This poster hero remained in the memory of millions of people.
Poster for the film "Chapaev", 1934

January 28 - 125 years since the birth of Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. However, until now we know little of the true prose of life about the heroic deeds and death of this legendary man. Today we will try to fill the gap in the historiography of the beloved Chapai and lift the veil of secrecy that has surrounded the biography of Vasily Ivanovich himself and his family for many decades.

IN A SABER TRIP

Initially, the most legendary military hero in the history of Russia, Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev, honestly deserved his guaranteed place in history with a saber in his hands back in the First world war. In the autumn of 1908 he was called up for military service, but was soon transferred to the reserve. In 1914 he was again mobilized. Participated in battles, was wounded three times. For military distinction he was awarded four St. George's crosses and a medal, promoted to ensign. There were fewer such heroes in Russia at that time than twice Heroes Soviet Union.

Vasily Ivanovich was treated in a hospital in Saratov, then moved to Nikolaevsk (now Pugachev, Saratov region). In December 1917 he was elected commander of the 138th Reserve Infantry Regiment. In January 1918 he was appointed Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Nikolaevsky district. He formed a Red Guard detachment here, which, under his command, suppressed the kulak-SR rebellions in the district. From May 1918 he commanded a brigade that took part in the battles against the Ural White Cossacks and White Czechs. In the autumn of 1918 he was sent to study at the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. But already in January of the following year, he asked for it to go to the front. In the spring of 1919, he was appointed head of the 25th Infantry Division, where he showed simply remarkable military leadership abilities, multiplied by amazing courage and people's intelligence. Chapaev made this division the best in the entire Red Army, and the division made him the first hero of the Civil.

Vasily Ivanovich treated any letter, except military tactical, with fierce hatred, believing that a conscious fighter needed it, like a hare galoshes. He mocked the teachers of the academy. He called them "bastard intelligentsia", sometimes even cursed them. And the most amazing thing is that he successfully proved to others the correctness of his own delusion. For example, in less than a year he rose (by today's standards) from foreman to lieutenant general! The only case in the entire Civil War.

NOT ONLY A LEGENDARY CARGO

A fantastically daring intelligence officer in the First World War (once he alone led a whole regiment out of an enemy encirclement), with a hunchback and then taking an officer rank, Chapaev, at the age of 30, is faster than Frunze and even the refined military intellectual Tukhachevsky realized that not a horse would win in battles, but equipment . Turning inside out, he equipped the troops of his division with the most modern equipment and weapons for those times. It will be hard for someone to believe in this, but, for example, in the 17th armored detachment of his rifle division, Chapaev had a 10-ton land battleship Gasford, powerful cars from the English company Austin, as well as several armored cars assembled especially for him in St. Petersburg . The artillery of the legendary commander was served by over 2 thousand people - much more people than in a modern artillery regiment of a full staff. In all parts, the telegraph, telephone and courier-motorcycle communications functioned perfectly. We didn’t even have the last one in the Great Patriotic War! Chapaev also had five airplanes. Moreover, he used aviation far from so much and not only for reconnaissance purposes. Regularly dropped bombs on enemy positions.

How this man, who almost did not know how to write, who read in syllables, was visited by such a commander's insight - it is incomprehensible to the mind!

From the questionnaire for those entering the accelerated course of the Academy of the General Staff, filled in personally by Chapaev: “Are you an active party member? What was your activity? “I belong. Formed 7 regiments of the Red Army. "What awards do you have?" - “Georgievsky cavalier of four degrees. The watch was also handed over. "Which general education got?" - "Self-taught".

The conclusion of the attestation commission: “Enroll as having a revolutionary military experience. Almost illiterate."

In those dashing times, only such reckless, daring, bold and daring leaders-nuggets were followed by a crazy people reared up by the revolution. People have always liked leaders from their own environment, such as Pugachev, Bolotnikov, Razin, Chapaev. Fate itself decreed that he passed away young, and therefore, by and large, did not tarnish his beautiful legend.

Chapaev was lucky not only with life. If not for his commissioner Dmitry Furmanov, we would probably know no more about the Ural falcon than about the same Parkhomenko and Shchors. Furmanov succeeded in creating the legend of Chapaev. By this I do not at all want to say that the writer composed a complete lie. He has interesting and reliable observations. Well, at least this: “In the early March morning, at five or six o'clock, they knocked on my door. I go out: “I am Chapaev, hello!” In front of me stood an ordinary man, lean, of medium height, apparently of little strength, with thin, almost female hands. Thin dark blond hair stuck to his forehead; a short, nervous, thin nose, thin eyebrows in a chain, thin lips, shiny clean teeth, a shaved chin, a magnificent sergeant-major mustache. Eyes... Light blue, almost green. The face is matte-clean, fresh.

Agree, next to this almost Freudian description of the appearance of Chapaev, all the photographs of Vasily Ivanovich known to us fade.

But on the whole, Furmanov wrote in his “Chapaev” (by the way, several years after the events themselves) not what really happened to the hero, but what should have been according to his own commissar ideas. He painted in poster form a bright symbol of the Civil War - in such colors and colors that the party and Soviet bureaucracy, which was then growing stronger, demanded. Of course, Furmanov did not succeed in a deep, contradictory, even tragic personality, which was the real Chapaev. Yes, it couldn't work. The writer was faced with a very specific ideological task, and he solved it in a communist way on time, at the lowest cost, not disdaining even outright lies.

Never, in any of his many battles, did Chapaev ride "ahead on a dashing horse", primarily because he had a rifle division. He could not famously wave his saber, since his right hand was shot back in the First World War. The head of the division liked to travel by car. (And he flew to Moscow on a personal plane.) At first he rode on a confiscated bright red American Stever. Then he recaptured the powerful Pickard from Kolchak. Vasily Ivanovich had several more little-known brands of cars (still had a whole auto detachment, almost fifty cars), but finally he chose the Ford-T, which was hardy and fast at that time. (a Chapaev fighter N.I. Ivanov was summoned to Moscow to carry A.I. Elizarova, Lenin's sister, in just such a car).

STORM URAL

Meanwhile, the biography of our hero gave every reason to compose a detailed one. Maybe even pulled on the "Stormy Ural" - something by analogy with " Quiet Don". In his youth, Vasily Ivanovich, with his father and brothers, worked as a carpenter in the Trans-Volga cities and villages. Married not for love. He spent three years in the trenches of the First World War. As already mentioned, he was the best scout of the regiment. In the Carpathian mountains, Comrade Peter Kamishertsev died in his arms. Chapaev, returning from the front, divorced and married the wife of a friend. Two more girls were added to their own three children. But there was no happiness in the new family either. And because Vasily Ivanovich did not care about his relatives at all, but even more, probably because he was a great womanizer. Didn't miss a single skirt. The division chief eventually coveted Furmanov's wife, Anna. Because of this adultery, the commissioner quarreled with the commander and hastily sent his wife to Moscow. His elder brother Andrei was hanged during Russo-Japanese War either for desertion, or for buffoonery and incitement. The younger, Grigory, also managed to show revolutionary prowess and proletarian determination, being a military commissar. He was shot and stabbed with bayonets. Vasily Ivanovich himself, it turns out, did not drown at all, but how exactly he died - no one knows for sure ...

Georgy and Sergey Vasiliev went even further than Furmanov. The namesakes did not just transfer the book to the screen, they created their own original work "based on Furman's material", thanks to which they moved even further away from the harsh, cruel truth of life, but powerfully and in the highest degree talentedly completed the construction of the main revolutionary legend. Now for the ages!

It is not my task to analyze all the advantages and disadvantages of the film "Chapaev", but, probably, it would be appropriate to say here that the Soviet cinema with this film, where the main character was played by the irresistible Boris Babochkin, reached its apogee, as it were, on the highest artistic level. level, having strengthened and impeccably polished the immortality of the legendary division commander. Pre-war cinema does not know a better picture than "Chapaev". Even the "Battleship Potemkin" will be in second place.

TELL JOKES - THEN THEY LOVE

Jokes about Chapaev (like the third round of immortality) appeared in 1934, immediately after the release of the film of the same name. The tape walked widely and powerfully across the country, and after it, like grasshoppers on summer grass, folk tales jumped in a swarm - a phenomenon that was born exclusively on Soviet soil. That is, it is possible, of course, that literary and film characters somewhere in other countries also became heroes of oral folk art. But on such a scale - world culture does not know this.

Moreover, interestingly, from the 30s to the present, each new demonstration of the film exponentially increased the number of jokes about Vasily Ivanovich. Something similar, however, in much smaller volumes was observed only with Stirlitz. What is the reason for such a phenomenon?

The film "Chapaev" as a real work of art really had a huge reserve of ideological, psychological and somewhere even aesthetic and moral influence. You can't take that away from him. But it is possible to vulgarize. What with a zeal worthy of a better use, Soviet propaganda did from year to year. There was no such ideological hole where she would not put the hero of the Civil War. And gradually she turned him not even into Ivanushka the Fool (he was just on his mind), but into a frank dummy who, like a muslin young lady, sighed and gasped at every step about the greatness of Lenin, the wisdom of the party and the communist future of the whole earth. Propaganda techniques, which filmmakers used quite carefully, became in the hands and mouths of ideologists outright nonsense, sheer insanity.

Could a Siberian grunt, who killed more than one human life in fierce battles (Vasily Ivanovich actually did not disdain to personally deal with his enemies with a saber), could say this: “Raisa, do you have a portrait of Lenin?” I notice that Vasily Ivanovich is unusually excited. I show a photo. Vasily Ivanovich stared intently at Lenin's face for a long time, then said: "What a simple-looking man, but how correctly he understands everything in life!"

But this is not the wildest vulgarity, which, with or without reason, was inserted into the mouth of Chapaev by all and sundry. Including, unfortunately, his own children. There are no number of their sugary, stupefyingly loyal, enthusiastic memories. The son and daughter even wrote a “documentary” book about their father, but it would be better if they didn’t do this┘

Composing jokes about Vasily Ivanovich, Petka and Anka, people thereby, as it were, shared with the characters dear to their hearts all the hardships and hardships of the unsuccessful socialist life. Note that in the huge thesaurus of oral folk art about Chapaev (no one knows the exact number of jokes about the division commander, but, for example, there are several tens of thousands of them in the collection of the author of these lines) there is not a single frankly boorish, mockingly derogatory tale. Even in the most exaggerated versions, Vasily Ivanovich looks quite nice and attractive. Because the people loved him, loves him and will continue to love him, even despite the fact that at present this love is no longer stimulated by anyone.

MYSTERY OF DOOM

In the entire restless biography of Vasily Ivanovich, the darkest spot is his death. There are several versions of it. According to one of them, allegedly the second wife of Chapaev was carried away by the head of the artillery warehouse. Vasily Ivanovich roughly beat the traitor. Then in the absurd head of Pelageya a plan of revenge ripened. She sought out the headquarters of the whites and informed her husband's enemies where he was, and even that most of his fighters had training rifles. Such a "household" turn is not excluded.

However, another version is more plausible. In the high command of the Soviet Republic, the obstinate commander Chapaev has long been not only annoyed, but also feared. Vasily Ivanovich was distinguished by independence of judgment, often entered into polemics with his superiors. Therefore, he acquired a reputation as an "uncontrollable partisan." The then powerful chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, Lev Trotsky, declared a merciless fight against partisanism. And it is not surprising that he immediately disliked Chapaev. In addition, Vasily Ivanovich "was noticed" in a friendly disposition towards communist anarchists.

The Left Socialist-Revolutionary rebellion of July 6-7, 1918 was supported by anarchists, and after its suppression, Lenin ordered that the Red troops be cleared of Socialist-Revolutionaries and anarchists. Some historians agree that Chapaev, therefore, "was to be eliminated." Leon Trotsky, who was especially zealous in carrying out this Leninist directive, dealt with the divisional commander in a very sophisticated way. First, he handed over a gold watch with an engraving "For Bravery", and the next day he transferred to another division. However, there was no connection at the new location!

