Repressed writers and poets. I would like to name everyone... The tragedy of Russian writers “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon”

Persecution creative intelligentsia reached enormous proportions under Stalin - but with his death it did not end

In 1966, on February 10, the trial of the writers began Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel. They were accused under Article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” Thus coming to power Leonid Brezhnev made it clear to everyone that they would no longer coddle disloyal intellectuals. But for the first time, people plucked up courage and declared their protest; moreover, they went to a rally. This process can be called the starting point of Soviet dissidence. the site recalled the most high-profile trials of writers and poets and the persecution to which they were subjected in the USSR.

Before the "thaw"

The persecution of poets and writers began during Stalin. Among those who were subjected to them are the classics Russian literature what they are considered to be today. Poet and translator Nikolay Zabolotsky in 1938 he was sentenced to five years. However, after the camps he was also sent into exile on Far Eastern construction sites. Nikolai Alekseevich was able to return to Moscow only in 1946, at which time he was reinstated in the Writers' Union. Zabolotsky was rehabilitated five years after his death in 1963.

First time Osip Mandelstam arrested in 1934 and together with his wife sent into exile near Perm. At that time, this was a rather mild punishment for writing and reading the anti-Stalin epigram “We live without feeling the country beneath us.” Thanks to the intercession of people in power, the couple had their sentence commuted and were allowed to move to Voronezh.

In May 37th Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam We were already in the capital. But the poet did not enjoy freedom for long. In 1938, he was arrested a second time and sent to prison. Far East. December 27, 1938 one of greatest poets XX century died of typhus in a transit prison. Osip Emilievich's grave has not yet been found.

Daniil Kharms died during the siege of Leningrad in a mental hospital at Kresty on February 2, 1942. The poet first went to prison in 1931, when three people were arrested at once - Kharms, Igor Bakhterev and Alexander Vvedensky. They were told that they belonged to an “anti-Soviet group of writers” and were sent to camps for three years.

In 1941, Kharms was arrested for “slanderous and defeatist sentiments.” To avoid execution, the poet tried to pose as a madman, as a result of which he was sentenced to be kept in a psychiatric hospital. He lived there for less than a year.

Varlama Shalamova as a “socially harmful element” he was sentenced to 3 years in the camps in 1929. In 1937 he was convicted again, only now he received five years for “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.” In 1943, for what Shalamov called Bunina Russian classic, the writer was sent to camps for ten years. Officially for “anti-Soviet activities.” Three years after Stalin's death, he was rehabilitated and returned to Moscow. His main work was “Kolyma Tales,” which tells about all the horrors of Stalin’s camps.

Another Nobel laureate in literature Alexander Solzhenitsyn ended the war on February 2, 1945 with the rank of captain. The front-line soldier celebrated his victory in the Lubyanka prison. He was stripped of his military rank and sentenced to 8 years in the camps in New Jerusalem near Moscow. And in February 1953, the writer found himself in “eternal exile” in Kazakhstan, in a small village, where he worked as a teacher of mathematics and physics.

Three years later, Solzhenitsyn was released, and in ’57 he was rehabilitated. From that moment on, he settled in Ryazan, where he also taught. However, Alexander Isaevich managed not to please the new government either. In 1974, for “The Gulag Archipelago,” the writer was deprived of Soviet citizenship, accused of treason and expelled from the country.

This is far from full list writers and poets who became victims of Stalinist repressions. Literature was then forever lost Boris Pilnyak, Boris Kornilov, Isaac Babel and other talented authors.

Trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel

Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel were arrested by the KGB in early September 1965. Sinyavsky was considered one of the leading critics of the magazine " New world", taught at the Moscow Art Theater School and worked at the Institute of World Literature named after Gorky. Daniel translated works of writers from the republics of the USSR and wrote himself.

They met in '53. We met often, read our stories to each other, and, of course, discussed Stalin’s repressions. After their arrest they were accused of being anti-Soviet. The investigation lasted almost a year. At this time, the famous “letter of 63” was written, in which the following signed in defense of friends: famous people, How Akhmadulina, Tarkovsky, Okudzhava, Nagibin and many others - 63 people in total. The Times published an appeal to the Soviet government, in which writers from France, the USA, Germany, Italy and England asked for the release of Daniel and Sinyavsky. Moreover, a “glasnost rally” was organized in Moscow.

At the beginning of December 1965, about 200 people gathered on Pushkin Square. And although they were dispersed a few minutes later, and the organizers were arrested, it was a loud statement of disagreement with the authorities. The rally became the first purely political demonstration in the Soviet Union.

For a long time, the KGB could not establish who exactly was hiding behind the pseudonyms. Abram Tertz And Nikolay Arzhak, whose books were published in the West and denounced the Stalinist regime. They say that the writers were betrayed by a friend and classmate of Sinyavsky. This agent once, in a nice conversation, gave Daniel an idea, which he embodied in the story “Moscow Speaks”. And when the work of the mysterious Nikolai Arzhak was read on Radio Liberty, the informer immediately recognized the plot and identified the author.

After this, Sinyavsky and Daniel were arrested. Despite the indignation of the public, both Soviet and foreign, the writers were given a harsh punishment: Sinyavsky was sentenced to 7 years of strict regime, Daniel to 5 years in the camps. Sinyavsky was released early in June 1971. And two years later he left to teach at the Sorbonne. Andrei Donatovich died at 71 in Paris.

Daniel was released in 1970 and lived in exile for a long time in Kaluga; after returning to Moscow, he began publishing under a pseudonym Yuri Petrov. Julius Markovich Daniel died at the age of 63 in Moscow.

Boris Pasternak

In 1957, the novel “Dr. Zhivago» Boris Pasternak. In the USSR, this work was perceived negatively and was subjected to harsh criticism and ban. In the same year, the writer was nominated for the Nobel Prize for the third time, and in the fall of ’58, Pasternak became the second Russian author after Ivan Bunin to receive the high award. From that moment on, the persecution of Boris Leonidovich began in the USSR. The novel was recognized by the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee as slanderous, and the decision of the Nobel Committee was recognized as an attempt to drag the country into another Cold War.

