great warrior, chief of the general staff and commander of the front, Marshal Vasilevsky. I still keep as a shrine his inscription of gratitude to us; he signed the book in amazingly beautiful handwriting and almost the last photo, where he, lying in bed, shakes my hand. The pictures and photographs of marshals Baghramyan and Babajanyan are equally dear to me (by the way, both are from Nagorno-Karabakh). There is also a cheerful photo with Ivan Vasilievich Konev, the Grand Marshal of Victory.

About the youthful military campaign, we published the books “I order to intercede”, the collection “By the Paths of the Fathers”, the book magazine “100 Questions, 100 Answers about Our Army”. Our book, which can be admired even today, adjoins here. Volodya Taborko with his assistants conceived the unforgettable and all-encompassing "Book of Future Commanders" by A. Mityaev with drawings, photographs, maps. "Valery Nikolaevich," says Osetrov, "we need to produce a million." - "Will we find paper?" - "We'll find, we'll ask."

So "The Book of Future Commanders" by A. Mityaev was published in a million copies. Scattered the entire circulation. Another million. They also launched A. Mityaev's "Book of Future Admirals" - also a million. The legendary Ivan Kozhedub, Hero of the Soviet Union, constantly came and advised us three times.

What do you have, sciatica?

See what needs to be done.

He knelt down, got up, then knelt down again. Our wonderful front-line photographer Misha Kharlampiev took a wonderful shot: a marshal on his knees in front of a publisher. The marshal showed his fist: "If you publish, I will introduce the tanks to the publishing house." Where is that photo saved...

Our publishing house published a beautiful color book “Under the feet of an icy island”, in which we talked about Artur Chilingarov, his friends and the station. Since then, all his expeditions to the North and South Poles have been remembered and illuminated. The Komsomol also knew him. I remember when, at one of the congresses of the Komsomol, Boris Pastukhov announced: “And now the famous polar explorer Chilingarov will greet us,” the hall applauded, the waiter came out, who brought each speaker a glass of tea. Words were heard: “Through storms and snows, we appeal to you ...” The waiter looked at the podium with concern and even looked inside - there was no one, the speech recorded by us on tape sounded. The waiter turned around and ran away to the laughter of the stands. Later we said: "Arthur, you have a glass of tea left in the Palace of Congresses." And Arthur, one of the most outstanding heroes of our time, was simple, talkative and funny, participated in Komsomol affairs, was at world youth festivals in Berlin and Cuba.

We also published a book about the youth of Marshal Vasily Chuikov. The fact is that in the early 70s, we and other publishing houses were forbidden to publish books of military leaders so as not to say anything. And all books of this kind were transferred to Voenizdat and Politizdat. We were left with their youth. We begged Chuikov to prepare the book "The Youth of the Marshal", although in the preface we also set out his full biography. Vasily Ivanovich liked to come to me, leisurely told about his childhood in a large peasant family, and about how his mother got to Mikhail Kalinin and defended the church in the village. He told a lot about China, it was interesting to me, because at the university I studied Chinese a little and wrote a diploma on the political structure of China. Vasily Ivanovich was a military adviser to the Chinese Kuomintang opposing the Japanese, he had a lot of experience. Chuikov was recalled directly from there to Stalingrad.

The battle of Stalingrad, now a legendary feat, caused him more sadness and sadness then. He did not want to talk about heroism, although he remembered it, he repeated melancholy: "I want to be buried there." - "They will wall you up in the Kremlin wall." He sighed heavily: “I want it there, in a mass grave, with the soldiers. I will write a will." And so it all happened, he was buried in Stalingrad.

But perhaps the most significant in terms of history and its meaning was the meeting with Marshal Zhukov. He then lived in a dacha in a military settlement in Arkhangelsk. Naturally, he was retired and did not seem to be in disgrace, but the authorities were afraid of him and did not bring him closer. Zhukov was busy with his memoirs and family. When he turned 75, the Komsomol decided to congratulate him. It was still impossible for the first secretary, but Suren Harutyunyan, the secretary for military and sports work, was just right, and the director of the Young Guard was allowed, especially since he himself is torn. We arrived, a Mongolian delegation had just finished their visit there, headed by the first secretary of the People's Party of Moldova, Yu. The marshal was in a light tracksuit, he said: "Well, the youth has come, I'll go and change." A few minutes later he was in full marshal's uniform and received the Komsomol delegation standing up (we also had an instructor from the military sports department, Vitya Baibikov). He carefully listened to the greeting address that Suren read out, and nodded where it was said about his participation in the battles near Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk, Warsaw, Berlin. Then he said that we would drink a glass. cognac was served, we drank, he motioned for us to sit down, and then I handed him the books that I had brought from the publisher. He stroked the one-volume Quiet Flows the Don and said: "My favorite writer." I presented an anthology of Russian poetry about Russia "On the Russian Land". Georgy Konstantinovich looked at it carefully, leafed through it: “We at the front greatly valued patriotic poetry.” The Grand Marshal attributed patriotic poetry to the strategic factors of victory. The conversation was not short. We asked where it was harder: near Moscow or near Stalingrad? He said that near Stalingrad. Near Moscow, we knew Kutuzov's decision, but here it was impossible to surrender Stalingrad: Russia would be lost.

And what about Leningrad? Here in Chakovsky's "Blockade" this event, your arrival and Voroshilov's change are described ...

Zhukov got angry:

Yes, your writer will write whatever you want! After all, I flew covertly, even without an appointment order. If they shoot down, then the general, not the commander. Yes, and Klim was the first marshal for me, I respected him and could not give him any kicks.

Before parting and parting, I made up my mind and asked an unexpected question:

But all the same, Georgy Konstantinovich, why did we win? - Yato, of course, knew from our textbooks that the main thing is the leading and guiding force of the party, the socialist economic system, the friendship of peoples. And this is probably true to some extent. "But why did we win?" - revolved in my head. And the further, the more fantastic our victory seems and not always rationally explicable.