Vasily Ivanovich had to form it first. Obviously, the calculation was on the explosive nature of Chapaev, on the fact that he would be indignant at the perfidy of his superiors and spit on everything. But Vasily Ivanovich did not justify such hopes, if they were, and formed a division in the shortest possible time. It seems that the sending of Chapaev to study in Moscow pursued the goal of removing him from command of the 25th division. But Vasily Ivanovich, as already mentioned, made sure that he was again sent to the front. As soon as the headquarters felt that Chapai was a force that could lead an entire army, they decided to get rid of him.

An unspoken hunt was announced for the divisional commander, betrayal was on his heels. Chapaev's division was regularly cut off from the main forces, and so cunningly that it was "accidentally" discovered by the enemy. For the time being, Vasily Ivanovich managed to resist the enemy. But it couldn't go on like this for long...

The defeat of Chapaev's headquarters was entrusted by the White Guard command to the Cossack General Nikolai Borodin. The two thousandth special detachment made its way to the village of Lbischenskaya for two nights, hiding in the reeds during the daytime. And here the most intractable question arises: how did the Whites find out about the separation of Chapaev's headquarters from their division? Is it really only from the absurd woman Pelageya II? It is also difficult to explain why the numerous Cossack corps managed to pass unnoticed across the open steppe to the village of Lbischenskaya. And this despite the fact that Vasily Ivanovich always organized intelligence himself and in the most thorough manner. Further, on the night of the Cossack attack on the Chapaev headquarters, additional guard posts were removed by someone's order. Historians suggest that the Whites received information about the location of Chapaev's headquarters from the command of the Red Army.

After all, according to archival data, aviation reconnaissance of the Reds, making overflights of the steppe, discovered the Cossack corps in the reeds. A message about this immediately arrived at the army headquarters, but never went beyond its walls. It is possible that traitors acted in the headquarters, possibly from among the military experts of the tsarist army, attracted by Lenin and Trotsky to cooperate. On the night of September 5, 1919, people from Chapaev's inner circle could remove additional posts around the village of Lbischenskaya. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the tsarist military experts who worked at Chapaev's headquarters were not among the thousands of Red Army soldiers killed in the night battle. The following fact also makes one think: when the finally defeated White Guard troops retreated to the Caspian Sea, in Guryev, many participants in this retreat were captured by the Reds, and among the prisoners were military experts from the Chapaev headquarters, already dressed in White Guard uniforms.

The Cossacks approached the village from three sides. From the fourth, the Ural River closed the retreat. Assault groups gradually moved towards the center of the village, but could not surround the house where Chapaev was. The Cossacks showed unheard of cruelty - they did not take prisoners. The next morning, when the battle was over, they counted a thousand hacked Red Army soldiers. Chapaev was not among those killed. The commander managed to escape from the village. He was killed, according to one information, on the way to the Ural River. According to others, he was only seriously wounded in the stomach. Two Hungarians allegedly ferried Chapaev on a raft from the gate to the other side. And already there he died from a large loss of blood. The mystique of the death of this hero is also far from accidental...

If today you have not heard funny stories about Chapaev, then it is quite possible that you will hear tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in a year, in a few years. For when other characters, like the very popular Stirlitz, are nevertheless heroes of a certain “situation”, then Vasily Ivanovich, a truly folk hero, without any exaggeration, an epic hero, can handle any, the most complex and even insoluble human problems. In anecdotes, Chapaev, following the unpredictable folk thought of writing, moves freely in time and space, intricately connecting one with the other. He is generally a great traveler. I do not know the country, wherever he has been. Vasily Ivanovich spoke at the UN, in all known world parliaments. He is on friendly terms with all the outstanding personalities of the 20th century, from the Queen of England to the domestic freeloader from the dashing Yeltsin years, Lenya Golubkov. Chapaev has been in space many times. I have an anecdote in which Vasily Ivanovich communicates on an equal footing with Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Nothing can be done here: both are immortal!

Chapaev comes to God. “Comrade God, let me swim across the Urals,” “Are you afraid of drowning, Vasily Ivanovich?” - “I'm not afraid! Only there, in Russia, there is such a mess that there is no strength to endure!

MAIN CHARACTERS

Gunner Anka. In fact, there were only two famous women in the division: Anna Nikitichna Steshenko, Furmanov's wife, and Maria Andreevna Popova, a nurse and ammunition carrier. And - not a single machine gunner under that name. It was entirely invented by the directors Vasiliev, following Stalin's instructions. According to the leader, there should have been four main acting characters in the film. 1. Red commander, a native of the people (Chapaev); 2. Commissioner (Furmanov); 3. Ordinary fighter (Petka); 4. Female representative (Anka). So from two women's destinies one legend turned out - Anka the machine gunner.

It remains to be added that after the end of the Civil War, Maria Popova, according to some information, completed special courses and was sent together with A. M. Kollontai to Sweden. Then she worked for a long time in pre-war Germany. They say she even personally knew Hitler, Bormann, Himmler. In Germany, she gave birth to a daughter, Zinaida, who later also became a scout. Popova never admitted who the father of her daughter was, which gave reason to idle tongues to guess: from whom did “Anka suffered” - from Bormann or Goering? If this information is at least partly true, all the jokes about Chapaev and Stirlitz are miserable mosquito squeaks...

Orderly Petka. Petr Semenovich Isaev was born in the village of Korneevka, Saratov Region. On the actual military service promoted to senior non-commissioned officer of the musician team. In the spring of 1918 he joined the Chapaev detachment and already in the summer he commanded a squadron. In the autumn - the head of communications of the 1st brigade of the division. Then, together with Chapaev, he moved to the 2nd Nikolaev division, where he was the commander of a communications battalion, assistant chief of communications. In February 1919, Chapaev, who returned from Moscow, took Isaev with him. Any combat assignments of the divisional commander Peter Semenovich performed brilliantly. He had a beautiful wife, two children: a boy and a girl. After the release of the film "Chapaev", a terrible and mystical tragedy struck the Isaev family. The wife, seeing how her husband in the film is having an affair with a machine gunner, could not bear the shame and hanged herself. Persuasion did not work either about the “artistry” of the picture, or about the fiction of the directors. After some time, Isaev's daughter suddenly died. His son devoutly hated everything that was connected with the name of Chapaev. There are three versions about the death of Pyotr Semenovich himself. 1st: dies with Vasily Ivanovich on September 5, 1919. 2nd: Isaev personally strangled the traitor pilots Sladkovsky and Sadovsky, then shot himself. 3rd: a year has passed since the death of Vasily Ivanovich. On September 5, 1920, the entire division celebrated a commemoration for him on the banks of the Urals. Peter got very drunk and said: “There is no Vasily Ivanovich, my beloved commander, and I have nothing to live for!” And he shot himself with a revolver right at the table ...

RELATIVES

The first wife of Pelageya, nee Metelina, died shortly after the death of Vasily. Upon learning that he was no more, she decided to take the children to her. She went across the Volga, fell into the wormwood, caught a cold, gave birth prematurely and died. With her daughter Valentina, who was born from another cohabitant, Claudia Vasilievna Chapaeva maintained a relationship all her life.

The second wife of Pelageya Kamishertseva had long hoped to become Chapaev's legal wife. Did not work out. And then she cheated on him. The new suitor, Zhivolozhinov, for some reason did not like Chapaev's offspring. In the end, he left his elderly cohabitant. Kamishertseva lost her mind. She lived until 1961, periodically getting into psychiatric hospitals.

Native children: Alexander, Claudia, Arkady. The eldest son graduated from the agricultural technical school and the military academy. Fought. After the Great Patriotic War, he rose to the rank of deputy artillery commander of the Moscow Military District. He retired with the rank of Major General. He died in the spring of 1985. The author of these lines twice met with Alexander Vasilyevich. The eldest son of Chapaev was a completely adequate person, not without even some self-irony. True, he said with annoyance that it was not without reason that certain forces made Ivanushka the Fool out of his father. And that was in 1984.

The middle daughter, Claudia, was an orphan for some time. In 1925, her stepmother sought her out in order to go to Furmanov and draw up a widow's pension. At the age of 17, the girl got married, gave birth to a son and entered the construction institute. After meeting with the people's commissar of the food industry Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, she transferred to the Moscow Food Institute. During the Great Patriotic War, she worked as the head of the department of the Saratov regional party committee, then became a people's assessor. According to her granddaughter Evgenia Arturovna, her grandmother, having retired, worked for about 20 years in the Soviet archives, researching her father's military path. Allegedly, she simply copied open documents, and “read deliberately slowly” closed documents - she memorized them. Then she went to the toilet and on her knees wrote what she remembered with photographic accuracy. In this way, the grandmother collected many thousands of documents. This precious archive is kept in my family,” says Evgenia Chapaeva.

The youngest son of Vasily Ivanovich, Arkady, was very handsome and talented. At 18, he was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In Borisoglebsk he graduated from flight school. Served with Chkalov. However, in his personal life, like his father, he did not have happiness. At the age of 27, a year before the war, Arkady died in a plane crash.

Adopted daughters of Chapaev. Sisters Olimpiada and Vera Kamishertsev lived in Leningrad. Both graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute. They called themselves "leagues". In life, they behaved far from being modest and restrained, compromising the name of the adoptive father. They died a month apart in the early 60s.

All Chapaev's brothers and sisters, with the exception of Mikhail, died tragically. Having married a merchant's daughter, Mikhail was cursed by his father, and then "dispossessed" by his brother Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. In Soviet times, he lived in Saratov. He refused the offer of local authorities to get a good apartment. In return, he asked the management to give him four kilograms of nails for free for building a house. And built. Small, unprepossessing, but his own.

Some descendants of the legendary division commander settled in the Armizonsky district of the Tyumen region. After the Civil War, two cousins ​​of Chapaev arrived there. Nikolai Alekseevich Chapaev became a gardener. In 1957 he went to an exhibition of achievements in Moscow. Died in 1968. Alexander Alekseevich on the Siberian land was strengthened by the peasantry, raised children. One of them is the full namesake of the famous division commander, he is his great-nephew. Now Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev lives in the village of Yuzhno-Dubrovnoye, works in the Zarya private cooperative.

And the last. The real name of the legendary hero of the Civil War is Chepaev. Furmanov made him Chapaev.

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The hunt is over. “Misha Zakhar”, a well-known drug dealer in the criminal world, was arrested the day before in Angarsk. Almost 10 million rubles worth of heroin was confiscated from his accomplices.

Gosnarkokontrol. Open the door, please. Right now.

Came with a search. In this Irkutsk apartment, the drug police were met by the so-called "foreman". These women, indignant at the number of guests, were engaged in the sale of heroin and the collection of funds from the drug centers of the city.

Information about the active activity of the criminal community that traded heroin in the region was received in 2013. Detaining members of the group began last summer. Operations were carried out in cities, holiday villages and on the Angarsk-Irkutsk highway.

What do you do?
- Nothing. Unemployed. I live in Angarsk.

The drug police note that the leading positions in the criminal community were occupied by gypsies. This man, according to investigators, is the leader of the group. He was detained in Angarsk a few days ago.

It was established that an active member of an organized criminal community called "Brotherly" took part in this criminal community. Which included Zakharchuk Mikhail Vasilyevich.

Zakharchuk Mikhail Vasilievich is more accustomed to the nickname "Misha Zakhar". So he is widely known in the criminal environment. Angarchanin is 27 years old. He oversaw drug trafficking in large cities of the Baikal region. Heroin and more than 9 million rubles were confiscated from members of the group.

It has now been proven that the heroin and all the money comes from drug trafficking. More than 20 criminal cases have been initiated on this criminal community. 15 people were brought to justice, 8 of whom were arrested, - says Alexander Salnik, deputy head of the Federal Drug Control Service for the Irkutsk region.

The drug police hope that this time "Misha Zakhar" will receive a serious prison term. He was already involved in the sale of drugs, but then he was only fined 25 thousand rubles.

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Mikhail Alexandrovich Zakharchuk
Alexey Batalov. A life. A game. Tragedy

Cover photo: © Tatyana Balashova / Russian Look.

Photos used in the book:

© Dmitry Donskoy, Sergey Pyatakov, Sergey Yastrzhembsky, P. Manushin / RIA Novosti;

© Zinaida Baitsurova, Boris Kavashkin, Valery Khristoforov / Photo by ITAR-TASS;

© Tatyana Balashova / Russian Look;

© Igor Gnevashev.