Incriminating articles poured in the newspapers like peas. Meetings of workers condemning the author took place throughout the country. At writers' meetings at all levels they demanded that Boris Leonidovich be expelled from the country. Rallies of indignant citizens were held at enterprises, factories, and government agencies, accusing the author of betrayal and “moral failure.”

On the fourth day after receiving the Prize, Pasternak was expelled from the Union of Writers of the USSR. As a result of such pressure, Boris Leonidovich sent a telegram to Sweden in which he refused the prize. And then the KGB offered the author a deal: he publicly wrote a letter of repentance through Pravda, and then he was left in the country and allowed to work as a translator. The writer agreed. This persecution seriously affected the health of Boris Leonidovich. And on May 30, 1960, he died.

Joseph Brodsky

the site decided to remember some foreign writers, who not only visited the USSR, but also met with the leaders of this state.

H.G. Wells

English writer and publicist . Author of famoussci-fi novels "The Time Machine", " The Invisible Man", "War of the Worlds "etc. Representativecritical realism. Supporter of Fabian socialism.

H.G. Wells visited three times Russia . For the first time in 1914, then he stayed in St. PetersburgHotel "Astoria" on Morskaya street , 39. The second time in September 1920 he had a meeting with Lenin . At this time, Wells lived in an apartment M. Gorky V apartment building E. K. Barsova onKronverksky Avenue, 23.

H.G. Wells visited Russia three times

Interest in Russia accompanied Wells throughout almost his entire life. creative life. It arose in 1905 in connection with the events of the first Russian revolution. His acquaintance with Gorky, which took place in America in the same year, strengthened Wells's interest in the life and fate of the Russian people (Gorky would later become a good friend of the English writer). Among the writer’s Russian friends are Alexey Tolstoy, Korney Chukovsky; scientists - Ivan Pavlov, Oldenburg; Soviet Ambassador to England Maisky. In addition, Wells was married to a Russian woman, Maria Ignatievna Zakrevskaya.

Bernard Shaw

Shaw and Lady Astor in front of the Museum of the Revolution

Probably the first of the well-known writers in the West with whom Stalin met and talked was the famous English writer and playwright Bernard Shaw, Nobel laureate 1925. In 1931, 75-year-old Shaw committed trip around the world, during which he visited and Soviet Union. Bernard Shaw considered himself a socialist and friend Soviet Russia, he greeted October Revolution 1917. A very warm welcome awaited the writer in Moscow, and on July 29, 1931, Stalin received him in his Kremlin office. We do not know the details of their conversation, but we know that Shaw’s entire further journey around the country and his trip along the Volga passed in the most comfortable conditions.

Shaw wrote that all rumors about famine in Russia are fiction

Bernard Shaw and Lady Astor with party and cultural figures of the USSR; far left - Karl Radek

There was a severe economic crisis in Western countries at that time, and much was written about the crisis in Russia. There were rumors of famine and cruelty in Russian villages. But B. Shaw, returning to the West, wrote that all rumors about famine in Russia were fiction; he became convinced that Russia had never been so well supplied with food as at the time when he was there.

Emil Ludwig

On December 13, 1931, in the Kremlin office, Stalin received Emil Ludwig, who had arrived in the USSR. E. Ludwig’s books “Genius and Character” and “Art and Fate” were very popular in the 20s. The conversation between Stalin and Ludwig lasted several hours and was carefully recorded in shorthand. Stalin talked a lot about himself, he talked about his parents, about his childhood, about his studies at the Tiflis Seminary, about how, at the age of 15, he began to participate in the revolutionary movement in the Caucasus and joined the Social Democrats.

Stalin's conversation with Emil Ludwig was published as a separate brochure

Stalin's conversation with Emil Ludwig was published not only in newspapers; a year later it was published as a separate brochure and then reprinted many times.

Selecting an interlocutor in in this case was not accidental. At that time, a question arose in the Kremlin about writing popular biography Stalin.

Romain Roland

On June 28, Stalin received Rolland in his Kremlin office (Stalin tried to use meetings with representatives of foreign creative intelligentsia to strengthen his authority abroad). Rolland’s wife was present at the meeting, as well as A. Ya. Arosev, who translated the conversation. The meeting lasted two hours. The typewritten text of the translation was presented to Stalin, edited by him and sent to Rolland in Gorki, where he was vacationing with A. M. Gorky. On July 3, Stalin, K.E. Voroshilov and other Soviet leaders visited Gorki. Together with Gorky, Rolland attended the All-Union Physical Culture Parade on Red Square.

The conversation with Stalin made a strong impression on Rolland and his wife

Meetings and conversations with Stalin made a strong impression on Rolland and his wife. I. G. Ehrenburg noted that Stalin, being a man of great intelligence and even greater cunning, “knew how to charm his interlocutor.” However, the euphoria from meeting Stalin did not last long for Rolland. The death of Gorky, the publication of Andre Gide’s book “Return from the USSR” and the reaction of the Soviet authorities to it, the events of 1937 helped Rolland free himself from the charm of the owner of the Kremlin office. The writer, probably sensing the vicissitudes of his previous judgments about Stalin, did not want to publish the conversation and hid it in the archive for fifty years.

Lion Feuchtwanger

At the end of 1936, the German writer arrived in the Soviet Union, where he stayed for several weeks

At that time, Feuchtwanger, like many other prominent Western writers, saw in the Soviet Union the only real force capable of countering the Nazi threat. “To be for peace,” said Feuchtwanger, “means to speak for the Soviet Union and for the Red Army. There can be no neutrality on this issue.”

The result of Feuchtwanger’s trip to the USSR was the book “Moscow 1937”

In Moscow, Feuchtwanger attended the trial of the “right-Trotskyist bloc” and stated that “the guilt of the defendants already seems to be largely proven.” A few days later he clarified that this guilt had been “exhaustively proven.” Feuchtwanger can hardly be blamed for not understanding the falsity of this and other Moscow political trials organized by Stalin to strengthen his personal power. Indeed, in all the newspapers that Feuchtwanger read in Moscow with the help of translators, he encountered speeches by prominent Soviet writers with demands for the execution of the defendants.