Suren tensed up and expressed his disagreement with my vague question. The marshal was silent for a while and, calming Harutyunyan, said:

Good question, important. After all, at the beginning of the war, we were weaker, and they were more experienced. We learned and studied a lot from the German generals - Schlieffen, Clausewitz, Moltke. A Prussian officer is a real centuries-old military bone. The German army marched all over Europe: France, and Belgium, and Denmark, and Norway, and Greece, and Czechoslovakia. Everyone bowed before her. German technology was better at mass production - their tanks, their planes, their guns. - The Marshal paused, his eyes seemed to be clouded, and he told us important and secret words: - That's when the war began, the regular troops crunched, it turned out that we had the best young soldier. Yes, we had the best, well-prepared ideologically (apparently, the marshal remembered the criticism of the Glavpurovites when he was filmed in 1957, about the underestimation of the political factor), sincere, young, ready for battle!

My friend after the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 was boxer Vitaly Popenchenko. I was in Tokyo for the Olympics and ended up with boxing tickets. In two fights of the quarter-finals and semi-finals, his opponent was knocked out in five seconds. So it happened with lightning speed with one and the other opponent, and the third one just ran away from the ring. In the final, Popenchenko boxed for ten seconds to please the audience, and then sent the opponent to a knockout. It was interesting with him. He was smart, tactful, a book lover and a book reader. He himself studied at the graduate school of the Moscow State Technical University. Bauman. The whole world knew Popenchenko's murderous blow. Boxers lost weight, added kilograms in order to escape “out of weight” from Popenchenko. We at the publishing house were somehow touchingly friends with him, we loved him. Unfortunately, he died after falling down a flight of stairs.

We were all proud when the great hockey coach Anatoly Tarasov came to my office. After the victory over the Canadians in 1972, it became clear that real men play hockey, and there were many proposals to publish books about the Golden Puck competition held by the Komsomol.

How could we be proud of our heroes! It's a joy to be involved with them. I remember an old film about the Papaninites who returned from the North Pole. They drove along Gorky Street, thousands of leaflets and greetings rained down on them, colorful balloons flew from below, people on the street applauded and shouted “Hurrah!”. And now, when Artur Chilingarov sank in a bathyscaphe to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, it was greeted as an ordinary event. But this is a world event! .. A man sank to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, because the ice could converge over him ... Arthur agreed with my indignation, but was glad that everything ended successfully.

A few words about the aesthetic edition. It had two sections: aesthetic self-education and aesthetic education. The young reader has received wonderful books from us that guide his taste and strengthen folk traditions. The first, and perhaps still unsurpassed, was N. Mertsalova's color book "The Poetry of Russian Costume", which collected on the tabs a whole gallery of delightful miracles of our fashionistas of the past. And next to it, another one appeared - a stunning book by O. Baldina "Russian Folk Pictures" (a book about Russian popular prints). In the book “Northern Etudes” by S. Razgon, it was said about all of us dear monuments of the cultural and historical past of our people. Enlightened, enlightened all the same, talked about Russian culture. It was then that, walking with Vasily Belov around the Vologda Museum, where Vasily Ivanovich spoke with unusual enthusiasm about the northern school of icon painting, about delightful folk products made of linen, wood, birch bark (towels, arches, cradles, tueski, etc.), I listened to his historically profound thought: in the past, art was spilled, dissolved in all the people, but now it is only in the crystals of the masters, and it must be collected. Iya sent him a publishing contract for a book about folk aesthetics, Lad. It is clear that he had already comprehended this, thought and wrote, but sent us the contract back: "I do not conclude contracts for things that have not been written." Not every boletus mushroom! He did not sign the second time either - and only on the third time, apparently, having finished the text, he sent the signed contract. I consider this book one of the most outstanding books that enlighten, spiritualize, inspire people's minds. I am proud that "Lad" was published by the publishing house "Young Guard".

I remember the great sculptor Sergei Timofeevich Konenkov, when Sergei Pavlov, Tolya Svetlikov, our editor-in-chief, Valentin Osipov and I came to visit him. He was kind and cheerful. "I'm only 94 years old," he said, "and try my muscles." I tried, admired, and he replied that he works with a hammer and chisel every day: “I'm a sculptor. And marble is not a light stone.”

At one of the meetings, the famous artist Yuri Nikulin approached me: “I heard you are leaving for the USA? Task: bring two anecdotes. I laughed and said, “Okay, but you start writing a book. Not life, but history. Village. Front. Artist. The circus. Meetings. Anecdotes". Yuri Vladimirovich shook his head: "Yes, I only know jokes." - "Wonderful. Let's divide the book into two parts. Two-thirds of the sheet is life, and a third - under the blue stripe - anecdotes. Is it going? He hesitantly agreed. Three months later, I call: “How are you doing with the book?” - “Yes, you know, on top, two-thirds, nothing was written, but on the bottom it was almost filled.” - “I’m waiting in six months!” Six months later: “Yes, everything is filled from below, but not yet from above.” I know he's joking, but he soon finished. I am proud of this book and my friendship with one of the joyfully talented people of our time. He was kind and cheerful, invited my whole family to the circus and showed the famous number with a log, which they carried with the clown Shuidin - the hall was writhing with laughter. And Yuri Vladimirovich turned up the heat: “Well, why are you weak! Valery Nikolaevich himself came to us.” The audience, of course, did not know who Valery Nikolaevich was, and my dear mother, Anfisa Sergeyevna, taking it seriously, turned to me: “Ask them not to suffer if they are afraid of you.” And they did not suffer - they treated with laughter.