© Zakharchuk M., 2018

© Design. Eksmo Publishing LLC, 2018

Instead of a preface

When I was just starting to work on this manuscript, I suddenly thought: surely there is a person somewhere in the country who knows absolutely nothing about Alexei Vladimirovich Batalov. And in that there is nothing so reprehensible, terrible. I have a friend who has worked all his life, as it is now customary to say, in the media, has written several books, and at one time edited a magazine published by Regina Dubovitskaya. And so, when he was already editing another magazine, I brought him an essay about the outstanding, but no - brilliant ballerina Galina Ulanova. And this editor with a blue eye asked me: who is she?

Therefore, as if anticipating any possible awkwardness in this direction, I, as they say, will begin by presenting my hero to the potential reader, in as much detail as possible. Well, then I will already describe his life and his great play in the theater, cinema, television and his tragedy. So, Alexei Batalov was a Soviet and Russian theater and film actor, film director, screenwriter, public figure, teacher, People's Artist of the USSR. He also had the highest title of the former Soviet country - Hero of Socialist Labor. And he was also awarded the title of laureate of the USSR State Prize and two State Prizes of the Russian Federation, Lenin Komsomol Prizes and the President of Russia for his acting work. He was awarded the Batal prize at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1955 and a dozen major domestic prizes in the field of culture, such as Juno, Kinotavr, Nika, Idol, Triumph, and so on, just about one and a half dozen different awards. Congratulating Batalov on his 80th birthday, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia noted: “Your works have significantly enriched the heritage of Russian culture. With your creative self-expression, you pave, in the words of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, “invisible steps to Christianity” and testify that the service to beauty is inseparable from mercy, care and charity. For many years you have been actively involved in the work of the World of Art International Foundation, providing all possible assistance to musically gifted children with health problems and handicapped. This is truly a noble cause, and it is gratifying that it has become one of the most significant in your life.”

If anything can be added to the words of His Holiness, it is only that the actor was also elected Honorary President of the Paris Film Club "Firebird", Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the annual award of Russian business circles for the best acting work of the year, Honorary Member of the Board of the regional charitable organization " Moscow Association for the Assistance and Assistance to the Disabled with Infantile Cerebral Palsy”, member of the Board of Trustees of the Marfo-Mariinsky Charitable Society. By the way, the monastery itself was restored thanks to the efforts of Batalov. Few of the former Soviet actors could be compared in patronage with Alexei Vladimirovich.

As a preliminary summary of what has been said, one can assert without the risk of being misunderstood: in our country there is no other cultural worker of this caliber. The speech, as the reader perfectly understands, is not at all about the enumerated regalia and merits. It is even possible that someone will have more awards and titles than Alexei Vladimirovich. But at the same time, no one will be able to say after him: “When Akhmatova came to Moscow, my room was vacated for her. Therefore, I was sincerely convinced that she was my own grandmother, and so I addressed her until I went to school. In my six-meter apartment, when I went to bed, I reached the opposite wall with my feet, and Anna Andreevna looked like a queen in the cubbyhole. But what warms my soul most of all is that I was the first to take her to the ruined Tsarskoye Selo after the war. It was such an incredible day! She wandered there in silence, and I walked side by side, trying not to interfere. It was an amazing sight! To me, who returned from the army, Akhmatova, although she herself was not rich, gave money to dress me up. And I bought my first car with all the money - Moskvich. Mandelstam, Pasternak, Zoshchenko, Bulgakov, Ilf and Petrov regularly visited our house. Olesha, one might say, nursed me. When I put on "Three Fat Men", he gave me the most valuable advice. It is a pity that Yuri Karlovich did not have time to see the film. And the father of my first wife, the artist Konstantin Rotov, copied Uncle Styopa from me. Very funny and it looks like it. He also joked: “Your shoes are size 45, and Uncle Styopa too!”

Agree, the reader, that this is an amazing, hard to imagine environment rich in great figures of Russian culture, in which Aleksey Vladimirovich grew up, studied, created and worked from the cradle. Figuratively speaking, it grew on such soil, where if you stick a shaft, a tree will grow. But the most amazing thing is how he powerfully managed to absorb the best features of those great people he encountered, melt communication with them in his own wide soul and then create amazing, unique images of his contemporaries, people from the distant past. Let us recall only some of Batalov's roles: "Big Family" - Alexey Zhurbin; "The Case of Rumyantsev" - Sasha Rumyantsev; "Mother" - Pavel Vlasov; "The Cranes Are Flying" - Boris Borozdin; "Lady with a Dog" - Dmitry Gurov; "Nine days of one year" - Dmitry Gusev; "The Light of a Distant Star" - Pyotr Lukashev; "Three fat men" - Tibul; "Seventh Sputnik" - commissioner; "The Living Corpse" - Fedor Protasov; "Running" - Sergey Golubkov; "Purely English Murder" - Dr. Bottwink; "Star of Captivating Happiness" - Prince Sergei Trubetskoy; "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" - Robert Lawson; “Moscow does not believe in tears” - Georgy Ivanovich (Gosha). But only films that have definitely become classics of Russian cinematography are listed.

Among other things, all of Batalov's relatives are extremely well-known people in the national culture. Father - Vladimir Petrovich Batalov - Soviet and Russian actor and film director. In 1925 he graduated from the Second Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. He then worked for almost forty years at the Moscow Art Theater. For some time he worked at the Bolshoi Theater, at the Lenin Komsomol Theater. He taught at Mosfilm and at the institute - the current GITIS. For many years he directed the People's Theater at the ZIL plant. He starred in six films and directed one picture - "Women" himself. By the way, the main role - Varvara Kladova - was played by the outstanding actress Alla Tarasova.

Batalov's mother, Nina Antonovna Olshevskaya, was a Soviet theater and film actress, director, and teacher. Born in the family of the son of the chief forester of the Vladimir province and a Polish aristocrat, Countess Poniatowska. The successor at baptism was Mikhail Frunze, a friend of her mother, a famous revolutionary in the future, public figure and a military leader. At the age of 17, Nina Olshevskaya came to Moscow and entered the studio at the Art Theater. It was led by Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky. A year later, she married the actor of the Art Theater Vladimir Batalov. In 1928, Alexei was born to them. After graduating from the studio, the young actress was accepted into the troupe, which, of course, was considered a great success. However, after working at the Art Theater for several years, Nina moved to the Red Army Theater. Simply because she was given only episodic roles. On one of her tours, she met Viktor Ardov and soon married him. During the Great Patriotic War, she was evacuated with her children and worked in the Bugulma Russian Drama Theater. Then she returned to the Theater of the Red Army. Possessing an undoubted gift for recitation, Olshevskaya almost never spoke in public, but she generously taught this art to others. Nina Antonovna was a member of the inner circle of A. A. Akhmatova. Akhmatova lived in the Ardovs' apartment on Bolshaya Ordynka during her visits to Moscow and considered it her "Moscow home". Anna Andreevna inscribed to Olshevskaya her collection “The Run of Time”: “To my Nina, who knows everything about me, with love to Akhmatova.” Nina Olshevskaya starred in several films. In collaboration with director Leonid Chertok, she staged the famous film "Earring with Malaya Bronna". She died at the age of 90. She was buried at the capital's Preobrazhensky cemetery.

Alexei Batalov's stepfather, Viktor Efimovich Ardov, is a Russian Soviet satirist, playwright, screenwriter, publicist and cartoonist. In 1918 he graduated from the First Men's Gymnasium in Moscow. He worked as an actor and entertainer in the cabaret "Neryaday". In 1925 he graduated from the economic department of the Moscow Institute National economy named after G. V. Plekhanov. Since 1921, he began to publish his own cartoons with accompanying text in the Spectacles magazine and subsequently illustrated his satirical collections himself. He was regularly published in the satirical publications "Crocodile" and "Red Pepper". Together with L. V. Nikulin, he wrote the comedies Squabble and Article 114 of the Criminal Code, Tarakanovshchina. With V. Z. Mass - the comedy "The Birthday Girl". He wrote humorous monologues for variety artists: V. Ya. Khenkin, R. V. Zelenaya, A. I. Raikin, B. Ya. Petker and others. Since 1927, he was in charge of the literary part of the Leningrad Satire Theater. In 1942, he volunteered for the front, with the rank of major he served in the newspaper Forward to Victory!, and was awarded the Order of the Red Star. Victor Ardov is the author of more than 40 collections of humorous prose, screenplays for the films "Bright Path" and "Happy Flight", theoretical works on the technique of colloquial genre on the stage and in the circus. His book of memoirs “Sketches for Portraits” about V. V. Mayakovsky, M. A. Bulgakov, A. A. Akhmatova, M. M. Zoshchenko, I. A. Il’f, E. P. Petrov, M. A. Svetlov, Yu. K. Olesha, M. E. Koltsov, I. V. Ilyinsky, F. G. Ranevskaya and others (republished under the title "Great and funny" in 2005). Viktor Ardov was friendly with a number of writers and figures of Russian culture who lived for a long time in his apartment 13 in house number 17 on Bolshaya Ordynka. Among them are I. A. Brodsky, A. I. Solzhenitsyn, M. M. Zoshchenko, B. L. Pasternak, M. I. Tsvetaeva, A. A. Tarkovsky, F. G. Ranevskaya and others. Especially close to the Ardov family was A. A. Akhmatova, who stayed at their house during her visits to Moscow in 1934–1966. Now a monument to Anna Akhmatova has been erected in the courtyard of the Ardovs' house in Moscow.

The first wife of Alexei Batalov was Irina Konstantinovna, the daughter of the artist Konstantin Pavlovich Rotov and the children's writer Ekaterina Borisovna Borisova, then the adopted daughter of the screenwriter and literary historian N. A. Kovarsky. From this marriage, a daughter, Nadezhda, was born, who did not maintain relations with her father.

The second wife - Gitana Arkadyevna Leontenko - is a circus performer. In this marriage, a daughter, Maria, was born, suffering from cerebral palsy from birth. Nevertheless, Maria graduated from the screenwriting department of VGIK and to this day is engaged in literary work.

The uterine brother of Alexei Batalov - Mikhail Viktorovich Ardov - writer, publicist and memoirist; cleric of the non-canonical Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, archpriest; Rector of the Moscow Church of St. Royal Martyrs and New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Golovinsky Cemetery, Dean of the Moscow Deanery of the ROAC. Until 1993 he was a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, served in the Yaroslavl and Moscow dioceses. In the summer of 1993, he left the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate and moved to the Russian Church Abroad, becoming a clergyman of the Suzdal diocese. Went into schism. He opposed the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, having vowed never to enter this temple. He declared his rejection of the Olympic Games and any sports competitions, as well as the inadmissibility of classes physical education and sports for Christians. On religious grounds, he had a difficult relationship with his brother.

The second uterine brother is Boris Viktorovich Ardov. He studied at the MXAT School-Studio on the course of A. Karev. He worked in the Sovremennik theaters and the Central Theater of the Soviet Army. He studied at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors, taught at VGIK. He starred in several films, including The Living and the Dead and Three Fat Men.