Feuchtwanger was received by Stalin, the conversation lasted more than three hours and left, according to Feuchtwanger, “an indelible impression.” The result of the trip to the USSR was the book “Moscow 1937. A trip report for my friends,” published in the summer of 1937 in Amsterdam. In the chapter “One Hundred Thousand Portraits of a Man with a Mustache,” the writer talks about his meetings and conversation with Stalin. Soon, on the personal instructions of Stalin, this book was translated and published in the USSR.

(pictured Sergey Yesenin)

In the year of literature, we decided to celebrate our celebration in the former rest house for writers named after Gorky in Repino. In Soviet times, I did not have a chance to vacation there. But in September 1998, while walking in the village of Repino, I plucked up the courage to go into the dilapidated building of the writers' rest house. The first person I met was Maxim Gorky. “Man – that sounds proud!” – I remembered. The dilapidated monument stood mournfully at the entrance - it was the only one guarding the ruins of what was once created on the initiative of a proletarian writer. “And this is all that remains of your initiatives?” – I involuntarily asked the monument.

The Gorky Holiday Home was created in the 1950s. After the collapse of the USSR and the Union of Soviet Writers, the holiday home fell into disrepair. Throughout the 90s of the last century, the house was mercilessly destroyed until the building and surrounding territory were bought. The new owners demolished the monument to Gorky. After restoration former house Writers' getaway has become a Residence SPA hotel.

If members of the Writers' Union rested in such comfort, every year they would probably produce a masterpiece on the scale of War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov.

I didn't sleep well that night. I dreamed that I was wandering through the empty, dilapidated rooms where writers once lived and worked, and it seemed that I heard their voices.

I woke up often. The shadows of the authors who worked here woke me up and demanded that I write about the tragedy of Russian writers.
And there really was something to write about.

V.N. Eremin talks about the mystery of the death of some Russian writers in his book. And how many we don’t know who disappeared, died, drank themselves to death...

The fate of Russian writers cannot be called anything other than a tragedy.
K.F. Ryleev was hanged on July 13 (25), 1826 in Peter and Paul Fortress among the five leaders of the Decembrist uprising.
A.S. Griboyedov died on January 30 (February 11), 1829, when a crowd of religious Islamic fanatics destroyed the Russian diplomatic mission in Tehran.
A.S. Pushkin was mortally wounded by Baron Georges de Heckern (Dantes) in a duel on January 27 (February 8), 1837. Two days later the poet died.
M.Yu. Lermontov was killed in a duel on July 27, 1841 in Pyatigorsk by Nikolai Martynov. However, it is still suspected that Lermontov was killed by another shooter.

Every writer of any worth who tried to tell the truth was destroyed by the authorities by all means. There are versions that A.S. Pushkin and M.Yu. Lermontov were killed on the orders of the tsar under the guise of a duel, and the tsar deliberately sent A.S. Griboedov to dangerous Tehran.
P.Ya. Chaadaev was officially declared crazy for his “Philosophical Letters”, his works were prohibited from publication in imperial Russia.

A.I. Herzen was arrested in 1834 and exiled to Perm. His friend N.P. Ogarev was also arrested. Later they were forced to emigrate from Russia, and already abroad they published their works and the famous “Bell”. In Russia they would have been sentenced to death.

F.M. Dostoevsky was sentenced to death for participating in an anti-government conspiracy. The execution was replaced by hard labor, where the writer spent many years. Reasons sudden death Fyodor Mikhailovich, as well as his father, is still a mystery. Gorky called Dostoevsky “an insatiable avenger for his personal misfortunes and suffering.”

For some reason, writers in Russia could not do anything else and therefore became beggars. In the magazine “Education” in 1900, Panov wrote: “Pomyalovsky had to live like the last proletarian. Kurochkin lived for two years on a salary of 14 rubles a month, constantly needed the basic necessities, fell ill and died of exhaustion. NOT. Chernyshev died of want... Nadson, even at the height of his literary activity, was so financially insecure that he was not able to get himself a fur coat...”

The tragedy of Russian writers is that they did not want to limit themselves to the role of cheap fiction writers, to write for the sake of earning money and for the needs of the public. They served Melpomene and became her victims.

“Dobrolyubov literally sacrificed himself to the insatiable Moloch - literature, and at the age of three he burned to the ground... Ostrovsky suffered from unaccountable timidity and was constantly in some kind of anxious state. Vs. Garshin suffered from melancholy and acute insanity. Batyushkov has gone crazy. G.I. Uspensky is rumored to be hopelessly ill with insanity. Pomyalovsky died of delirium tremens. N. Uspensky cut his throat. V. Garshin threw himself into the flight of stairs of the house and hurt himself to death.”

N.V. Gogol suffered mental disorder(taphephobia - fear of being buried alive). Doctors at the time could not recognize his mental illness. The writer repeatedly gave written instructions to bury him only when obvious signs of cadaveric decomposition appeared. However, when the coffin was opened for reburial, the corpse was turned over. Gogol's skull was stolen.

The sudden death of Leo Tolstoy, who was forced to flee his home due to the fact that his wife and children were fighting for the writer’s inheritance, can also be called tragic, although Tolstoy had previously renounced the copyright to his works. In fact, his family “killed” him.

The author died in terrible agony famous work“Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” A.N. Radishchev. He committed suicide by drinking poison.
The writer A.K. Tolstoy injected himself with too large a dose of morphine (which he was treated with as prescribed by a doctor), which led to the death of the writer.

According to Vladimir Vysotsky’s wife Marina Vladi, her husband was killed by drugs that he used as prescribed by a doctor to recover from alcoholism. If you believe last movie“Vysotsky”, then the state security agencies (KGB) were involved in the poet’s death.