It is impossible not to remember how Alya Pakhmutova and Kolya Dobronravov came before the distant taiga Baikal North Sea campaign, how they “tested” their new songs. We sang in chorus, Artur Chilingarov, who usually finds himself in such cases, was attached at the feet. They sang, laughed, wished a happy journey. The Central Committee of the Komsomol or we gave business trips, and they flew away. And two or three weeks later, in triumph, interrupting each other, they brought poems and new songs. How did they manage to bring from these pieces of iron, dams, rivers, electrical substations what could and should have been sung? All these “LEP500”, “Along the Angara, along the Angara”, “Marchuk plays the guitar”, “About the Lianhamari submariners” - all this became symbols of the time and just good songs. Well, Pakhmutova’s song “Our concern is simple, // Our concern is this: // If our native country would live, // And there are no other worries” became a symbol of that time, of our generation, her words and music sounded everywhere. “If only my native country would live”... But not everyone, unfortunately, was to their liking. And in sadness and sadness, we sang Pakhmutova's song "The land was empty without you ...". Gagarin left the earth - the era ended ...

The then boys and girls "absorbed" novelties of foreign literature. Suffice it to recall the 200-volume "Library of World Literature", where Europe, Asia, the USA, Africa, and Latin America were represented. Everyone chased after her, recorded.

The editorial office of foreign literature, headed by the sympathetic and indulgent Natalia Zamoshkina, produced fairly high-quality books. The staff of translators was brilliant. And the whole society has always thanked us for the publication of such books. Later, this direction was led by handsome actor Vadim Pigalev, a specialist in Freemasonry, whose dissertation even Academician Mints missed. And everyone was in awe of the small unique series "Selected Foreign Lyrics". During these years, the editors published books by N. Hikmet, D. Salinger, Irwin Shaw, Remarque, L. Levchev, Le Carré, Kurt Vonnegut, S. Karaslavov, S. Khol, D. Baldwin. When I was in the US, I called Robert Pan Warren, author of the classic book All the King's Men, and congratulated him on the release of his book in Russia. I heard a sad voice on the phone: “I know that you don’t pay a fee, so at least send a copy.” I answered with embarrassment that yes, we do not have an interstate agreement, but everyone liked the book and I would send copies to him. There was also a general literary conversation with him that in America barely ten writers live on a fee for books, money, and often quite a lot, is received by leading journalists and screenwriters. I was proud that our writers receive fees when publishing a book, and quite a lot. Now, I think, and I know, in this sense, we are like in America.

The Young Guard knew that the reference publishing house for publications of fiction was Hoodlit, where a well-known author came and where one-volume and two-volume collected works of the “classics” were published - in any case, they thought so there. Well, of course, the writer "for the stamp" wanted to be published in the "Soviet writer", where the fees were higher, and the sign of the writer's OTK was important. But for the soul, for the general reader, for the youth, there was the Young Guard. We had editions of artistic prose and poetry. An elite of editors worked in prose; however, they did not brag about it. This is Zoya Nikolaevna Yakhontova, the manager, a person of the highest skill and tact. Yes, and everything matches her - Ira Gnezdilova and Zinaida Konovalova, Asya Gremitskaya. And all the rest. In editing, they were just experts, they edited not in order to correct something or for the sake of an editorial itch, but did it tactfully and subtly to help the author, discuss with him inaccuracies and errors, stylistic, spelling, point out some flaws and blunders, while not cutting the fabric of the narrative, without changing the style of the author. According to the books of the "Young Guard" it was quite possible to write school dictations and presentations.

So, I remember, Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov himself comes to me. This was the time when he no longer wore his Stalin Prize badges. (And the leader loved this talented, but perhaps shorthand writer.) We remembered his Stalingrad "Days and Nights", the pre-war "Guy from Our City", his poems of the war years. At school, we all recited it by heart: “Major Deev had a comrade, Major Petrov, together they had been friends since ancient times ...”. Well, who during the war did not know “Wait for me” or “Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region ...”! True, we later - in the book "Privy Councilor to the Leader" by V. Uspensky, the author claimed that Stalin somehow noted that, having written good poems "Wait for me", Simonov in the lines: "Let the son and mother believe // ​​That there is no me ”- and they will stop waiting, made an inaccuracy. “Mother never gets tired of waiting,” he remarked. Perhaps right. Simonov received the Stalin Prize for the play "Russian People". But I often read poems from the cycle in the school audience, for which he again received a Stalinist. The poem, which was particularly well received by the audience, was called "The speech of my friend Samad Vurgun." Seeing a hostile audience abroad, Samed, or the author, uttered three words: “Russia. Stalin. Stalingrad! - and the hall burst into applause. The hall exploded with applause and when we read poetry.

But times have passed, after the war a new generation of writers appeared, which created its own image of the war: Y. Bondarev, V. Astafiev, I. Stadnyuk, M. Alekseev, M. Godenko, V. Kurochkin and others. and a set of his memoirs about the war was "scattered" in the "New World". Of course he was upset. He was told that he wrote diaries later. Naturally, he was indignant, showed notebooks and diaries. I also thought that in general it was nit-picking; perhaps he did not write about Malaya Zemlya, it seemed to some that he over-praised Stalin or did not mention someone. By the way, I recently read in Pravda that on November 5, 1941, on the Kola Peninsula, Simonov was behind enemy lines with an amphibious assault and wrote visionary and lofty poems about Stalin on November 5, 1941. This is not May 10, 1945, after all, the victory was still visible only in our hearts. There are lines in the poems that everything will be as before and on November 7, 1941, as always, a parade will pass through Red Square. I think that in Karelia they hardly knew that on November 7 a historical parade would be held on Red Square in Moscow. So these lines became visionary.