Uncle - Nikolai Petrovich Batalov - Russian and Soviet theater and film actor, Honored Artist of the RSFSR. He studied at the Second Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. He married the famous actress Olga Androvskaya. taught. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

Aunt - Olga Nikolaevna Androvskaya (Schultz) - an outstanding Soviet Russian theater and film actress, teacher. People's Artist of the USSR, laureate of the Stalin Prize of the first degree. She was awarded three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and four medals. In 1914 she graduated with a gold medal from the Moscow women's gymnasium of L. O. Vyazemskaya and entered medical courses. She worked for a year in a clinic, caring for the wounded coming from the front. At the insistence of her father, in 1915 she entered the Faculty of Law at the Higher Women's Courses of V. A. Poltoratskaya. During her studies, she participated in amateur performances. In 1918 she entered the Korsh Theater, where she received her first theater lessons. At the same time she worked at the F. I. Chaliapin Drama Studio. In memory of her younger brother Andrei, who died in 1924 from wounds received in the Civil War, she took the pseudonym Androvskaya. Since 1924 - actress of the Moscow Art Theater. In 1938, she made her debut in cinema - she plays the role of the landowner Popova in the film by I. M. Annensky "The Bear" based on A. P. Chekhov. Together with her partner in the film M. I. Zharov, a year later she also starred in the next film by I. M. Annensky - “The Man in the Case” based on the story of A. P. Chekhov. Until the last days, O. N. Androvskaya kept creative activity. On October 6, 1970, the premiere of the play "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants" based on F. M. Dostoevsky with Androvskaya in the role of General Krakhotkina took place. In September 1972, she underwent a major operation, but almost immediately after leaving the hospital, she independently began to prepare the role of Turusina in A. N. Ostrovsky’s comedy “Enough Stupidity for Every Wise Man,” which she had long dreamed of, but which she never had a chance to play. . Already being terminally ill, she brilliantly played the role of Pani Conti in the famous play "Solo for the Chilling Clock" by O. Zahradnik staged by O. N. Efremov. Other "old men" of the Moscow Art Theater were also involved in the performance - A. N. Gribov, V. Ya. Stanitsyn, M. I. Prudkin, M. M. Yanshin. The premiere took place on December 13, 1973. At the same time, the performance was filmed. This role was her last.

Little is known about the sisters - aunts of the Batalovs. But Zinaida Batalova was married to the Moscow Art Theater actor Mikhail Verevkin. And one of Maria's husbands was Viktor Stanitsyn (real name - Gese). Outstanding theater actor, coryphaeus of the Moscow Art Theater, four times winner of the Stalin Prize. He played many outstanding roles in the theater and several notable roles in the cinema: “Ranks and People”, “Dawns of Paris”, “The Fall of Berlin”, “War and Peace”. In addition, Viktor Yakovlevich taught for many years at the Moscow Art Theater School. Finally, it was he who led the course in which Alexei Batalov studied.

Batalov's niece, Anna Borisovna Ardova, is a Russian theater, film and television actress, best known for her starring role in the sitcom One for All on the Domashny TV channel. Theater actress. Mayakovsky. In 2013, she was the host of the Fort Boyard game on Channel One. Honored Artist of Russia. She starred in fifty films.

Now, at least in a few words, I should probably state the story of my personal acquaintance with the hero of the further narration. Somewhere in the early eighties, the famous artist of the Leningrad BDT theater Kirill Lavrov was awarded the Lenin Prize for playing the role of V.I. Lenin in the play "Rereading Again ...". Kirill Yuryevich and friends from the capital celebrated his highest award in the small hall of the House of Actors, where I was a regular, as a member of the bureau of the All-Russian Theater Society. Having learned about this celebration, with a bottle of champagne at the ready, I entered the room, where the celebration of the laureate of the most prestigious Soviet award had already far exceeded its equator, with a clear parade step, and loudly asked the audience for three and a half (!) minutes of attention. My voice, of course, is not as strong as that of Richard the Lionheart, whose roar made the horses crouch. But I forced Lavrov's well-drunk guests to shut up. And in complete ringing silence, he said a toast in honor of the laureate, who, in my captain's rank, served in aviation in the Far East.

The guests, and the hero of the occasion himself, were frankly shocked by the appearance of the captain, and a bottle of champagne, and especially by my loud assurance of three and a half minutes. But it was precisely during the indicated time that I reported to those present the military biography of the newly-made laureate, which I knew, if not by heart, then quite decently. In those days, I served in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper and considered all cultural figures who had a direct relationship with the army and navy only as my potential heroes. So, even before the war, Lavrov applied to the nautical school, but he was not accepted due to his age. When fascist Germany attacked our country, Lavrov was in his sixteenth year. He again went to the military registration and enlistment office. Again, the military commissar categorically suppressed the young man's desire to fight. And the Nazis were already approaching Leningrad. Together with his peers, Kirill had to be evacuated to Novosibirsk. There he got up to the machine and for a shift he regularly gave out two norms of machined parts for military equipment. But as soon as he grew up to military age, he immediately entered the Astrakhan Military Aviation School. The victory found Lavrov in the distant Kuril Islands as an aviation officer. He served the dive bombers "Pe-2" - the people "Pawn", and in the Finnish war - "Pekka-Emelya" - the most massive Soviet dive bomber. As an aviation specialist, Lavrov had to work up a sweat. "Pawn" was fastidious not only in piloting, but also in maintenance. But all the same, pilots and technicians in the Kuriles lived by the rule: business is time, and fun is an hour. Their artistic performance was at a decent level. It was there, in amateur performances, that Lieutenant Lavrov for the first time played the role of Bob Morphy in K. Simonov's The Russian Question.

After my final words, Alexei Batalov approached Lavrov, kissed him and said with feeling: “Thank you, Kirill, for such an original point in our meeting today. This is really quite unusual, non-standard! Few of those present here knew that you, it turns out, are an aircraft technical officer, and even a whole captain. But what is especially remarkable is that this captain did it, the rogue, in exactly three and a half minutes - I clocked!

The astonished Kirill Yuryevich began to swear and swear ridiculously that he was not in a dream or spirit that he was seeing me for the first time in his life. And that was the absolute truth. But no one believed him. Then he came up to me, thanked me for the original kunshtuk, and somehow almost guiltily offered: “If you want, we can go with us. Let's sit in the Arrow. Do I need to tell you, dear reader, with what joy I agreed! We went to the Leningradsky railway station in three Volga cars. It fell to me to sit in the back seat next to Batalov and Yuri Senkevich, as it later turned out, the closest friends of Kirill Lavrov. We talked about something drunkenly - I don’t remember it. But they exchanged phone numbers. The next day, I, who have been adhering to the iron rule of forging iron all my life, while it is hot, called Alexei Vladimirovich and asked him to give an interview for Krasnaya Zvezda. To my indescribable surprise, the artist refused not only aggressively, but almost irritably. Like that, he said that it was one thing - chatter in a tipsy company, and quite another - an interview for a well-known newspaper. Especially the military, which he personally never even held in his hands. To be frank, I was so taken aback and confused that I didn’t even come up with an answer to the Batal’s “thrashing”. However, then he sat, pondered, leafed through the reference books and, as they say, fully armed again disturbed Alexei Vladimirovich by phone.

As expected, Batalov began to refuse, although not as aggressively as the last time. He told me that he was an extremely distant person from the army. “I honestly confess to you: I served urgently in an extremely sparing regime at the Theater of the Soviet Army, where my mother worked. I even held a machine gun in my hands three or four times at the most. And so we were engaged in protection and economic work. But mostly I played on stage. True, only episodic roles. - “No, dear Alexey Vladimirovich,” I retorted, “you served in a special company at the theater from start to finish, received a military specialty as a general driver there, and even drove the head of the TsTSA major general in the UAZ. In your service record - all the insignia of military distinction. If you think that this is not a reason for speaking in a military newspaper, then I will add that you played a soldier Boris in the film The Cranes Are Flying, a military doctor in the film My Dear Man, and a commissar in the film The Seventh Satellite. In the film "The Star of Captivating Happiness" you are the Guards Colonel Prince Trubetskoy. Did I miss something? - “So the same role. And service in my understanding is something special. So do not be offended by my refusal and understand me correctly. It is not good for me, a civilian to the marrow of my bones, to show off in a military newspaper. Then those people who really served in the army or navy will laugh at me later.

It became clear to me that “about the bath”, like that anecdotal foreman, I agreed: there will be no bath. And in a low voice, I mumbled: “Yes, to be honest, Alexey Vladimirovich, I just wanted to talk to you, listen to you. When else will there be such an opportunity? - “At this time, I invite you to shoot a TV show that is being prepared for my 55th birthday. There I willy-nilly have to tell a lot about myself. There, during the breaks, we will talk, since you are already so stubborn.

…The TV recording lasted something like four hours. Then I decided to approach Batalov and thank him for his frank and honest story about my own work, which I took down in detail. The artist marveled at my ability to cursive. I asked him some other questions, although there was more than enough material for a newspaper publication. I repeat: Batalov was amazingly frank and generous with memories. It felt like he was preparing for the recording very seriously. And even with that short conversation, I became an unwitting witness to the amazing, never before met with me upbringing of an actor. “Marina,” he asked the director, “are the cameras turned off? I want to smoke so much that I no longer have the strength. ” - “Alexey Vladimirovich, I didn’t know. You could smoke in the frame. A lot of people do that." - "Well, what are you, smoking in the frame, if this is not a role, I don't care what to go out now and strip naked on the street."

Early eighties. No one has any idea that smoking is harmful. The greatest praise for any assembly is a statement: the smoke was such that it was possible to hang an ax. Even a woman with a cigarette was as rare as a rural cart on Tverskaya today. And Batalov turned out to be so surprisingly demanding of himself. I was shocked! And since then, my feeling of admiration for the great actor has only grown stronger. I don’t know, I’m not sure that I can convey my own love and admiration for the great, selfless activity of “the chief intellectual of the Soviet Union Alexei Batalov” in this book. But, God knows, I will try my best. And let Him help me...

Attention! This is an introductory section of the book.

If you liked the beginning of the book, then the full version can be purchased from our partner - the distributor of legal content LLC "LitRes".

Mikhail Zakharchuk

Telephone and Stalin

When I studied at the academy, Russian and Soviet literature was taught to us by Professor Vladimir Maksimovich Piskunov, the author of dozens of books and monographs. He told me the following story: “Somewhere in 1942, a professor, relatively speaking, Sidorov, because I forgot his last name, wrote a monograph about Bagration. And when the professor was giving a lecture in a cold institute hall, the rector's secretary ran up to him and blurted out in fright: "Professor, Comrade Stalin is calling you!"

The elderly scientist did not have time to reach the device. The excited rector warned him:
“Today at seven o’clock in the evening, Comrade Stalin himself will call you at your apartment!”

And I must say that the professor lived in a communal apartment. Therefore, when he returned home, he went around all the neighbors and asked them not to take the phone at exactly nineteen o'clock. People, of course, went towards the scientist, although they did not know with whom their neighbor would communicate. At the appointed time, the bell rang. Stalin said something like this:

“You wrote a very wonderful, interesting book. She is also dear to us as the same spoon for dinner or an egg for Christ's day. There is such a huge war going on, so the experience of past years is very valuable to us. But I strongly disagree with some of the messages in your book. There are fourteen such points. First…"

Stalin spoke, as always, muffled and slow. Somewhere at the third or fourth point, the communal tenants became agitated: they, they say, respected the professor, but he is rude. The poor scientist had no choice but to say to the leader with a tremor in his voice:

"Excuse me, Comrade Stalin, but we have a common phone - the apartment is communal, and I can no longer occupy it, people need to call."

After hanging up the phone, the professor went to his room and began to collect the prison suitcase, because he understood what tactlessness he had committed in relation to the dear comrade leader. And he did the right thing (he didn’t allow it, but collected it), because three Chekists rushed to him exactly half an hour after the telephone conversation. They put the scientist in a black funnel, brought him to a house with dark windows, took him up in an elevator to the fourth floor, opened the doors, and the elder said:

“Now this is your apartment. Comrade Stalin will call you in five minutes.”

Exactly five minutes later, the bell rang, and the great leader continued, as if the conversation had not been interrupted at all: “The fifth point on which I disagree with you! ..”

In this bike, for me personally, it’s not at all what comes to mind right away: what a powerful man Stalin was! He took and settled the professor without any delay in a separate apartment - presumably, not in the "khrushchev", they simply did not exist then. Something else is much more important: in the midst of such a terrible war, the leader not only read a specific monograph, which not all historians knew about, but also found time to call the author. But he could simply convey his opinion through his numerous assistants. Finally, he could also call the professor to the Kremlin for a conversation. However, Joseph Vissarionovich preferred the phone ...

As Alexander Sergeevich used to say “our everything”, we are lazy and not curious. We cannot even imagine the fact that during the 1418 days of the war alone, Stalin personally made several tens of thousands of phone calls! Or maybe even more. How much, we will never know for sure. As never before, we will never know what the leader discussed in telephone conversations with the directors of thousands of military enterprises relocated beyond the Urals, with the secretaries of the party committees of these plants, with representatives State Committee defense, with designers, generals, admirals, workers, collective farmers, artists, diplomats, scientists ...