The secret services (according to one version), allegedly on behalf of Stalin himself, also poisoned Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov, who entered our literature under the pseudonym Maxim Gorky. On the eve of Gorky's death, all medical staff and the nurse who gave him medications were replaced. At the time of his death, only his last mistress was at the writer’s bedside - Maria Budberg, who was an NKVD agent. Having no medical education, it was she who gave Gorky some last medicine in his life, which he tried to spit out.

According to Pavel Basinsky, which he outlined in his book about Gorky, Maria Zakrevskaya-Benckendorff-Budberg (she was also called “red Mata Hari”) allegedly poisoned her former lover Maxim Gorky for personal reasons, motivated by love revenge, and not on the instructions of the NKVD chief Yagoda.

Gorky wanted to undergo treatment abroad, but did not receive Stalin’s permission.
The poet Alexander Blok, who suffered from a mental disorder, died without receiving permission for treatment abroad.

The suicide of Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1930, according to one version, was organized by the Kremlin secret services. Mayakovsky shot himself with a revolver given to him by the GPU. Viktor Shklovsky, speaking about Mayakovsky, said that the poet’s fault was not “that he shot himself, but that he shot at the wrong time.”

The suicide of Sergei Yesenin also caused a lot of noise. Some still believe that the hanging of Sergei Yesenin at the Angleterre Hotel was staged by the NKVD on the orders of Stalin.

For his epigram “The Kremlin Highlander” (“We live without feeling the country beneath us...”), Osip Mandelstam was arrested and died in a transit prison.
In prison, the security officers will kill the peasant poet Klyuev and shoot the writer Pilnyak.

On August 3, 1921, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov was arrested on suspicion of participation in the conspiracy of the “Petrograd Combat Organization of V.N. Tagantsev” and shot.

In 1933, Nikolai Erdman (screenwriter of the film “Jolly Fellows”) was arrested for the political poems he wrote and sentenced to three years of exile in the city of Yeniseisk. His play "Suicide" was banned.

Olga Berggolts was arrested on December 13, 1938, on charges of “in connection with enemies of the people” and as a participant in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy against Voroshilov and Zhdanov. Her first husband, Boris Kornilov, was shot on February 21, 1938 in Leningrad.

Benedikt Lifshits was arrested in October 1937 in connection with the Leningrad “writer’s case” and executed on September 21, 1938.

Mikhail Koltsov was recalled from Spain in 1938 and on the night of December 12-13 of the same year was arrested at the editorial office of the Pravda newspaper. On February 1, 1940, he was sentenced to death on charges of espionage and executed.

Isaac Babel was sentenced to capital punishment and executed on January 27, 1940, on charges of “anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activity” and espionage.

Arkady Averchenko wrote very poetically about the tragedy of the Russian writer. “You will be engraved in my brain for the rest of my life - my funny, ridiculous and endlessly beloved Russia.”

Author " Damned days“Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was forced to flee Russia and never returned to his homeland, although he was repeatedly invited.
Marina Tsvetaeva, who returned to the USSR in 1939, committed suicide on August 31, 1941 (hanged herself).

Reading all this, one cannot help but recall Voltaire’s famous aphorism: “If I had a son with a penchant for literature, then, out of fatherly tenderness, I would break his neck.”

Stalin read all the significant books of Soviet writers. Stalin watched the play “Days of the Turbins” by Mikhail Bulgakov at the Moscow Art Theater more than 14 times. In the end, he made a verdict: “Days of the Turbins” is an anti-Soviet thing, and Bulgakov is not ours.”

Having read Andrei Platonov’s story “For Future Use” published in the magazine “Krasnaya Nov” in 1931, Stalin wrote: “A talented writer, but a bastard.” Stalin sent a letter to the editor of the magazine in which he described the work as “a story by an agent of our enemies, written with the aim of debunking the collective farm movement,” demanding that the author and publishers be punished.

After the “successes” of collectivization, which led to famine in many regions, Mikhail Sholokhov wrote a letter to Stalin on April 4, 1933, in which he spoke about the tragic situation of the peasantry. “I decided that it was better to write to you than to create on such material last book"Virgin Soil Upturned"

However, Mikhail Sholokhov, for all his apparent success, could not avoid accusations of plagiarism - as if he was not the author of the novel “Quiet Don”. Many asked the question: how could a very young man (22 years old) create such a grandiose work in such a short time - the first two volumes in 2.5 years. Sholokhov graduated from only four classes of the gymnasium, lived little on the Don, during the events of the First World War and Civil War was still a child. Stalin instructed N.K. Krupskaya to look into this issue.

Literary critic Natalya Gromova in book club“The Order of Words” in St. Petersburg spoke in detail about the relationship between writers and rulers.

Rulers often act as customers for artists, thereby bribing them and forcing them to serve themselves. Some artists themselves are ready to serve those in power, and do whatever they order, as long as they get paid. Such, so to speak, “prostitution” has a detrimental effect on talent. For the worst thing for an artist is the loss of freedom.
If for an artist art is self-sacrifice, then for rulers it is just a beautiful wrapper hiding their vices.

It is known what characterization was given to Boris Pasternak in his homeland after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Vladimir Semichastny (at the direction of Khrushchev) said the following: “... as the Russian proverb says, even in a good herd there is a black sheep. We have such a black sheep in our socialist society and in the person of Pasternak, who came out with his slanderous so-called “work”…” (referring to the novel “Doctor Zhivago” - N.K).

They started repeating on all corners: “I haven’t read Pasternak’s novel, but I condemn it.”
The novel Doctor Zhivago was published in Italy without the author's permission. Pasternak was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The persecution forced the writer to refuse the Nobel Prize. But Pasternak was nevertheless expelled from the Writers' Union.

Because of the poem published in the West " Nobel Prize“In February 1959, Pasternak was summoned to the Prosecutor General of the USSR R.A. Rudenko, where he was threatened with charges under Article 64 “Treason to the Motherland.”
They even proposed depriving Pasternak of Soviet citizenship and expelling him from the country. Pasternak wrote in a letter to Khrushchev: “Leaving my homeland is tantamount to death for me. I am connected with Russia by birth, life, and work.”