So, returning to the arrival of Simonov in the publishing house. He brought with him the fragrant smoke of his eternal pipe and said bluntly: "I want the youth to read two volumes about the war." It was flattering for us, although I knew that we had to persuade, to ask the Central Committee, because at that time Simonov was well, if not persecuted, then in disgrace. I walked, I ran, I begged. The Central Committee, apparently, considered that publishing in our country is a lesser evil than in Politizdat or Khudlit.

And the second, no less curious, was the publication of Valentin Kataev's novel "Cemetery in Skuliany". Valentin Kataev surprised his former allies by publishing his memoirs “My Diamond Crown”, where he spoke unflatteringly about his past liberal brethren, about pre-revolutionary talkers, the Social Revolutionary Blumkin, who killed the German ambassador in Moscow and was elevated to the pedestal of a freedom fighter for this, although he was an ordinary terrorist. But the liberal-democratic public was especially outraged by the story “Werther has already been written”, where the head of the Cheka, a Jew named Markin, mercilessly destroyed innocent residents. The offended resisted, since there should be a different surname. But Kataev remained true to the truth, because, after all, he was in Odessa during the revolution. Andrey Voznesensky, brought into poetry by Valentin Kataev when he was the editor-in-chief of the Yunost magazine, said that the Parisian emigration, who had previously invited Kataev to go to Paris, then refused to trust him. Apparently, this did not frighten Kataev, he began to search for his roots and found his descendants in distant Skuliany, in the Dnepropetrovsk region (or then Yekaterinoslav region). He wrote about his family tree the novel "Cemetery in Skuliany". He also came to see me at the publishing house, where, perhaps, he had not been since the time of writing the airy, romantic, revolutionary story for children and youth “The Lonely Sail Turns White”. Knowing that he always watched the shoes of his subordinates in the magazine "Youth" and either jokingly or seriously gave them a crackdown for this, he put the shoe brush near the office. He didn’t understand my joke and also immediately said: “Valery Nikolaevich, I want the youth to know the past, and I wrote a novel about my ancestors, who were from the nobility, but were our real compatriots.” Not only did we not object, but we were glad that he, a well-known author, a former resolute opponent of the Young Guard magazine in the Yunost magazine, came to us. “You know,” he said, “many of my pupils turned the wrong way. We must love our country and serve it.” I remember his beautiful, noble book, published by the publishing house, I remember the magnificent anniversary reception in the oak hall of the Central House of Writers, where he delivered a speech full of sarcasm and irony, including for those who were sitting in the hall. Too bad they didn't record. However, maybe someone wrote it down.

So, in the "Young Guard" many wanted to be published. And it would be dishonest to try to single out someone, just remember some serious and playful pictures of those years, some touches, without trying to combine them together.

Well, like this. The first, of course, is Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. We loved him, adored him, published him. He answered the same. It is enough to recall his entry in the book of honored guests: “I am always happy to visit the Young Guards, even when I myself am younger.”

In the years when I came to the publishing house, I began to work on a dissertation on the Soviet youth press. Of course, he turned to the origins, to 1918–1925 (according to chronology, the dissertation was determined by this period). It was simply amazing that the first Komsomol youth magazines and newspapers were found for me in the old archives of the Lenin Library: Smena, Journal of Peasant Youth (ZhKM), Molodaya Gvardiya, the Youthful Truth newspaper, and there I was surprised to see Sholokhov's stories "Duel", "Mole", "Foal" and others.

Sholokhov began to publish in youth publications. I saw and felt the hand of the future genius, the master of the word and the bright picture. There, in the 1920s, there were already these vivid pictures of azure steppes, feather grass overflow, distant ravines and groves. There you could already feel the breath of the Quiet Don. True, Sholokhov did not publish in the magazine "Young Guard", there was the dominance of Trotsky's relative Averbakh and others like him. So I learned that his associates had already begun to cast a shadow on the Quiet Don, accusing Sholokhov of plagiarism. But the commission of writers, headed by Serafimovich, well-known from the Iron Stream, rejected that first wave of slander. In our time, in the 70s, the attacks continued, and it was then that the Norwegian scientist, Professor Geir Khetso, who was by no means a supporter of Sholokhov, decided, having collected root words, comparisons, epithets in Don Stories, to compare with the same linguistic material " Quiet Don. The result was amazing. They matched 95 percent. The hand that wrote the stories and the novel was driven by the same person! .. For us, this was not the main evidence, we knew the history and spirit of the work, but for a logically, rather mechanically thinking European, this was a convincing argument. Valentin Osipov, our editor-in-chief, and I decided to publish Don Stories with my foreword and drawings by various artists. The volume was prepared in a special way, on fine coated paper, in a hard cover. I turned to Sholokhov with the question of what order of stories we should do, and received a warm, smiling answer, which is kept at my house: “Valera! You ask what order, and I will tell you which one you and Valentin Osipov chose, let's trust them. As for the civil war, here is such an episode. When he received us, that is, the entire Soviet-Bulgarian club of creative youth, in Rostov upon returning to Moscow from Tbilisi, the conversation was about those times, and the conversation was not sentimental. He ended it unexpectedly: "The civil war has not ended today."

A closer meeting was in Veshenskaya in 1974, when the director of the Bulgarian publishing house "Narodna Mlodezh" Popov came to me. He timidly asked: “Is it possible to meet with Sholokhov?” I knew that Sholokhov had an average attitude towards the Bulgarians, because in 1956 the secretary of the BKP Atanasov, a relative of Sholokhov's eldest daughter Svetlana, was fired. Now, maybe time has passed, and the relationship has changed. Accept? Called. Sholokhov said that here Brezhnev asked, but the prospects for the harvest were average, he did not accept. He paused and said: "Okay, I'll accept ours." The writers Anatoly Ivanov, Vladimir Chivilikhin and the poet Volodya Firsov went with me. We drove not without incident, on the way we saw that a piece of an anchor was sticking out of the Don, they pulled it out, tied it to a car, and then piled it up near the writer Vitaly Zakrutkin, who was standing on a hillock, who mortally asked to call in. Vitaly came out, clapped when he saw the anchor: “Guys, I thought you were realists, but it turns out you are romantics.” We sat, read the chapters from Zakrutkin's "Mother of Man", went down to the wine cellar and talked some more. Suddenly the bell rang, Zakrutkin went out, returned gloomy. The wife whispers: “Yes, Sholokhov said: what are you drinking lads with your sour meat, let them come to me for bitterness.” Zakrutkin was angry: "I have the best wine on the Don."