During Khrushchev's back-and-forth fight against the cult of personality, the logs of the leader's long-distance negotiations were destroyed. But it is reliably known that Iosif Vissarionovich could simply call the chairman of some Far Eastern collective farm in the middle of the night and ask him about the views of the harvest in the region. During the Great Patriotic War, the country lived according to the schedule established in the Kremlin: at night, all the leaders were awake until six in the morning. What if Stalin calls? And this is not a beautiful author's curlicue for journalistic "revival". So it was in fact. The leader could really call anywhere, anyone, anytime. Signalers in all parts of the vast Soviet Union knew this. They even developed a technology for connecting the owner of the Kremlin with distant subscribers. Before Stalin was about to speak, telephone operators along the entire chain, no matter how long it might be, had to “ring” all the telephone nodes, wipe the plugs and cells with alcohol so that noises and cods would not distract the “high talking parties”.

... Stalin almost mystically loved the telephone. He was his most devoted and indispensable assistant from the revolutionary turbulent years. Suppose Lenin also never disdained telephone communications. Otherwise, where would his legendary installation about the capture of mail, telegraph, telephone and ... banks come from. But nevertheless, Vladimir Ilyich did not leave us inspiring examples of handling the telephone. With the telegraph - yes, it was the case. There is even a famous painting by Igor Grabar “V.I. Lenin at the direct wire, where the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars issues (valuable and even more valuable) instructions to the Central Administration and the EBCU. It is understandable. During the reign of Lenin, the first state of workers and peasants, the so-called long-distance telephone communication existed only between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The beginning of Stalin's active work in the party and in the country coincided with the rapid development of telephone communications. And the leader appreciated her with all oriental wisdom and foresight. If you like, Joseph Stalin won the long and protracted struggle with Leon Trotsky solely with the help of a telephone set. And do not rush to pull the author for seditious messages. Because before each party congress, before each party conference, and simply before some serious meeting (literally!) Iosif Vissarionovich did not disdain to “call his comrades”, ask for their opinion, correct this opinion, in which case, in the right direction. Yes, and he could just call and ask: “Well, how are you doing there, Comrade Kirov?”

... For some reason, it was in this place that an old anecdote came to mind. Midnight. Stalin calls Mikoyan:

“Anastas Ivanovich, how did it happen that twenty-six Baku commissars were shot, and you alone survived?”

With a frightened tongue, Mikoyan once again tells why he was not shot.

"Well, dear Anastas Ivanovich, good night."

“Comrade Scriabin, here we planted your Polina Zhemchuzhnaya. Don't you think that husband and wife are one Satan? - "Koba, well, I have proved to you many times that I was never interested in her vile deeds." - "Well, good night."

“Beria, doesn’t it seem to you that in recent times did you send too many people to the other world? - "But these are our enemies, Koba!" “Enemies, you say. Okay, good night."

And in such a way the leader calls all his colleagues in the Politburo. Then, with a sense of deeply fulfilled duty, he says to himself:

“Something like this: I calmed my comrades, now you can sleep yourself.”

Have you noticed that in the joke the phone is in second place after the leader? And folk tales, I will tell you, never appear just like that, out of the blue. They always reflect the very essence of our being.

Returning to the aforementioned struggle between Stalin and Trotsky, it should be emphasized that the "great lion of the revolution" never condescended to talk on the phone with fellow party members, "to ventilate their opinion." Comrade Leiba Bronstein preferred to act through a retinue of his many assistants, being always sure that, when the time came, he would rise to the podium, deliver his next fiery, incendiary speech and secure, as usual, the majority before this "brilliant mediocrity" Stalin . At first, it happened all the time. However, Stalin, like no one else, knew how to endure and wait. And by the end of the 1920s, the personnel apparatus, selected and placed on the ground by Stalin (including with the help of a telephone!), threw Trotsky into the dustbin of history, where he, in fact, belongs. Iosif Vissarionovich firmly knew that cadres decide everything. Lev Davydovich did not understand this truth. Stalin outplayed Trotsky precisely as an apparatchik. Time will pass - and he will achieve exactly the same victory over Hitler.

And here I really want to be correctly understood. Of course, our soldier won the last war, because he turned out to have better military skills and more fortitude than the enemy. On the whole, we produced weapons more efficiently than the enemy. And in general, the potential forces of that socialist society, even with all its vices that we now understand, turned out to be objectively more progressive than German society. (That is why Soviet totalitarianism and German totalitarianism can never be equated with each other. Because for all the twists and turns of those difficult times, socialism has never been bestial, misanthropic). But last but not least, the victory went to us thanks to the clear, reliable work of the domestic bureaucratic mechanism, the main unit of which was the GKO. And the dynamo of that unit was Stalin. The most remarkable thing here is that the Soviet bureaucratic machine was opposed by the German one - the most reliable in the world, debugged for centuries, and even fanatically pedantic.

I understand how vulnerable such a comparison is, but I repeat, among other things, Stalin managed to outplay Hitler as an apparatchik, as a bureaucratic leader who comprehended the highest laws of managerial function and skillfully applied them in extreme military conditions. The Fuhrer, by the way, also perfectly mastered all the forms and methods of forcing society to war, nevertheless, he could not even create anything remotely resembling our State Defense Committee. (It is characteristic that the demoniac treated the telephone with the same disdain as Trotsky. On the other hand, he liked to “broadcast for history” in front of the public. Therefore, there was always (I repeat: always) a stenographer in his office. Such a thing would never have occurred to Stalin.)

And now, dear readers, the discovery is amazing and somewhere even incredible! However, it is quite obvious. It turns out that even the infamous and tragically famous repressions of 1938 happened because of the telephone! At the same time, the author also perfectly understands that the main reason for repression lies in the very core essence of any revolution, which always devours those who start it. There are no exceptions here. But as for specific events, namely the famous trials of the "Trotskyist-Zinoviev dogs" and other "enemies of the people", they were largely, if not decisively, provoked directly by the telephone. And here you can not do without a solid retreat.

In the early 1930s, the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army (Razvedupr) managed to find an approach to the imperial adviser V. Wenner, head of the Reichswehr cryptography service, and through him to the head of the German telephone tapping service, imperial adviser Hans Kumpf. It was a phenomenal success for Soviet military intelligence. She had never done this before! This breakthrough happened largely thanks to the efforts of Artur Artuzov. Therefore, Stalin allowed him to report directly, bypassing his immediate superior, Yan Berzin. So Artuzov became the eyes and ears of Stalin in the Intelligence Agency. He regularly carried tapes to the leader with telephone conversations of all the highest bosses of Germany, including Hitler himself! Iosif Vissarionovich had a good knowledge of German, although he never boasted about it. And he kept all the tapes with the conversations of his opponents, periodically listening to them. But just in case, he insured himself with the opinion of experts. They were unanimous: the records are genuine!

In April 1935, Kumpf suddenly committed suicide due to unrequited love for a young dancer. The loss for Artuzov seemed irreplaceable. However, chance helped here. His subordinate went to the deputy Kumpf - Kranke. He was an avid gambler, a tireless walker of women, and therefore he was constantly short of money. And one day Kranke offered: for a small fee, I would supply you with telephone information about the political situation not only in Germany, but also in the USSR. Stalin ordered that no money be spared for such information. And then it began that mom do not grieve. The leader began to receive tapes with records of telephone conversations of his "friends-comrades-in-arms" in centners! Suppose he had previously assumed that many of his closest friends were plotting against him. Although not to the same extent!

Here I deliberately bypass the issue that German intelligence deliberately and maliciously supplied the first person in the USSR with information compromising his associates. This, as they say, is a topic for a separate study. Something else is important. In any case, Stalin received cassettes with recordings of genuine telephone conversations of people who really started evil against him! You can compose, substitute, correct something on one cassette. Especially in Ser. 1930s. But, when there are hundreds, thousands of cassettes, and on each such wild details of the conspiracy that the hair stands on end, no staging can be taken into account here. Iosif Vissarionovich understood: he was betrayed by people he trusted! Somewhere to ser. In 1935, Stalin began to receive literally the ninth wave of convincing evidence of a large-scale conspiracy to kill him and seize power in the country. Tape recordings of the conspirators' stunningly candid conversations confirmed this. They literally got tipsy and lost their vigilance, especially when they went abroad.

Together with Artuzov, the leader carefully studied the conversations of Grigory Zinoviev, Alexei Rykov, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin and many others. Even Sergei Kirov, who had been killed by this time! The pedantic Germans kept records of secret conversations, from which it followed that Kirov and his associates were the first to intend to deal with the "presumptuous Georgian." People's Commissar for Communications Rykov set out in stunning detail how he would cut off communications in the Kremlin, as well as control telephone conversations between the leadership of the party and the government. Most of all, Stalin was struck by the fact that all government communications, it turns out, could be controlled by only 5-7 signalmen!

The People's Commissariat of Communications is in the hands of the conspirators! It is unlikely that the head of state would dream of such a thing even in a nightmare! But that's not all. Iosif Vissarionovich listened to tape recordings of telephone conversations in which the conspirators discussed in detail how best to organize an accident on the city telephone network so as not to arouse suspicion in anyone. He knew the voices of his old friends very well. For so many years of joint revolutionary struggle, I studied their every intonation. And now, following Plutarch, he bitterly stated: traitors betray themselves first of all.

The leader could not help thinking about another important thing. If such a huge number of telephone conversations are recorded on the territory of the USSR, and not only on ordinary communication lines, but even on government ones, then what an extensive spy network must be, working under his nose, what is the scale of betrayal in general! And then Stalin instructed Lazar Kaganovich to conduct a thorough investigation into the activities of the NKVD, especially those departments that were responsible for government communications. It was at this time, at the suggestion of Lazar Moiseevich, that the small figure of Nikolai Yezhov arose on the political horizon of the Soviet Union. It was he who personally established that the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, unauthorizedly listened in on the conversations of all members of the government, including Stalin himself.

Moreover, Enoch Gershevich Yehuda independently determined which intercepted conversations should be reported to Stalin and which should not, which grossly violated the established procedure for preparing reports for Stalin. During the investigation, the colossal scope of Yagoda's illegal activities was revealed. He learned to manipulate the data obtained from telephone conversations so deftly that he could easily influence Stalin's decisions about appointing people to leading positions in the country. Sometimes Yagoda thought (several times he even smugly blurted out!) that it was he who was powerful, Yehuda, and by no means Stalin. Upon learning of this, Joseph Vissarionovich was furious. It seems to the reader that Yagoda was immediately dealt with. Not at all. As a great statesman, Stalin never cut off his shoulder. He appointed Yagoda People's Commissar for Communications of the USSR. True, he ordered the NKVD officers to establish constant monitoring of the new head of the department in order to identify all his contacts with employees of the NKVD, the Red Army, the Central Committee, institutes and enterprises that produced communications equipment.

At the end of 1935, Artur Artuzov received the first information that Mikhail Tukhachevsky had organized a conspiracy against Stalin in order to remove him from the post of head of government. The leader, as always, took this signal incredulously, believing it to be outright disinformation. Although, again, just in case, he ordered to strengthen control over the marshal. In a conversation with Artuzov, he complained:
“I feel like someone is watching me all the time!” - "To confess, Joseph Vissarionovich, I myself am confused." - "Could the Germans start a game with us by sending us misinformation?" “Such a thing cannot be ruled out. But what I guarantee you for sure is that all materials are genuine. Several times I involved famous Soviet musicians in the analysis of tape recordings. Of the fifteen people, no one expressed doubts about the authenticity of the voices on the tapes.

In December 1936, an employee of Artuzov in Germany reported that Kranke had requested a huge amount, as he had very valuable information regarding the leader himself. The reconnaissance department paid the requested amount to Kranke and received ... a conversation between Stalin and his wife Alliluyeva on the eve of her suicide!

... Joseph Vissarionovich had an unbending, truly steel will and inhuman endurance. Once, in exile at a picnic, Yakov Sverdlov began jokingly spreading that Koba could easily be recruited into the secret police, intimidating him or subjecting him to torture, and he allegedly could well have betrayed his comrades. At that time, such rumors were actively exaggerated in the party environment. Then Dzhugashvili silently put his left hand on the burning coals. It smelled like roasted humans. Sverdlov became ill. And Koba calmly remarked:

“Remember, Yakov, and tell others: I can neither be intimidated nor broken.”