In March 1963, at a meeting with the intelligentsia in the Kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev, to the applause of most of the audience, shouted, addressing the poet Andrei Voznesensky: “You can say that now there is no longer a thaw or frost - but frosts... Look, you found Pasternak! We suggested to Pasternak that he leave. Do you want to get your passport tomorrow? Do you want it?! And go, go to the damn grandmother. Get out, Mr. Voznesensky, to your masters!”

The relationship between the artist and the authorities can be considered as a litmus test of the processes taking place in society. The artist must be in opposition to the authorities (in in a good way this word). He must criticize the government, show its shortcomings and call for their elimination, and be the conscience of the nation.

GRASS CRACKING ASPHALT - here metaphorical expression collisions "artist and power".

The writer must say what the reader is afraid to admit. Ultimately, what is of interest is not even the work itself, but the feat of its creator, the personality of the creator himself.

To find control over uncontrollable writers, Stalin decided to create a Writers' Union. Since 1925, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) has operated in the country. Its main activists and ideologists were A.A. Fadeev, D.A. Furmanov, V.P. Stavsky and others. RAPP consisted of more than 4 thousand members.
In 1932, RAPP was dissolved and was replaced by the Union of Writers of the USSR. A.A. Fadeev and V.P. Stavsky retained their posts, and other leaders of RAPP were shot.

Evgeny Zamyatin in his dystopian novel “WE” anticipated the situation of control over literature with the help of the Institute of State Poets and Writers.
Mikhail Prishvin, who attended the plenum of the organizing committee in November 1932, wrote in his diary that the future writers’ organization “is nothing more than a collective farm.”

The USSR Writers' Union was formed at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. The pioneers entered the hall with instructions: “There are many books marked “good,” / But the reader demands excellent books.”

The delegate from the Tula province boasted of the number of writers in his organization. To which Gorky noted that previously there was only one writer in Tula, but what a writer - Leo Tolstoy!
“Let me remind you that the number of people does not affect the quality of talent,” Maxim Gorky said in his speech. He cited the words of L.S. Sobolev: “The party and the government gave the writer everything, taking away only one thing from him - the right to write badly.”
“During the years 1928–1931, we gave 75 percent of the books that did not have the right to second editions, that is, very bad books.” Gorky advised young writing proletarians not to rush to “make them writers.” “Two years ago, Joseph Stalin, concerned about improving the quality of literature, said to communist writers: “Learn to write from non-party people.”

As a result of the congress, Gorky became the main writer of the country; leading children's poet - Marshak; “They predicted Pasternak” to play the role of the main poet. An unspoken table of ranks appeared. The reason was Gorky’s phrase that it was necessary to “identify 5 brilliant and 45 very talented” writers.
Some people have already begun to cautiously ask: “how and where to book a place, if not in the top five, then at least among the forty-five.”

It would seem that after the congress, golden times began for writers. But everything was not so smooth. Mikhail Bulgakov in his novel “The Master and Margarita” angrily ridiculed the morals of the writers of that time.

"Engineers human souls“- this is what Yuri Olesha called the writers. He once remarked: “all the vices and all the virtues live in the artist.” The author of the lines “not a day without a line,” a few days after his speech at the congress, told Ehrenburg in a private conversation that he would no longer be able to write - “it was an illusion, a dream at a holiday.”

Once, in a fit of hangover pessimism, Leonid Andreev said: “A pastry chef is happier than a writer, he knows that children and young ladies love cake. bad person who does a good job, not knowing for whom and doubting that this work is even necessary. That is why most writers have no desire to please anyone, and want to offend everyone."

Alexander Green suffered from alcoholism and died in poverty, forgotten by everyone. “The era rushes by. She doesn't need me the way I am. And I can’t be anyone else. And I don’t want to.”
The Writers' Union denied him a pension with the wording: “Green is our ideological enemy. The Union should not help such writers! Not a single penny at all!”

It is significant that a third of the participants in the First Congress of Writers (182 people) died over the next few years in prisons and the Gulag.

Symbolic tragic fate Alexandra Fadeeva. For many years he headed the Writers' Union of the USSR. However, in 1956, from the rostrum of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, he was harshly criticized by M.A. Sholokhov. Fadeev was directly called one of the perpetrators of repression among Soviet writers. IN recent years he became addicted to alcohol and went on long binges. Fadeev confessed to his old friend Yuri Libedinsky: “My conscience torments me. It’s hard to live, Yura, with bloody hands.”

On May 13, 1956, Alexander Fadeev shot himself with a revolver. In his suicide letter to the CPSU Central Committee, he wrote: “I don’t see any way to continue living, since the art to which I gave my life was ruined by the self-confident and ignorant leadership of the party and now cannot be corrected.<…>My life, as a writer, loses all meaning, and with great joy, as a deliverance from this vile existence, where meanness, lies and slander fall upon you, I am leaving this life..."

The beginning of the tragedy for many writers was the Decree of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, published on August 14, 1946, on the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad”. It said, in particular: “The gross mistake of Zvezda is providing a literary platform to the writer Zoshchenko, whose works are alien to Soviet literature…. Akhmatova is a typical representative of empty, unprincipled poetry, alien to our people...”

Since many works of art were not published in the USSR, writers sent them to the West. Since 1958, writers A.D. Sinyavsky (under the pseudonym Abram Terts) and Y.M. Daniel (Nikolai Arzhak) published abroad novels and short stories with a critical mood towards Soviet power.
When the KGB found out who was hiding under pseudonyms, the writers were accused of writing and transmitting for publication abroad works that “discredited the Soviet state and social system.”
The trial against A.D. Sinyavsky and Yu.M. Daniel lasted from the autumn of 1965 to February 1966. Daniel was sentenced to 5 years in the camps under Article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” Sinyavsky was sentenced to 7 years in prison in a strict regime correctional labor colony.

The fate of the poet Joseph Brodsky is indicative. In the USSR, Joseph Brodsky was considered a mediocrity and a parasite. After the publication of the article “Near-Literary Drone” in the newspaper “Evening Leningrad”, a selection of letters from readers was published who demanded that the parasite Brodsky be brought to justice. The poet was arrested. In prison, Brodsky had his first heart attack. He was forced to undergo examination in a psychiatric hospital. From February to March 1964, two trials took place. As a result, the poet was sentenced to five years of forced labor in a remote area.