We arrived at Veshenskaya for dinner, went on a conversation that lasted two hours. Popov asked about collectivization, about the upbringing of Veshenians, about the prototypes of the heroes of The Quiet Flows the Don. At the end of the evening, Sholokhov, saying goodbye, said, turning to the secretary of the district committee: “Well, we accepted Ganichevo as Cossacks, but Popov must be accepted.” The secretary immediately reported: "Everything is ready." They waited for whips, sabers, and when they arrived at the hotel, they found a hospitable table on which everything was: bacon, sausage, cabbage, tomatoes, salted watermelons. I don't want to eat. But they didn't come for that either. The first secretary of the district committee stood up, solemnly began: "Well, Popov, the first thing: if you become a Cossack, you must love your homeland and serve it." Two-hundred-gram faceted glasses were filled to the end and were drunk by him with the accepted candidate for the Cossacks. Love! The chairman of the executive committee stood up, solemnly proclaimed: “A Cossack must love the land! She will be his mother." Two hundred grams of white drink were drunk. A portly, beautiful woman, the chairman of the collective farm, stood up, briskly, with a smile, conveyed the Cossack truth: "The Cossack loves and cherishes women." And she drank her two hundred grams. Popov, on the other hand, was obliged to drink with everyone and was already unsteady on his feet. The district head of the KGB, a former front-line soldier, stood up and categorically declared: "A Cossack must shoot accurately, keep his weapons ready." Well, there is absolutely no objection. Popov emptied the glass. How many more there were, toasts, is not clear, although we did not participate in the competition. At the end, they slashed with a whip, struck with a flat saber, presented a barrel with a naked but saber-bearing Cossack, and issued a diploma. In any case, in the morning, when they went in early to say goodbye to Sholokhov, he touched his mustache and asked: “Did Popov become a Cossack?” He came closer, peered and, smiling, said: "I see that they have accepted." We laughed, he continued: "Every Cossack should have a cloudy eye." With such a sarcastic, short word, he often defined everything. I remember when I said a little about Proskurin’s thick novel “Destiny”, but for sure: “Not enough, Peter, not enough”. And once he said to me: “Well, what are you, Valera, drinking all the hay?” - recalling how last year I persuaded him to drink all sorts of infusions from medicinal herbs.

I don’t want, and I can’t, write memoirs about all the writers. But I cannot but remember Leonid Maksimovich Leonov, because he was one of the most outstanding writers of our time. If Sholokhov is a block that came out of the depths of our earth, this is its part, its essence, inseparable from the people, then Leonov is the mind of the era, its contemplator who has risen above the world, rushing into space, the ether is a Russian person. Both told me about their meetings with Stalin, both saw him in their own way.

Sholokhov recounted a meeting in early 1942, when he arrived in Moscow from the Western Front, having received an invitation from the VOKS (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries) to come to a meeting with an American millionaire, a philanthropist who brought medicine. Sholokhov, annoyed, as he considered, by an empty pastime, shouted to the millionaire: “Get up!” - when he, sitting in a rocking chair, extended his hand to say hello (and he jumped up: Odessa, Cossack whips remembered), and then, at the table, quarreled with Ehrenburg (he saw in Kaluga only one murdered Jewish girl, not mountains of people). Sholokhov, as he said, “popped” a glass of vodka and left, although he was persuaded to stay. The next morning, two captains with blue buttonholes asked him to drive to the Kremlin. There, Stalin's assistant Poskrebyshev was waiting for him and ominously said: "This time you, Mikhail, will not get out." “Well, well,” said Sholokhov, and stepped into the office. Stalin was standing by the window smoking a pipe. Silent. Then he asked with an accent: “They say, have you started drinking more, comrade Sholokhov?” He, without justifying himself, answered resourcefully, more with the question: “More than whom, Comrade Stalin?” The pipe puffed, puffed, swirled, Stalin smiled slightly, pointed to a chair and, walking around the office, asked: “Comrade Sholokhov, when did Remarque write his book “All Quiet on the Western Front”?” - "Probably at 28 or 29, Comrade Stalin." “We can't wait that long. We need a book on how the people fight - our whole people. Then there was a conversation about the war, about the commanders, about the fighters. So or almost so, the idea of ​​the book “They Fought for the Motherland” sounded from the lips of the leader. He told me about this meeting twice.

And Leonov, at a meeting in the 30s with M. Gorky and Stalin, memorized the details: “Gorky then declared about me that I was the hope of Soviet literature. Hope was dangerous. And Stalin came up and looked at me for a few seconds with his black eyes without pupils. I didn’t lower my eyes… And if I had lowered my eyes, well, I think I wouldn’t have remained alive.” In general, both looked into the eyes of the era and wrote about it.

Leonid Maksimovich was all imbued with mysticism, he believed that his records with the "Devil's Mass", bought abroad, set fire to his apartment. Mikhail Alexandrovich did not believe in the machinations of the devil. We really wanted to bring them together, these geniuses of the era, but they either agreed or found reasons to delay the meeting. So they never met, and probably it would have been a historical event.