And yet, hearing the voice of his dead wife, Stalin turned pale and clutched at his heart. Artuzov called the doctors. Stalin was taken to the hospital with a heart attack. After recovering from his illness, he began to act quickly and decisively. On January 11, 1937, Artuzov was released from work in the Intelligence Agency and transferred to the NKVD to deal with archives. Iosif Vissarionovich personally ordered to break all contacts with Kranke and other German agents at the Hermann Goering Research Institute. In March 1937, Genrikh Yagoda was arrested, who confessed that he had instructed Karl Pauker to listen in on all of Stalin's telephone conversations, including those conducted over high-frequency communications. To this end, he repeatedly sent Pauker to Germany to purchase special equipment for remote listening. She was found in his office and in one safe house of the NKVD, which was used only by Yagoda.

In April 1937, Pauker was arrested, and later Artuzov. During the search, it turned out that the latter hid from Stalin the recordings of Tukhachevsky's telephone conversations with German generals received from the Germans. They were made during his participation in the German maneuvers of 1932, where he negotiated the amount of rewards for passing secret information to the German army. Artuzov also hid from Stalin the records of several conversations between Ieronim Uborevich, Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Ion Yakir in 1935, which contained information that they were developing a plan to seize power in detail. Artuzov was an old friend of Tukhachevsky and, at his own peril and risk, did not report such information to Stalin. This played a decisive role in his death sentence. The concealment of such information was regarded as complicity with German intelligence.

In May, Otto Steinbrueck, Gleb Boky and Stefan Uzdansky were arrested. Thus began a grand purge: they killed everyone who knew at least something about the audition project. They identified those who could help Yagoda, Pauker install listening devices. Yezhov proposed to improve the procedure for finding enemies. They included those who had ever met with the repressed or their relatives or talked with them at least once on the phone, so the number of such “enemies of the people” increased many times over. Arrests covered not only the Intelligence Agency, the NKVD, the Central Committee, the Red Army, but also many people's commissariats that carried out the orders of the Red Army, and primarily the people's commissariat of communications. The materials found during the search of Artuzov served as a pretext for the arrest of M. Tukhachevsky on May 22, 1937 in Kuibyshev. On May 25, the marshal was interrogated, presenting records of more than fifty of his telephone conversations! Mikhail Nikolaevich immediately admitted that he had participated in the conspiracy.

An amazing thing: at all trials, “enemies of the people” very quickly admitted to espionage against the USSR when they were provided with tape recordings of their conversations. After hearing their speech, where they discussed in detail various topics of cooperation with German intelligence, sabotage, sabotage or overthrow of the government, the arrested people experienced such a psychological shock that they signed any evidence that the NKVD investigators presented to them. This can partly justify the fact that many commanders, including M. Tukhachevsky, who went through the war, confessed to all the charges brought literally the next day after the start of the interrogations. This cannot be explained only by the fact that during interrogations torture was used against them. Although, of course, they were also actively used to knock out confessions. Stalin himself stated: “The NKVD used methods of physical influence that were allowed by the Central Committee. It was absolutely right and necessary.” On the other hand, Kaganovich once declared: "Real Bolsheviks will never voluntarily confess their guilt even under torture." And here a psychological paradox arises, which, by the way, has not yet been exhaustively clarified. Why did many of our intelligence officers, partisans, officers and generals who were captured during the Great Patriotic War endure the most severe torture by the Gestapo and did not give any evidence, and many Red Army military commanders confessed during interrogations to the NKVD almost immediately and many slandered themselves?

One explanation might be this. The accused were so shocked when they heard their own voice and the voice of the interlocutor in the recording that they lost the ability to control themselves and confessed to something they had never really done. Let us recall how the telephone recording affected the leader. But he was not squishy, ​​like his opponents. Thus, the investigators received any evidence from the arrested. The main thing, as Stalin demanded, was that the confession of guilt should come from the arrested themselves. Why did Stalin need it so much? Probably also because the tape recordings received from German intelligence had a huge psychological impact on him: he no longer trusted the NKVD investigators either.

Stalin's closest associates - Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, Semyon Budyonny, frightened by such a peculiar form of technical conspiracy, sharply demanded that Stalin investigate the activities of employees of all organizations that dealt with communications, its protection and control. As a result, G. Bokoy's cryptographic department was practically destroyed. 70% of employees were shot. The repressions hit the technical departments of the Intelligence Agency and the Research Institute of Communications of the Intelligence Agency of the Red Army hard, which led to a halt in the development of promising special equipment for interception systems. The production of new types of encryption equipment has stopped. The heads of the 6th, 7th, 10th and secret encryption departments of the Red Army Intelligence Agency Yakov Fayvush, Pavel Kharkevich, Alexei Lozovsky, E. Ozolin and many others were shot. In 1937, cryptography in the NKVD and Intelligence Agency was actually destroyed in the same way as radio intelligence.

On June 2, 1937, Stalin spoke at an enlarged meeting of the Military Council under the People's Commissar of Defense:

“In all areas we defeated the bourgeoisie, only in the field of intelligence we were beaten, like boys, like guys. Here is our main weakness. There is no intelligence, real intelligence. I take this word in the broad sense of the word, in the sense of vigilance, and in the narrow sense of the word also, in the sense of a good organization of intelligence. Our military intelligence is bad, weak, it is littered with spies.

Our PU intelligence was headed by the spy Guy, and inside the Chekist intelligence there was a whole group of masters of this business, who worked for Germany, Japan, Poland, as much as they wanted, but not for us. Intelligence is an area where we have suffered a severe defeat for the first time in 20 years. And the task is to put intelligence on its feet. These are our eyes, these are our ears."

So, because of the “wiretapping empire” built by Yagoda, the whole complex of problems associated with intelligence became the leader’s main problem. The mass betrayal of his comrades-in-arms also did not improve the mood of Joseph Vissarionovich. Worst of all, it turned out that he could no longer calmly talk on his favorite phone, fearing that “unidentified traitors” could listen to him. Therefore, he burned out the “big Soviet ear” created by Yagoda with a red-hot iron. For some time, this struggle against "internal enemies" came to the fore. Stalin was no longer up to defense against an external enemy. He deliberately did not improve the connection between his powerful army, intelligence, government and the Central Committee, if not worse.

As a result, by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in the USSR, communications in such power structures as the Red Army, the NKVD, the Central Committee and other defense departments eked out a simply miserable existence. It’s hard for anyone to believe this, but in the very first days of the war, Joseph Stalin and Georgy Zhukov contacted the fronts through the Central Telegraph on Gorky Street! Underground communication centers did not exist at all. Moreover, with the opening of the high-frequency communication line Moscow - Berlin, which passed through Brest, German intelligence was able to listen to all the conversations of the Soviet government and the People's Commissariat of Defense! In the reserve of the High Command, communication units were absent as a class. The neglect of the connection, rightly called the nerves of war, turned out to be complete, total, all-pervading. Only by 1945 did the situation here change somewhat. Although, in general, we can safely say: if in all the main areas of armed struggle we were significantly ahead of the Germans by the end of the war, then in connection with the enemy we did not overtake. However, this, as the reader understands, is a separate issue.

We will return to the telephone as a means of communication between Stalin and the outside world. And here the recollection of Air Chief Marshal Alexander Golovanov is very eloquent:

“If Stalin called himself, he usually said hello, inquired about business, and if it was necessary for you to personally come to him, he never said:“ I need you, come, ”or something like that. He always asked: “Can you come to me?” - and, having received an affirmative answer, he said: “Please come.” Quite often, he also asked about health and family: “Do you have everything, do you need anything, do you need to help your family in any way?” ... Even when holding very important meetings, Stalin never turned off the phone. So it was at the time when there was a discussion of the more effective use of our divisions. There was a phone call. Stalin, without hurrying, went up to the apparatus and picked up the receiver. When talking, he never pressed the receiver close to his ear, but kept it at a distance, since the sound volume in the device was amplified. A nearby person could easily hear the conversation. Corps Commissar Stepanov, a member of the Military Council of the Air Force, called. He reported to Stalin that he was in Perkhushkovo (here, a little west of Moscow, was the headquarters of the Western Front). “Well, how are you doing there? Stalin asked. - The command raises the question that the headquarters of the front is very close to the front line of defense. It is necessary to withdraw the headquarters of the front to the east beyond Moscow, and organize a command post on the eastern outskirts of Moscow! ”There was a rather long silence. “Comrade Stepanov, ask your comrades - do they have shovels?” Stalin said calmly. “Now…” There was another long pause. - And what kind of shovels, Comrade Stalin? - "Now. - Quite quickly, Stepanov reported: - There are shovels, Comrade Stalin! "-" Tell your comrades, let them take shovels and dig their own graves. The front headquarters will remain in Perkhushkovo, and I will remain in Moscow. Goodbye". Slowly, Stalin hung up. He did not even ask what kind of comrades, who exactly raises these questions. And, as if nothing had happened, he continued the interrupted conversation.

... As already mentioned, Joseph Vissarionovich talked on the phone with a variety of people, from the marshal to the stoker in the Kremlin boiler room. (There was a case when Stalin asked the latter to lower the heating temperature a little.) However, the leader's communication with the creative intelligentsia is, as it were, a special article. According to some accounts, he spoke sporadically or frequently on the phone with writers. Stalin often talked on the phone with the singer Ivan Kozlovsky. Ivan Semyonovich himself told the author of these lines:
“If you want to know, Stalin called me at home several times. I still had a telephone: K, six hundred ... so I forgot ... "-" And what did you and the leader talk about? “They talked about life, about art, they talked about different things. He was the smartest man, although, of course, very insidious ... "-" And when did he usually call you? “Always after midnight. He knew when the artists returned home after work ... "

I have no reason not to believe the great singer, especially my countryman. Except for the statement: "About life, about art." Stalin, for all his greatness and all-round intellectual development, was still a very concrete, pragmatic person. And this is especially clearly visible in perhaps the most historically legendary telephone conversation between the leader and Boris Pasternak, which took place in 1934. The reason for that conversation was the arrest of the poet Osip Mandelstam. The fate of Mandelstam was worried by Nikolai Bukharin, who wrote a letter to Stalin with a note: "Pasternak is also worried." Knowing that Pasternak was at that time in Stalin's favour, Bukharin wanted to emphasize with this postscript that this anxiety was, as it were, of a social nature. After reading Bukharin's note, Stalin called Pasternak.

There are 14 (fourteen!) versions of this communication between the Master of the Kremlin and the Poet. The author is closest to the version of a friend of Osip Mandelstam and Boris Pasternak, the poetess Anna Akhmatova:
“Stalin called Boris and said that an order had been given that everything would be all right with Mandelstam. He asked Pasternak why he didn't bother. “If my friend was in trouble, I would climb the wall to save him.” Pasternak replied that if he had not bothered, Stalin would not have known about this matter. "Why didn't you contact me or writers' organizations?" - "Writers' organizations haven't done this since 1927." - “But is he your friend?” Pasternak hesitated, and Stalin, after a short pause, continued the question: “But he is a master, master?” Pasternak replied: “It does not matter ...”. Pasternak thought that Stalin was checking whether he knew about poetry (“We live, not smelling the country under us, / Our speeches are not heard ten steps away. / Only the Kremlin highlander is heard, - / A murderer and a peasant fighter.” - M.Z. ), and with this he explained his shaky answers. “Why are we talking about Mandelstam and Mandelstam all the time, I wanted to talk to you for so long.” - "About what?" - "About life and death." Stalin hung up the phone.

Because the leader valued his time too much to waste it on idle talk, especially on such abstract topics. The great and profound Pasternak did not understand this. He called back to the secretariat of the leader, but he was not connected again. "Can I talk about this conversation?" - "And this is your own business," - answered the secretary. The next day, all of Moscow knew about Stalin's call. Which, by the way, has not changed one iota in his attitude towards the poet.