Close friend Joseph Brodsky Yakov Gordin (editor-in-chief of the Zvezda magazine) told me why Brodsky was not a parasite either in life or in law.

After returning to Leningrad, on May 12, 1972, the poet was summoned to the OVIR and informed of the need to leave the Soviet Union. Deprived of Soviet citizenship, on June 4, 1972, Brodsky left for Vienna.
Brodsky was considered a genius abroad. In 1987, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature - at 47, Brodsky became the youngest laureate.
In 1996, Brodsky died a mysterious death.

The tragedy of Russian writers is that many authors not recognized in their homeland were forced to emigrate abroad. This is Herzen, and Ogarev, and Bunin, and Brodsky, and Solzhenitsyn, and Dovlatov. Recently, Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky ranked Dovlatov among the outstanding writers of the 19th century. And this is also the tragedy of Russian writers: when during the life of the author those in power oppress him, and after his death they praise him.

Those writers who remained in their homeland lived as if “in a golden cage.” Members of the Writers' Union were provided with material support (according to their "rank") in the form of housing, construction and maintenance of "writers'" holiday villages, medical and sanatorium-resort services, vouchers to writers' houses of creativity, supply of scarce goods and food.
At the same time, following socialist realism was a prerequisite for membership in the Writers' Union.
If in 1934 the union had 1,500 members, then in 1989 there were already 9,920 members.

Previously, writers were fighters on the ideological front, wishful thinking. The authors were simply bribed to write what the authorities needed. Without being a member of the Writers' Union, a writer could not proudly call himself a writer.

I remember how in the late 90s they encouraged me to join the Writers’ Union. They promised the publication of a book, good payment, and a vacation in a sanatorium. It was a sinecure for slackers. Joining the union guaranteed that your opus would be published, you would receive a decent fee, and your book would be distributed through a collector to all libraries in the country.

Now all this is gone, and membership in the union has become a formality. Now every self-respecting writer strives to be outside the union in order to emphasize his originality and uniqueness.

In my opinion, the tragedy of Russian writers is that they claimed to be the rulers of thoughts, they wanted to remake the world, to create a new person. They thought of their mission as serving a high idea. It was believed that a person, if he considers himself human, must sacrifice himself for what is more important than his life.

The words of Maxim Gorky, carved on a stone in Yalta, are symbolic: “My joy and pride are the new Russian man, the builder of a new state. Comrade! Know and believe that you are the most necessary person on earth. By doing your little thing, you began to create a truly new world.”

Alexander Tvardovsky, who headed the New World magazine for a long time, found himself disliked by the new government after Khrushchev’s resignation. The KGB sent a note to the CPSU Central Committee “Materials on the mood of the poet A. Tvardovsky.” As a result of persecution organized by the KGB, Alexander Trifonovich was forced to resign as editor. After this, he was soon diagnosed with lung cancer, from which he died a year later.

When in 1968 in the USA and Western Europe The novels “In the First Circle” and “Cancer Ward” were published without the author’s permission, and the Soviet press began a propaganda campaign against Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

In the essays “A Calf Butted an Oak Tree,” A.I. Solzhenitsyn characterizes the Writers’ Union of the USSR as one of the main instruments of total party-state control over literary activity in the USSR.

“It was writers, it was writers, big Moscow bosses who were always the initiators of the persecution of Solzhenitsyn in the 60s, 70s and 90s,” says Lyudmila Saraskina. “In 1976, Sholokhov demanded that the Writers’ Union prohibit Solzhenitsyn from writing, prohibit him from touching the pen.”

In 1970, A.I. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature with the wording “for the moral strength with which he followed the immutable traditions of Russian literature.”
A powerful propaganda campaign against Solzhenitsyn was organized in Soviet newspapers. Soviet authorities They offered Solzhenitsyn to leave the country, but he refused. Under the Soviet regime, Alexander Isaevich was called nothing less than a traitor.

“The writer brothers cannot forgive Solzhenitsyn that at his word their silence became audible,” says the writer’s wife Natalia Dmitrievna Solzhenitsyna. She told me what Alexander Solzhenitsyn's biggest mistake was.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the USSR Writers' Union. Also, for political reasons, A. Sinyavsky, Y. Daniel, N. Korzhavin, L. Chukovskaya, V. Maksimov, V. Nekrasov, A. Galich, E. Etkind, V. Voinovich, Viktor Erofeev, E. were excluded from the Writers' Union. Popov et al.

Nice illustration the decomposition of Soviet writers is given in the film “Theme” by Gleb Panfilov, where main role performed by Mikhail Ulyanov. Having spent the advance he received, the unlucky writer tried in every way to find a worthy topic for writing a book.

After the collapse of the USSR Writers' Union in 1991, the Russian Writers' Union (patriotic) and the Union of Russian writers(democratic). There is also the Moscow Writers' Union, the Moscow City Writers' Organization, the Russian PEN Club, the Russian Book Union, the Foundation for the Support of Russian Literature and many other unions and literary associations.

The reason for the collapse (as elsewhere) is the division of property. When the Russian Book Chamber was liquidated in 2014, the same reason was given. It turns out that the issuance of international standard book numbers (ISBN) was carried out on a fee basis (about 1,200 rubles for one such number). About a million publications are published in Russia every year.

On January 21, 2015, the Literary Chamber of Russia was formed. It includes many different organizations, unions and associations.
Writers' unions are fighting each other for new members. The unsuspecting writer receives a message that “the prose council has proposed your candidacy for consideration by the RSP Organizing Committee.” You must pay an entrance fee of 5,000 rubles. Membership fees are 200 rubles per month. Having paid more than seven thousand rubles, the author has the right to four free pages in the almanac per year. Books are published by authors for their own money.

On one of the sites I read the following announcement: “Attention to young writers - members of the Moscow Writers Union” under 35 years old. “To register for entry, you must provide the documents specified in the list. You don’t just need recommendations and books...”