At that time, people of all sizes and talents were found in our literary field. I remember how Volodya Chivilikhin came running: “Guys, an extraordinary Siberian showed up. At a seminar in Kemerovo. So Rasputin was first named. And at that time, the state found funds for holding "cluster" seminars for young writers. These were the seminars in Chita and Kemerovo. The "publishing catch" there was great. Venerable writers, teachers of the Literary Institute came to a distant city, conducted master classes, let's just say: seminars. Serious disputes ensued, but there were also considerable talents. The Siberian school rose to its full height. Those places have always been famous for their literature, there was some kind of special, bright, thoughtful, sensitive to the soul climate and people apart.

Here Valentin Rasputin was one of these generous gifts of Siberia for literature. He came quietly, sat down in the prose editorial office in a corner where a kettle was always heated on the stove, listened to the editors chirping and Viktor Astafyev thumped with laughter.

I don’t fully know why the reader believed Valentin so unconditionally, for his kind of rustic honesty, artlessness of speech, for the precisely expressed truth. After all, he warned us against the coming time of greed, envy, profit in the story “Money for Mary”, about old villages floating into the depths of eternity, and in general - native graves, which meant not only the death of the past, but the foggy and death of the future (“Farewell with Mother). He was worried and blamed us: "I always bring trouble and pain to you before censorship and power." We reassured him and said, not without pride, that after the publication of the book we were glad that we had a little touch of his glory. He could not stand these words about fame and awards: "A writer must think and work." I remember when they released the big one-volume Farewell to Matera, we “washed” the title page of me, although he, as always, did not drink. He loved to talk with my daughter Marina, as a student, but especially to listen to her granddaughter Nastya, who knew at least a thousand ditties learned in the folk art circle. I remember how, in his presence, one general attacked us and him for publishing the book Live and Remember. "Are you almost exonerating the deserter?" We said that the book is not about that. Valya calmly said: "He not only ruined his wife, but also his future life." Yes, we understood this, and it was not for nothing that Ivan Fotievich Stadnyuk said: “If I were GLAVPUR, I would buy thousands of copies and send them to military units: this is what treason leads to.”

Of course, the book was not about this or not only about that, but about the cruelty of war, about the destruction of human destiny. It seemed that he would not write anything for a long time, but then “Farewell to Matera” appeared. In general, by the end of the 80s, Valentine's authority was unconditional. There were books about him, articles. And he, as before, is quiet and modest.

But Viktor Astafiev was immediately whirlwind, unrestrained. He seemed to want to use all the cells of life left to him by the war.

Yato, I must admit, was shocked by his first story I read, “Ode to a Russian Garden” - it’s so simple, clear, with amazement and joy in the life clutch of everything that surrounds us, to write about all the things known to us: about vegetables, midges, a bathhouse, girls, hut.

It was a true master. He wrote and wrote, brought us the great "Tsarryba", "War thunders somewhere." We printed something, he referred something to the Soviet Writer. But then our women clung to "The Shepherd and the Shepherdess", about the battle of Korsun-Shevchenko. He generously sprinkled the bloody drama of the new Stalingrad in 1944 with strong, obscene soldier words. The editors cried, begged to take them off, saying that this was not in the tradition of Russian literature: neither Tolstoy, nor Sholokhov, nor Tvardovsky, whom he adored, had a swear word. He agreed. A wonderful book was published, which also had a subtitle "Modern Pastoral". When, during perestroika, having received money for a collection of works from Yeltsin, he restored the swearing, the story got dirty, faded, and lost its writerly height. Yes, and Viktor Petrovich, something in his character was dark, evil (and God forbid to survive what he experienced: dispossession, exile, mortal combat, the death of his daughter). Once he told me: “Do you know, Valera, who survived in this war? Who with ... on those who lay on the bottom shelf. You know, when we, the wounded, were being transported in a wagon, the intellectual could not get on the bottom, but we, the simple ones, could. That's how they survived."

Of course, I was stunned, I could not say anything, because the man went through the whole war. I asked the front-line soldiers about his words. Vladimir Karpov answered harshly: "Victor and in a peaceful life on people with ...". Bondarev sighed and said: "He had no friends." In any case, in the latest novel, Cursed and Murdered, the stench of war is evident. No, Viktor Petrovich had friends, not to mention hundreds, thousands of fans. He moaned that Perm, where he lived, did not understand him, did not accept him, did not recognize him, but immediately his friends, primarily Vasily Belov, offered to move to Vologda. With his arrival, with the presence of Belov himself, Fokina, Gryazev, Romanov, the city and region turned into a powerful, all-Union literary center. The first secretary of the regional party committee Drygin gave him his four-room apartment, and Kuptsov gave it to Belov. I would like to see today one oligarch or governor who gave his apartment to a writer. For some time he lived and wrote there. We all then said: "We are not going to Vologda, but to Belov and Astafyev." But Viktor Petrovich didn’t work out there, I received a letter from him:

“Valera, all the same, I need my own language, Siberian, Yenisei, I’ll leave for my Krasnoyarsk.”

Realizing that he needed to add something, he added: “But in general, you understand, two bears cannot get along in one lair.”

And in 2001, during the "plenum on wheels" "Moscow-Vladivostok", we stopped in Listvyanka (Astafiev was in the hospital), wished him good health and creative work. Signed magazines, books, myself, Mikhail Alekseev, Volodya Kostrov, Kolya Doroshenko, Igor Yanin, Boris Orlov, Karem Rush, and all the other 20 people. And now - the eternal memory of Viktor Petrovich, a talented, life-broken, unexpected person.