No less famous telephone conversation took place between Joseph Stalin and Mikhail Bulgakov.
“Bulgakov ran, excited, to our apartment (with Shilovsky) on Bol. Rzhevsky and told the following. He went to bed after dinner, as always, but then the phone rang, and Lyuba (L.E. Belozerskaya, the wife of the writer. - M.Z.) called him, saying that they were asking from the Central Committee. M.A. he didn’t believe it, deciding that it was a hoax (it was done then), and disheveled, annoyed, he picked up the phone: “Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov?” - “Yes, yes.” “Now Comrade Stalin will talk to you.” - "What? Stalin? Stalin?” And then he heard a voice with a Georgian accent: “Yes, Stalin is talking to you. Hello Comrade Bulgakov. - "Hello, Joseph Vissarionovich." “We have received your letter. Reading with friends. You will have a favorable response to it. Or maybe it's true - you ask to go abroad? What, are you very tired of us?“ - “I have been thinking a lot lately - can a Russian writer live outside his homeland. And I don't think it can." - "You're right. I think so too. Where do you want to work? At the Art Theatre?“ - „Yes, I would like to. But I talked about it, and they refused me. - “And you apply there. I think they will agree. We need to meet and talk to you." - "Yes Yes! Iosif Vissarionovich, I really need to talk to you. - “Yes, you need to find time and meet, definitely. And now I wish you all the best.”

... I will finish these somewhat chaotic notes with what I started with. During his long leading life (almost four decades), Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin used the telephone a myriad of times. Exactly how much, we will never know. Through this apparatus, simple in today's terms, first patented in 1876 by Alexander Bell, the leader practically not only led the great country, but often directly communicated with the huge, incredible multitude of its people. Therefore, when I see the image of the leader with the indispensable pipe, it seems to me that it is not entirely accurate. Stalin often smoked cigarettes. But the phone never changed.

Once, speaking at a meeting of officers-students of the editorial department of the military-political academy with the writer Konstantin Simonov, my classmate Senior Lieutenant Mikhail Zakharchuk said: "We will never rise to Simonov." It's true: none of us is destined to rise to the level of the luminary of military journalism Konstantin Simonov ... He was a true master of the word, at the same time a deeply decent officer-journalist, writer and poet.

A beautiful phrase, uttered by Misha Zakharchuk about forty years ago, is now remembered in connection with the obviously unseemly behavior, dishonesty of himself. I will give examples.

During the years of study at the academy, Mikhail Zakharchuk in a team of classmates was distinguished by a special journalistic agility. He often visited theaters, met with famous artists, sometimes talked about them in newspapers. However...

On one of the school days, frankly speaking, we were all saddened by the news: Zakharchuk got into an unpleasant story. The famous actress of the Maly Theater Elena Nikolaevna Gogoleva was indignant at the untruthfulness of the interview prepared by Zakharchuk. It got to the point that Misha was called to the "carpet" to the head of the academy. I remember how Misha was very upset by what happened. I don't think there was smoke without fire. Apparently, even then he tried to arbitrarily interpret and think out certain facts in newspaper publications.

Many years passed before today I became convinced of how much journalist Mikhail Zakharchuk sometimes allows himself.

In personal correspondence, in the comments on Zakharchuk's articles, I expressed praise for him. At the same time he gave advice and criticism. Take, for example, my response to his publication "Soviet Mozart": "It is written in an interesting way, but it is very stretched out, overly detailed, sometimes you get tired of reading the same thing ... In essence, this is a compilation, a huge canvas woven from separate patches of factual material taken from various sources. We must pay tribute to the author - for many years he succeeded in this matter, got his hands on it, got the hang of finding, connecting, generalizing, analyzing facts. As they say, the writer pees, the readers read. Yes, even excitedly praise. What else is needed? Such huge articles, along with very successful essays on outstanding people, M. Zakharchuk accumulates and then introduces them into his books. What to say? Well done! After all, he took a landmark not for the publication of one-day newspaper materials, but, as he once put it, "ON THE SHELF", that is, for the publication of collections. He is doing well and has certainly made a name for himself. Only now, annoyingly, MISHA GOT SICK WITH STAR DISEASE. Completely unwilling to recognize, albeit modest so far, the creative successes of fellow journalists.

Once I sent Zakharchuk my miniature “Kobzon's Trick” and received an assessment: “I have nothing to do but please you. With your spontaneity, it seems to you that your knshtyuk (? ? ?) represents something ... Now, if you wrote a large canvas about Kobzon, then it would come in handy.

I replied: “Misha, after your tactless attacks on me, I want to declare: my miniatures, short stories and short stories have every right to exist. Based on them, you can even put on small plays, shoot short films. But your journalistic "canvases" are unlikely to fit for this. So think about it: what is more precious and worthy in creativity? On the bookshelves there is clearly not enough of your works of small format (small genres). They have a certain flavor."

My commentary on M. Zakharchuk's article "BARELESS SOUL" (About Vladimir Vysotsky):

“In an effort to tell readers some unknown facts about Vladimir Vysotsky, the author of the article, M. Zakharchuk, went to extremes. He introduced us to his father, retired colonel of the Air Defense Forces Semyon Vladimirovich Vysotsky, as a sophisticated swearer. What is so good about it? I personally know that Mikhail Zakharchuk is not averse to sometimes using a strong word himself. I guess that much of what the father of Vladimir Vysotsky allegedly told him is the fruit of an indefatigable fantasy. Here he obviously went too far, typing tedious paragraphs of verbal garbage (every line is a mate). Admit it, Mikhail Alexandrovich, did you want to be original, to surprise readers with this? WRONG! Curses do not work either on your authority, or, moreover, on the authority of Vladimir Vysotsky. Therefore, please edit and remove profanity from the article. Do not allow vulgarity in the collection of your works. Better shorter, less, but better.

Do you think he took the advice? Where exactly. . .

My next letter to Zakharchuk:

“MISHA, you continue to behave tactlessly and arrogantly. The mere fact that you remove the person who called you from the conversation without letting him finish... How can you? Now about the inclusion of brains. I consider this slang phrase of yours offensive and I never use it myself. When you publish materials, you too "turn on your brains" and check grammar and punctuation. Stylistics too. More than once I found errors in you, albeit not numerous. You can't remember all such cases.

For example, in the article "To spite all deaths" (on the 70th anniversary of "Wait for me" by K. Simonov) you wrote: "... I apologize to my dear readers for such a sharp turn in the aforementioned topic, but if they have patience, they will understand So in the fall of 1979, the Izvestia newspaper published on its pages an article with a photograph “Konstantin Simonov:“ The war was huge, nationwide.

WHY ARE YOU, MISHA, LIE? Tailoring your material to be exclusive? This publication by General F. Stepanov appeared in Izvestia on May 8, 1986. I have a clipping from this post. *** And how to understand your next blunder: "... General Comrade Stepanov personally did not keep any records - we did this together with classmate Viktor Andrusov." You know, Misha, it's like the words of a fly sitting on a horse with a plow attached to it: "We plowed ...". But in the original version of the article you sent me in Riga, you still had the conscience to write: “... comrade. Stepanov personally did not make any tape recordings - my friend V. Andrusov did this.

“Aren't you ashamed, my classmate, MIKHAIL ZAKHARCHUK?!

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of K. Simonov (November 28, 2015), officer-journalist Mikhail Zakharchuk published an article “The Chief Military Writer of the USSR” in the online newspapers “Russian Heroic Calendar”, “Centuries” (under the new heading “The Truth of Konstantin Simonov "- read on

Perhaps the article will appear in other publications, for sure, in the book of the author. The first part of the article is a compilation of other people's research and information. The second part of the article is structured in the form of a fictitious interview by him, called "From that conversation with Konstantin Simonov", in which he, as it were, deliberately omits questions due to lack of space. And essentially publishes a transcript of the recording of the writer's speech I made. Here is a rogue!

In the article, Zakharchuk cunningly avoided the fact that the speech of the writer K. Simonov was based on pre-prepared, collective questions of the students of the editorial department of the academy, that this speech was recorded only by me on tape. Zakharchuk falsely claims that he allegedly hired three female stenographers on purpose to help record the writer's speech and print the material. In fact, he used the sound recording of Simonov's speech, which I gave him in September 1989 in Riga, where he deliberately came to me and swore that he would never violate my copyright. HOWEVER BREAKED! HOW IT DOESN'T COLOR MIKHAIL ZAKHARCHUK, A JOURNALIST APPLYING FOR THE WRITER'S TITLE!

Now about what opinion about Zakharchuk colleagues-newspapermen have.

On November 14, 2015, naval journalist Sergei Turchenko, editor-in-chief of the Russian Heroic Calendar, published a review of Mikhail Zakharchuk's book Through the Great Millennium, or 20 years at the turn of the millennium. Eyewitness Diary. Pay attention: what a long and abstruse title! From him, you will agree, blows megalomania of the author. Well, what can you do if he wanted to show his coolness? But let's delve into the content of this "extraordinary event in the literary life of modern Russia" (as stated in the first lines of the review). It turns out that apart from the author's loud statement, his vague reasoning in the preamble about life at the turn of the millennium, there is nothing original in the book. She clearly does not deserve to be considered unique. After all, it consists mainly of previously published compiled articles about famous people (artists, writers, musicians, artists).

Retired Captain 1st Rank Sergei Turchenko not only praised Zakharchuk, but also pointed out the flaws in his work. I quote:

“The reader will also find in the book curious pearls of “everyday philosophy”, for example:
“Our wives are given to us for our past transgressions. So God balances everything in the world, including family life. Plus, every husband deserves the wife with whom he lives. Otherwise, I would have looked for another, like our mutual friend Yura Belichenko. Already changed three spouses. Not realizing that all women are the same. Only their names are different ... In any case, I will not allow my daughters to remain fatherless just because their mother does not take the trouble to appreciate what a wonderful husband she got.

The book is densely interspersed with political and other anecdotes of the times described. But ... and black humor, often bordering on blasphemy. In my opinion, the overly frank details of relationships with women, while indicating their real names, do not color the book. And there is absolutely no point in the swear words scattered throughout the text that the characters use. There is an opinion that this gives the work a flavor of documentary, so, they say, it happens in life. I think that this is just linguistic hooliganism, bordering on obscenity. There are toilets in life, so what is the use of describing their contents in paints?

“Dear Victor! I read your article - everything is bubbling and seething inside me! First of all, thank you very much for civil position, for the indifferent attitude to the ugly behavior and no less ugly creativity of this frame! ... Are you, an officer, a journalist, afraid to tell the truth to a hypocrite, an opportunist who has turned into a boor?! You cannot know that I was a little ahead of you by expressing my attitude towards the work of Zakharchuk (and I have the right to judge, since I am an editor with extensive experience). As a result, she made an enemy for herself, and was sent by him ... (I won’t specify where).

The case with the actress of the Maly Theater Elena Gogoleva almost cost this "fruit" of her career. I remember well how much noise the Zakharchuk interview you mentioned made. At that distant time, we lived in a dormitory for students of the academy on Pirogovskaya Street, in a "stable" built for commissars at Gorky's expense. Living together in tiny rooms located on both sides of a long and gloomy corridor taught me a lot. Here I met Mikhail Zakharchuk, my husband's classmate in journalism at the Lviv VPU. From our room of 9 square meters, he did not get out and behaved tactlessly.

However, decades later, when we met on the Internet, I was delighted with him. He boasted that his book "Oncoming lane" was published. He sold it by mail. I asked him to allocate a copy of the old friendship. No, I did not select, but began to selectively send individual pages by e-mail. I read, and there was a feeling that I was plunging into some kind of surrealism. So many lies. Of course, for the most part, the people he allegedly met in his life are real, but often already dead ... After all, they will not be able to refute his tales, fiery journalism, designed for simpletons. With whom he just did not drink brotherhood! I remember expressing my opinion to him about the many grammatical and stylistic errors, Ukrainianisms, swear words and the too often used "I". He then restrained himself, did not send me to my mother ... Because he was a guest in My Blog, admired my poems ...

Purely out of professional curiosity, I often read his opuses in the Internet publication "Century", leaving objective comments with comments there. But someone's Internet hand wiped them off... And the scandal that separated us began with the suicide of one of the actors... In my blog, I expressed bitterness about his act and remembered how he once helped me and my little son get from from the airport to the sea station in Murmansk, when no one met me, and there were a lot of things. Mikhail Alexandrovich allowed himself (and he allows himself everything) to insult the memory of the artist in My Blog, to call him a Jew ...