The award ceremony became notorious literary awards and bonuses for money. In December 2011, a funny story was shown on television. Correspondent of the TV channel "Russia" with the help computer program compiled a brochure of meaningless poems, “The Thing Is Not Itself,” and published it under the name B. Sivko (bullshit); hired an actor from the Mosfilm file and held a presentation in Central House writers. The leadership of the Moscow organization of the Union of Writers of Russia admired the talent of Boris Sivko, they prophesied for him world fame. The poet Boris Sivko was unanimously accepted into the Writers' Union and was awarded the Yesenin Prize.

It’s no longer a secret to anyone how, to whom and why literary prizes are given. Pierre Bourdieu’s work “The Field of Literature” is about this. To receive a literary prize you need to: a\ issue an annual literary product, no matter what size or quality, but always annually, and preferably more than one; b\ you need to have a high mode of intra-group participation (in other words, participate in literary parties and be “in the crowd”); c\ demonstrate loyalty to certain topics and political conditions.

Among writers, as elsewhere, there is terrible competition, sometimes unfair. Everyone strives to get at least some kind of bonus, because literary work not to live. IN Soviet era literary prize was a kind of bribe to the writer from the authorities.

The first Russian prize awarded for literary activity became the Pushkin Prize, established in 1881 Petersburg Academy Sciences “for original works of fine literature in prose and poetry printed in Russian.”
The first literary prize of the USSR was the Stalin Prize for Literature.
The first non-state prize in Russia after the collapse of the USSR was the Russian Booker, established in 1992 on the initiative of the British Council in Russia.
In 1994, the first personalized literary prize in Russia appeared - named after V.P. Astafiev. Then the Andrei Bely literary prize, the Triumph prize, the Alexander Solzhenitsyn literary prize, the Debut literary prize, the " National bestseller", literary prize " Yasnaya Polyana", Bunin Prize, All-Russian Prize "Wanderer". In 2005, the Big Book Prize was established.
There is even an FSB award and an award from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.

In conditions of unemployment, the authorities recruit “engineers of human souls,” creating from them a “legion” of their “masters of thoughts.” Writers appeared who were born in the offices of power (the so-called “writing project”). Such “peers” are awarded prizes, numerous books are published, they are invited to appear on television, and their websites are promoted by bots in order to give public weight and significance.

Mass fame, especially today, is the result of a deal with power - one or another. Power uses writers, writers use power.

Today everyone, or almost everyone, has become a writer. Books are written by football players, stylists, singers, politicians, journalists, deputies, lawyers - in general, everyone who is not too lazy. Only the lazy cannot write and publish a book. A writer is no longer a profession or a vocation, but just a hobby.

Once upon a time, writers were truly “masters of thoughts.” Politicians listened to them, their opinions were taken into account by rulers, writers were the center of public opinion formation. Nowadays, almost no one listens to writers - their quantity has affected their quality. Writers' unions, instead of problems of inspiration, sort things out in court, dealing with the division of property.

When writers were still invited to the head of state, almost all of their requests related to the division of the property of the writers' union; It’s as if the writers don’t have any other problems. Now writers are no longer invited to the president.

Today, few people view writing as self-sacrifice; For most, it's just a sinecure. Many writers are still convinced: the main thing is to become a member of the union and take a leadership position, which will allow them to win laurels and receive grants.

Dmitry Bykov, in the article “Literature as a scam,” admitted: “Of all types of scams... literature turned out to be the most reliable, that is, this way of conning suckers for which they themselves pay with the greatest pleasure...”

Boris Okudzhava once told Mikhail Zadornov. “If you don’t quit this business now, you’ll never get out of the stage! All your life you will write only for money and you will become a slave to this business.”

For Zakhar Prilepin, “writing is just work. I will never write a single line, forgive me my commercialism, if I don’t know what I will use it for.”

Personally, I don’t consider myself a writer, although I have written two novels. I would rather be called a researcher.
I don't understand how you can be just a writer. It's like being a music lover. A writer is not a profession, but a calling and ministry. Perhaps even debt.
In my understanding, a writer is a contactee, a mediator between Heaven and people.
The task of writers is to awaken the conscience of people who read.
A real writer is a Prophet, because God judges what is happening with his conscience.

The tragedy of Russian writers is that no one needs them: neither those in power, nor society, nor even their neighbors.

They expressed the writer's tragedy very well modern world Strugatsky brothers in the film "Stalker":
“If you invest your soul, you invest your heart, they will devour both your soul and your heart!” If you take the abomination out of your soul, they eat the abomination! They are all literate. They all have sensory starvation. And they all swirl around: journalists, editors, critics, some kind of continuous women... And everyone demands: “come on, come on.” What the hell kind of writer am I if I hate writing; if for me it is a torment, a painful, shameful task, something like squeezing out hemorrhoids. After all, I used to think that my books made someone better. Nobody needs me! I’ll die, and in two days they’ll forget me and start eating someone else. After all, I thought of remaking them, but they remade me, in their own image and likeness...”

“Writing is not entertainment, it is a search for truth, self-forgetfulness and a thirst for compassion! Creativity is a means to comprehend your soul, to make it better. If you don't have to write, don't write! And if you write, then with your heart!
A real writer is not a writer; it only reflects life, because it is impossible to compose the truth, you can only reflect it.
It is not enough to write the truth, you also need to discern the Truth in the truth, understand its meaning.
My task is not to teach the reader, but to encourage him to solve the Mystery together. And for me, happiness is if the reader discovers more meanings in the text than I discovered.
I want to help a person think, I create space for reflection without imposing my opinion, since everyone must understand themselves and the mystery of the universe. You need to learn not only to look, but also to see, not only to hear, but also to distinguish.
The main result of a life lived is not the number of books written, but the state of the soul on the verge of death. It doesn’t matter how you ate and drank, what matters is what you accumulated in your soul. And for this you need to love, love no matter what! There is nothing more beautiful than love. And even creativity is just a replenishment of love. LOVE CREATES NEED!”
(from my true-life novel “The Wanderer” (mystery) on the New Russian Literature website

In your opinion, what is the TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN WRITERS?