Our critics, who wrote the prefaces or reviews that should have been for every book, have in fact formed a group of erudite, energetic writers who often clash with their pro-Western, liberal colleagues in the pages of magazines. Probably, then Pyotr Palievsky was considered the first value. At that time, when a far from benevolent discussion around Sholokhov unfolded, Peter made a fundamental report at the IMLI (Institute of World Literature) “The World Significance of Sholokhov”. At a time when the frail grave-diggers were preparing for the burial of Sholokhov's work, the critic, drawing on the texts of world authorities, great scientists and writers of the world and Russia, highlighted the greatness of The Quiet Flows the Don, showed its true, heavenly magnitude. Then he spoke in a dosed manner, did not scatter, in response to harsh remarks that it was time for him to defend his doctoral dissertation, sublimely fought back: "I think for you." And critics A. Lanshchikov, O. Mikhailov, S. Semanov, V. Kozhinov, V. Guminsky, S. Nebolsin, V. Gusev, V. Valmaev and others thought with him. And then a large group of young writers and critics followed, who were not only engaged in reviews and reviews. No, they represented the view of the younger generation on many problems. Suffice it to name Y. Seleznev, V. Kalugin, S. Lykoshin, L. Baranova Gonchenko, P. Palamarchuk, V. Karpets, N. Mashovets, I. Fomenko, and many others. No, it was not a common soldered group - each of them was individual and had his own point of view. But they really relied on Russia, its traditions, Russian and world school of criticism, they were deeply educated people of their time. It was a pleasure to admire their intelligence, erudition, sparkling.

They gathered in the Soviet-Bulgarian club of creative youth, exchanged knowledge, thoughts, posed problems. Among the members were Russian writers Rasputin, Belov, artists K. Stolyarov, L. Golubkina, V. Telichkina, director L. Shepitko, poets Vladimir Firsov, G. Serebryakov, Larisa Vasilyeva, who herself contributed aesthetic, historical, literary knowledge to club.

The work of our militant team of critics and writers, who spoke about the traditions that introduced the names of Aksakov, Khomyakov, the brothers Kireevsky, Strakhov, into the life of that society, infuriated those for whom modern modernists, cosmopolitan philosophers, writers and aesthetists had "light in the window" colleagues. This worried the future perestroika so much that their Bulgarian “pillar of thought”, Ph.D. Hristo Gyuryanov, faded, began to get lost in what was happening in the Soviet Union, and wrote a note about “wrong tendencies in the Soviet delegation”, where he accused us of a “non-class approach”. Yes, this chip, this argument was often thrown at us as an accusation (remember one A. Yakovlev), because there were no other, intelligible and meaningful arguments. The letter came to the Central Committee of the CPSU (what a strikingly identical handwriting all the accusers have). They called me, because they knew that I was the creator and organizer of this club, I was picking up the Soviet delegation there. I carefully explained that we affirm the classical, spoke about the world authority of V. Rasputin, V. Belov, composer Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov, artist S. Krasauskas. Yes, in general, many, among whom were the winners of the Komsomol Prize. The note was “closed”, they asked to expand the geography of the club (we went to Tbilisi, Batumi, Frunze, Vilnius, to Rostov to see Sholokhov). Gennady Gusev, who "managed the case", reported to the authorities, they scolded him for the inaccuracy in the wording, they took note that "the club is doing a lot of international work." In general, the club was a serious school of acquaintances, exchange of experience, talents, sincere acquaintance with other types of art, a glorious center of the Slavic spirit and patriotism.

Sometimes we also had “hooligan” actions for those times. for example, we were flying over the Kuban from Batumi, and Oleg Mikhailov suddenly stood up in the plane (although someone says that it was Sergey Semanov) and said loudly that “we are flying over the place of death of the glorious Russian general Lavr Kornilov, please stand up and honor the memory ". Everyone stood up, even the secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee Alexander Kamshalov. All in all, some accusations piled up.

The most troublesome, unbalanced, inspiring people are the poets.

The highest authority in the then poetic world worked in the editorial office of poetry - front-line poet Nikolai Starshinov. Before us, he worked as the head of the poetry department in the Yunost magazine and launched dozens, maybe hundreds of young poets onto the poetic track. A front-line soldier, an excellent fisherman, he could perform ditties for hours, among which there were cocky ones. His authority was indisputable, he led the Poetry almanac, which has become completely ours. “I was once a company leader” - this line from his poem, as it were, determined his fate, especially since this poem ended like this: “I still sing a little.” He sang himself, but the best thing is that the discordant choir sounded in our publishing house. Next to him, the head of the poetry editorial board, was Vadim Kuznetsov, who came from Magadan and plunged us into the sea of ​​poetry of the 1920s. I especially remember how he enthusiastically read the poems of Pavel Vasiliev and Nikolai Klyuev. It was not easy for them to work, because the poetic Olympus was constantly trying to occupy, and even capture. Sometimes the so-called "secretary" literature (that is, the literature of secretaries and other literary officials) crushed.

Of course, the authorities were by no means only "secretary". They got their place on the poetic, but rather on the literary representative Olympus in various ways. Who is some kind of scandal with a challenge - and what will they say there, in the West? There were big, as Volodya Firsov said, "craftsmen": Aksenov, Yevtushenko, Voznesensky, Slutsky, Okudzhava, Urin. Slutsky enjoyed some kind of indisputable and magical authority among publishers, "non-dogmatic" ideological workers of culture. In order not to “produce” an excessive “literary mass”, the onito (the latter) adopted a whole series of orders restricting the excessively frequent publication of books for writers. But, however, for such authorities as Rasul Gamzatov, Konstantin Simonov, this rule did not exist. But what Slutsky had to do with it, I did not understand.