I did not respond to this attack, but interrupted the correspondence with him. He “bombed” me with letters for a long time, appealed to conscience, criticized my ex-husband Volodya Verkhovod (with whom, by the way, we maintained the best relations). And then, I don’t remember exactly why, but I think Happy Press Day, I read his opus about journalists. He wrote about his beloved, as a luminary, a former familiar with marshals, and with actresses, and with artists, and with composers, and with singers. . . I advised him that it would be nice to remember the military journalists who made up the color of the profession. She cited the example of Valera Glezdenev, a journalist who died in Afghanistan in a wrecked helicopter. After that, she was sent by Zakharchuk to. . . It should be noted that it is easy for such a shot to be whipped in the face with a crap whip, no matter what. An officer who spent many years within the Garden Ring hardly knows what it is to serve in remote lands...

... Years have passed, the country that has learned such Zakharchuks has gone into oblivion, and has given them a well-fed life. A lot of things have changed for the worse in journalism. The time has come for braggarts and upstarts, compilers and frank storytellers ...

GRATEFUL TO VICTOR ANDRUSOV FOR HIS HONEST POSITION.

Victor! You see how much your message hooked me?! It is not personal resentment that boils in me, but resentment for those of our guys who died from bandit bullets in Afghanistan, and those who returned alive suffered in obscurity because of the indifference of officials - because they did not have blat, furry paws. They did not manage to get to the ramp to lick the hand of the prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, as Zakharchuk did ...

Victor, I am grateful to you for taking on such a responsibility - to wash this buffoon. Self-satisfied, he completely lost his sense of proportion. For more than a year he bombarded me with links to his "works" in "Century". I didn't read everything, but what I read made me sick. Remains in the soul and resentment that Zakharchuk defiles the memory of truly deserved and even great people.

Among the colleagues who responded to this publication is Vladimir Kaushansky, my classmate at the Faculty of Journalism of the LVVPU, a former special correspondent for the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, a retired colonel. He sent a short letter:

"Vitya, hello! I carefully read your article and sadly recalled the episodes of my joint work with Zakharchuk in different years. After all, after school, he came to my department of Komsomol life of the district newspaper "On Guard" of the Baku Air Defense District. In fact, I was his first boss department, except for his brief stay in the aviation department, where Mikhail quarreled to death and quarreled with the boss. Of course, I have something resonant to add to your arguments. But, you know, I don’t want to. In his attempts to play the role of a successful journalist, Zakharchuk is simply ridiculous "Familiar with his book opuses, which turned out to be unnecessary trash for everyone except himself. What he is doing now, I don't know and I don't want to know. God be his judge!"

This letter was followed by a response from retired colonel Boris Anushkevich, former editor of the SPORTS MILITARY REVIEW magazine, the press organ of the armies of the Warsaw Pact countries. My classmate writes the following:

"Hi, Vikandr! I remember those times when you posted links on websites to Misha Zakharchuk's opuses, literally forcing you to read them. I responded to some of your calls regarding Misha's memories of meetings with famous cultural figures. He really flickered in in theater and cinema circles, rubbed himself in the environment of the metropolitan bohemia, knew well those of its representatives with whom he met. Of course, Misha is well acquainted with this topic. But it is unpleasant for me to read his articles and essays: they are overloaded with monotonous facts, static, written in a half-dead language. And most of all, the way Misha presents his meetings, conversations, interviews with these people is disgusting: selfishness sticks out in almost every material.

I remembered the opinion of our teacher at the Faculty of Journalism of the LVVPU Androsova about the book by Anatoly Mariengof "A Novel Without Lies", which after that I quickly read. Yesenin's friend Mariengof, with rather frank narcissism, describes his life next to the brilliant poet, creating the impression that many talented poems during the years of their friendship were written thanks to his recommendations and comments. In the descriptions of the poet’s tavern sprees, one can feel the mockery of a friend: this is what this person really is, whose poems you admire ... Misha presents himself a little differently: he boasts that he is respected and loved by many celebrities on a short leg .. Kirill Lavrov invites him to a celebration on the occasion of the Lenin Prize and sits him down next to Alexei Batalov ... Lanovoy is glad to see him in his house, Pakhmutova is scattered in gratitude and compliments to Misha for an article about her work ... If Zakharchuk is on a business trip, then certainly in the obkom hotel ...

Well, using your, Viktor, tape recording of Simonov's speech without a corresponding reference to it is disgusting. Zakharchuk's emphasis on the importance of his own person in almost every material is not to my liking, and therefore I stopped reading his opuses. Why is he, like me, neither hot nor cold - we studied together in Lvov - and nothing more!"

Here is such an impartial conversation between colleagues arose by itself. No one initially set out to debunk the dishonorable methods of Mikhail Zakharchuk's work. It so happened that he himself asked for fair remarks from his writing comrades, with whom he once studied together, collaborated, and tried to be friends. . .

It is impossible to put an end to this. New facts appeared that prompted me to write:

AN OPEN LETTER TO PASKVILIANT ZAKHARCHUK Mikhail Alexandrovich,
which flaunts the signature-abbreviation MAZ

MAZ, that's why you didn't sell or donate (although you did promise) me your book with the loud title "Oncoming lane. Epoch. People. Judgments." Was he afraid of exposing his lies about me and my wife Tanya?!

Murder will out. Your fabrications in the chapter "Moscow... how much in this sound..." finally became known to us after many years. How long did you hide this stone in your bosom, cunning and fawning, calling me "druzhban".

In order to justify the meaning of your “oncoming lane”, along which you supposedly boldly move along, in order to show insects of history along with celebrities, you, a liar, chose my modest, harmless family. My wife and I took the nonsense you wrote with surprise and laughter. Tanya called your vulgar, swear-filled works like this: "This is reading for convicts on a slop bucket." You wrote that you studied with underdeveloped, even mentally ill journalist officers. I would like to ask: then what are you? It’s especially funny from this phrase of yours: “Vitya “entered” the academy, his wife Tatyana is an intelligent, sensible woman. She arrived in Moscow ahead of time and got hired as a secretary at the correspondence department on the condition that his boss would help her husband, a fool, become a student ... And otherwise, she confessed to me, I would never have escaped from the accursed Transbaikalia.

How simple it is: the wife of an officer came from afar to the capital of the country, got a job at the academy, and so on. Not a word of truth! And then I served and lived with my family not in Transbaikalia, but in the Far Eastern Military District. Everything else was also invented by you - a master of slander and slander, an unscrupulous person. Therefore, you described the portraits of teachers, classmates, editorial staff in a disgusting, obscene manner. SURE: FATE WILL SURELY PUNISH YOU! The first retribution has already overtaken: Moscow, which you adored and in which you lived freely, threw you overboard. Now you are a parish clerk in a remote village in the Vladimir province. The Almighty has prepared new punishments and will never forgive you nasty things, many of your sins. . .

SOME FEEDBACK FROM READERS
ON AN OPEN LETTER by Viktor Andrusov
libelist Mikhail Zakharchuk

Irina Korotkova, correspondent (Primorsky Territory):

I read and marveled at how the officer behaved. How they completely forgot all the moral foundations. How a man turned into a market woman who, out of boredom or in order to rise above her neighbors, lies, sticks out herself, attributes achievements to herself. So Zakharchuk turned into such a trader. It's good that you, Victor, told about him, dishonorable. After all, many did not know about his boorish attitude towards his comrades and were friends with him. People needed to be warned. I think that after this, Zakharchuk's circle of contacts will narrow, if not come to naught. Unless they stay next to him unscrupulous. It's disgusting. . .

Tatyana Motorina, experienced editor, poetess (Vladivostok):

Viktor Andrusov was the only one who PUBLICLY spoke about the work of Mikhail Zakharchuk. And everyone needs to speak up. After all, this, if I may say so, "writer" continues to sprinkle his opuses in a variety of publications and has long occupied the expanses of the World Wide Web with his fables, he has already reached Israel ... But we are now talking about the "Oncoming lane ..." Ugly little book, I'll tell you, gentlemen officers. Zakharchuk is not a pioneer of the genre. Many authors wrote about friends, comrades, about military brotherhood, while making all sorts of jokes about various shortcomings, character traits and even physical shortcomings, but they did it kindly , delicately, with good humor.
In the book "Oncoming lane ..." - an impermissible-offensive tone, characteristics of his fellow classmates are caustic and sometimes murderous. It has neither historical nor artistic value, although it would seem that it tells mainly about celebrities. Correctly noted by V. Andrusov: next to these luminaries, the cadets of the LVVPU, the students of the VPA, described by Zakharchuk, seem like insects, useless, worthless people. After all, if Zakharchuk expected to receive a tough rebuff, he did not dare to write such hopeless nonsense about his comrades, classmates.
I am not writing as an outsider. Do not be offended, gentlemen, that I interfere in men's affairs. But there are lines about me in the Zakharchuk epic ... Of course, they are softer, but still, humiliating.
We will not discuss the fact that the book is illiterate: what is the author himself, such is the book ... The publication cost, according to Zakharchuk (he wrote to me about it himself), 17.5 thousand dollars! Who generously sponsored him? Or did he publish his work on the colonel's pension? And one more question torments me: did the late head of the editorial department of the PVA A. Utyliev read this "crap"? I think no. Otherwise, he would not have kept silent, because he was a deeply decent, intelligent person who would never have accepted even the very tone of Zakharchuk's verbiage. Remember: Utyliev saved Mikhail from disgrace after the story with the artist Elena Gogoleva ...
Life has not taught Zakharchuk. His well-known tales about friendship with the great cannot but irritate: there are so many lies, familiarity, and in fact desecration of the memory of the departed ... He does not write about the living. And the dead, too, as Andrusov said, are harmless ... It is noteworthy that many of the heroes of the epic "Oncoming lane ..." do not know that the person who was considered their comrade humiliated them so meanly. Some are still among Zakharchuk's friends. You can, of course, get together with the whole world and sue the scribbler for desecrated honor and dignity. Today they pay good money (judicial practice has developed). You can punch him in the face. And it’s best to write an open letter to the media (and electronic ones in the first place), so that editors with a “brilliant memoirist” in colonel’s uniform who has neither honor nor conscience are more accurate. During my long life and journalistic destiny, I have seen many such zakharchuks and tried to "ground" them when they dug deep ...

Vladimir Borisov, naval journalist (Moscow):

Viktor Alekseevich, could it really be done like that? It doesn’t fit in my head, how could Zakharchuk even take up a pen and write such dirty lines about his classmates, friends, colleagues? You know, if you had a chance to learn something like this from another person, most likely you would not believe in such a monstrous meanness, but you are more to me than an older comrade and fellow writer. Without exaggeration I will say: you are a role model. Having read the anonymous fabrications of Zakharchuk, I am sure that anyone, even an outsider from our craft, will throw his "work of the century" into the trash with disgust and disgust. I am interested in: what kind of reader is this tome intended for and what was the author's goal? His dirt will not stick to us. I firmly shake your hand!

Lyubov Berezovskaya, wife of a journalist (Moscow):

Dear Viktor! I'm horrified, shocked. . . Can a military journalist, a graduate of our native LVVPU, do this? How did he not break his neck before with such “quirks”? And in general, is everything all right with his head? Maybe MAZ (M.A. Zakharchuk) had senile dementia, then his “tricks” can somehow be explained "but forgive me for meanness - never! Victor, do not take all this nonsense to heart... My husband and brother are graduates of LVVPU, and I know firsthand a lot about you as a professional, a master of writing, a worthy officer and how very good man. . .

Omar Khayyam said: “They will smear a person in mud, it hurts, it’s insulting, but the morning will come, the sun will rise, the mud will dry and fall off, the person will become clean.” However, this does not apply to you, since you are pure, and no one will be able to denigrate you. Your former comrade Zakharchuk finally showed what he really is, otherwise you would still continue to treat him with warmth - the way you usually treat many of your friends with love. Do not worry, instead of the vile Zakharchuk, you will have many worthy and decent friends who will not discredit you and will not sell you!