© Nikolay Kofirin – New Russian Literature –

LiveJournal Media continues to translate interesting and informative notes from American newspapers of the past and the century before last, which are dedicated to events in Russia and the life of Russians. Today the editors are studying publications dated September 5, 1902.

The Hawaiian star and The Jennings daily record: about the persecution of writers Tolstoy and Gorky

From London: Some Hungarian publications, as reported by a correspondent for the London Times, claim that Count Tolstoy intends to move to Bucharest, because after being excommunicated by the Holy Synod, he can no longer count on a Christian burial in Russia.

Starting today, Russian publications are prohibited from publishing interviews with Count Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky.

Historical information:

One of the most difficult, controversial and discussed moments in the biography of the great Russian writer Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy is his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church. Many believe that the Church anathematized the writer, but in fact there was no anathema. The most common point of view these days is that Tolstoy himself disconnected from the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Church could only state this fact.

V.I. Lenin wrote: “ Holy Synod excommunicated Tolstoy from the church. So much the better. This feat will be credited to him in the hour of popular reprisal against officials in robes, gendarmes in Christ, with dark inquisitors who supported Jewish pogroms and other exploits of the Black Hundred royal gang».

The British journalist’s statement about Tolstoy’s intention to be buried according to Christian rites looks doubtful, because the count himself stated in his will:

Among the various forms of repression that were applied to M. Gorky by the tsarist government, a large place is occupied by the persecution of his works, organized by the censorship, which vigilantly guarded all the foundations of autocracy. Censorship persecution, in the form of prohibition and seizure individual works, as well as bringing to justice those “guilty” of their publication, were usually accompanied by statements and characteristics that were supposed to justify and legitimize the measures carried out by censorship. These statements clearly reflect the attitude of agents of the tsarist government towards M. Gorky and are a convincing illustration of the importance that M. Gorky had as a fighter for the liberation of the working people.

In addition to the works of M. Gorky himself, all foreign publications that contained reviews of him as a major Russian writer enjoying enormous popularity and authority, as well as news about him, the dissemination of which was unprofitable or inconvenient for the Russian government, were subject to the same ban. The second part of the documents we publish belongs to this group of foreign works.

The Florida star: New Archaeological Museum

The Russian government decided to open an archaeological museum in the city of Sevastopol. The building will be erected in the style of a Christian basilica and will house three rooms: one dedicated to Greece, one to Rome and the third to the Byzantine period of history. The implementation of the project was entrusted to the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich.

Historical information:

We are talking about the construction of new buildings for the historical and archaeological museum-reserve “Tavrichesky Chersonesos”. Prior to this, the site housed the K.K., built in 1892. Kostsyushko-Valyuzhinich on the territory of Chersonesos museum called “Warehouse of local antiquities of the Imperial Archaeological Commission.” It was a small building on the shore of Quarantine Bay.

From the history of the Chersonesos Museum:

The emergence of the “Warehouse of Local Antiquities” dates back to 1892, when, during the redevelopment of the monastery territory, a small barn near the Vladimir Cathedral, where Kosciuszko stored finds, was demolished. Having hastily erected several simple buildings on the shore of Quarantine Bay, he arranged an exhibition in them, which was divided into ancient (classical) and medieval (Byzantine). The buildings of the “Warehouse” formed a spacious courtyard where large finds were exhibited, and from various architectural details, the head of the excavations, Kosciuszko, created a Christian basilica in the courtyard, in the form in which they are exhibited today, having been found in situ. Nearby there were sheds, under which were placed huge clay barrels, millstones, ceramic water pipes, etc.

During the decision on the fate of the Chersonesos excavations, the Archaeological Commission discussed the possibility of establishing a museum, but it was rejected. I.I. Tolstoy noted that finds cannot be hidden from the eyes of the educated public in a “backwoods repository.” Apparently, considering Kostsyushko’s brainchild as such, Baron V.G. Tiesenhausen wrote to him in 1895: “ Keep in mind that the current collection in your warehouse is temporary." The Baron imagined that the museum was visited only by pilgrims who knew nothing about archeology. Kosciuszko’s note in the margin is interesting: “ The view of an armchair scientist who has never visited Chersonesos... I am sure that the question of a local museum is only a matter of time».

The majority of the Commission members, including its chairman, Count A.A. Bobrinsky, treated Karl Kazimirovich with great respect and warmth, and therefore did not prevent him from equipping the “Warehouse” at his own discretion. Very soon the museum became cramped in unsightly buildings. Kosciuszko dreamed of building a new building. He wanted to build a museum in the form of an ancient basilica and even commissioned a local architect to design it.

His dreams were not at all groundless. Very close to Sevastopol, on the southern coast of Crimea, they lived in their summer palaces Russian tsars and their retinue. Sometimes they made long excursions to Chersonesus, where they visited the St. Vladimir Monastery and toured the excavations and museum. In 1902, during one of his visits to Chersonesus, Nicholas II promised Kostsyushko to think about a new building, saying that “ valuable finds have no place in a barn like the current one" He immediately ordered the museum project to be transferred to the Minister of the Court. The project was stuck in the ministry, and the Russian-Japanese War that began soon did not allow this idea to be implemented.

Thanks to outside interest in the matter royal family, The Archaeological Commission paid close attention to the condition of the antiquities in the “Warehouse”. The results of the survey were disappointing - the system for storing finds almost completely deprived them of scientific value. Kosciuszko did not connect the found objects with the place of discovery!

Archeology occupied an important place in the life of Prince Alexander Mikhailovich, and he became especially interested in it in Crimea. He conducted excavations at the site of the ancient Roman fortress of Charax on Cape Ai-Todor. He found interesting things and donated a significant part of the valuables to the Chersonesos Museum of Antiquities. Regular field work on Ai-Todor began only in 1896 with the participation and leadership of Alexander Mikhailovich. The archaeological collection of antiquities that belonged to the prince amounted to 500 items.