Osipov talked to Slutsky, who asked him all the time: who is Ganichev? where did he come from?.. After 25 years, I read in Nezavisimaya Gazeta that Boris Slutsky's brother was the chief of Israeli intelligence, B'nai Britt himself. Wonderful are thy works, Lord! Who was playing their game here - was it the KGB, was it B'nai Britt? Who gave authority to the poet? Party Central Committee? Writers Union? Intelligence service? So its own, hidden Soviet-Israeli PR was also present in our seemingly ideologically antagonistic times. Or the notorious, rather well-known Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Together with Andrei Voznesensky and, perhaps, Robert Rozhdestvensky, they were the creators of "pop poetry", which took a very definite place in literature. After the 20th Congress and the removal of Stalin's body from the Mausoleum, it seemed that totalitarianism (although then it was called the "cult of personality") was destroyed, and it was logical to talk about many things more freely, to amaze the imagination with some "revelations" of the deeds of the cult, excesses of the struggle against cosmopolitanism, but with skilful and inspired ascension of the name of Lenin. Each of the "pop artists" had such inspirational poems and even poems. For Yevtushenko and Voznesensky, Lenin was a sign of untouchability. Andrey even demanded that portraits of Lenin be removed from the money so as not to dirty them with dirty merchant hands, but with the Longjumeau poem (one of the suburbs of Paris, where Lenin trained party cadres while in exile, and where Voznesensky more than once, of course, already in our time , came) he paved the way to the heart of power. And Robert Rozhdestvensky already in 1979 wrote the poem "210 steps": so many steps did the guard of honor go from the Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower to the entrance to the Lenin Mausoleum. It contained a kind of "retrospective of the triumph of the Leninist idea throughout the world." Yevgeny Yevtushenko always wanted to please everyone - both here and in the West. Among his admirers and critics were communists and liberals, dogmatists and reformers, Westerners and residents of the Russian outback. He knew how to poetically arrange any idea that floats in the political atmosphere. Sergey Pavlov attracted him to the Helsinki World Festival of Youth and Students, which was held in a capitalist country, which means that there was some resistance in the form of local extreme rightists and anti-festivalists sent from Western Europe, they held their few manifestations at the Soviet steamship where our delegation lived. Our young leaders learned to oppose, notes of civic pathos appeared in Yevgeny Yevtushenko. He wrote a poster poem “Snotty fascism! ”, which was reprinted by all Komsomol newspapers. “And if I had not been a communist, then that night I would have become a communist!” Sergei Pavlov continued to think of using the skill of the poet, but he had other prospects: he had to go to the West, and he didn’t want to be known as a “Komsomol poet”, therefore he dealt a blow to Pavlov, accusing the “ruddy Komsomol leader” of the manners of the dogmatic leadership.

It wasn't about personalities. Pavlov and the Komsomol at that time repelled the attacks of those who attempted to win the Victory. The facts of inaccuracies in Fadeev's coverage of the activities of the Young Guard underground workers were presented with a broad generalization, they began to say that in general there was no special militant organization of youth in Krasnodon. Oleg Koshevoy was declared a spy. When talking about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, this kind of "researchers" and publicists shrugged their shoulders: there was no move. Matrosov rushed to the embrasure, because the orphanage, "he did not feel sorry for anyone and did not think about anything." One after another, revelations of “false” heroic deeds rained down, tragic motives were pumped up, the victorious outcome of the war was not actually recognized. How does it feel like today...

Work in the editorial office of poetry was cheerful and friendly, but also responsible. For example, we are publishing Vasily Fedorov. Poet of the first row, classic. He is rubbed off from the first places, and the notes about his work are small (in today's times they would say: PR is weak). But he did not care, he was always cheerful, sometimes tipsy, monumental, sovereign and lyrical.

During these years, poets who were in disgrace or even in exile also gained fame: Yaroslav Smelyakov, Boris Ruchev, Sergey Podelkov, Anatoly Zhigulin and others. We were friends with them. Valya Osipov, whose family suffered in 1937, not only treated them sympathetically, but also quoted them endlessly.

They were an independent people, they expressed their point of view on events, they were not afraid of anything (everyone had already seen it). A special scandal in the Central Committee of the party was caused by the letter of Y. Smelyakov, which was published in the almanac "Poetry" by N. Starshinov. They say that the French communists protested about these poems, where Louis Aragon and Lilya Brik were in the leadership for a long time. But Smelyakov considered that Lilya Brik was to blame for the death of Mayakovsky, and wrote a poem. What was there! But everything remained in its place. I quote this poem in full:

You cleaned yourself under Lenin,
soul, memory and voice,
and in our poetry there is no
still a cleaner person.

You would buzz like a three-pipe cruiser
in our common polyphony,
but they got you
these lilies and these axes.

Not a shabby financial inspector,
not enemies from a foreign camp,
and buzzing in the ear
prostitutes with an aspen camp.

These little darlings,
these kitties of demimonde,
like night vermouth, sucked
golden blood of the poet.

You would have spent it in battles,
instead of spilling it on the cheap,
to sell notes
those mourning merchants.

Why did you walk like a cloud
copper-throated and sun-faced,
to follow the planted coffin
veronica and bullshit?!

How you shot straight to the heart
how you succumbed to their weakness,
the one whom even Gorky
afraid after your death?

We look now with respect
hands out of pockets,
to the summit of this quarrel
two angry giants.

You cleaned yourself under Lenin,
to sail further into the revolution.
We have forgiven you posthumously
revolver false note.

But the unforgettable Nikolai Glazkov is a poetic joker, an eccentric, a witty and lively person.

We published it all the time. Here are some lines stuck forever:

* * *
I look at the world from under the table,
The twentieth century is an extraordinary century.
The century is more interesting for the historian,
So much sadder for a contemporary!

* * *
Let the mind go beyond the mind
In a world of uncertainty...
But I will not give up to two infections -
dullness and sobriety.

Nikolai's poems about the second front were of tremendous power, written in 1944:

Eternal glory to the heroes
And the front "I'm sorry."
The front won't help them second,
And he could have saved their lives.

Better climate in America
And cheaper life;
But the dead have no shame,
And you gave up fighting.

You are acting sane
Hiding the fronts in the rear;
But there is eternal glory in the world,
She doesn't get you.