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In the near future, Ellislack publishing house is to publish Natalia Gromova's book "The Knot". This is a study of the literary life of the late 1920s and 1930s, based on the study of archival and other materials. How serious and important this book is...

In the near future, Ellislack publishing house is to publish Natalia Gromova's book "The Knot". This is a study of the literary life of the late 1920s and 1930s, based on the study of archival and other materials. How serious and important this book is, the reader can get a clear idea from the following author's preface to it.

Naum KORZHAVIN

A gloomy memory remained about Soviet literature of the thirties, which is probably why a whole generation of writers fell out of the objective attention of historians. Actually, the contemporaries of those years themselves, having miraculously survived that era, tried to remember it as little as possible.

But the “missing” times are a kind of fatal turning point, they remind of themselves again and again.

The literature of the Silver Age and the twenties is recognized and appreciated. The poets and writers of the next generation continued for some time to think and write in the tradition of the beginning of the century. The past epoch, in all its diversity, also dawned on Soviet writers. Back in the late 1920s, the presence of the former tradition was felt by Bagritsky, Selvinsky, Tikhonov, Lugovsky, Lavrenev, Fadeev, and even by young Komsomol poets, although sometimes they did not suspect it.

But the past was destroyed consistently and purposefully, and even the memory of it became dangerous.

"The Defeat", "The Rupture", "The Iron Stream", "The Foundation Pit", "The Naked Year", "The Noise of Time" are the titles of the famous stories and novels of the twenties and thirties. The main theme of these books is Time, which required a complete renunciation of oneself... First in the name of a great idea, and then in the name of strong power.

The rift went through human souls. What to write? How to stay yourself? Love, have friends? <…>

Many dramas of that generation of writers could not make it into the pages of books. Perhaps only Bulgakov, in his secret novel The Master and Margarita, managed to tell the story of a writer of the 1930s, forced to choose between prison, insanity and suicide. <…>

“The art of the 1920s arose out of friendship,” G. Kozintsev wrote in his diary. It was inseparable from friendship. <…> Companies. Mugs. Associations. (FAX, LEF.) Then the House of Cinema, the artistic council. Big artistic council. From friendship to service...*

From the end of the 1930s, bright personalities, once united by creativity and friendship, began to turn into dull literary officials, bilious inhabitants of Peredelkino dachas, drunken habitues of restaurants, persecuted loners, connected only by random memories.

<...> Why in the twenties the word "friend" sounds as often as in Pushkin's time, and why by the end of the thirties it was supplanted by the faceless relations of comrades in literary meetings?

The heroes of those years changed places many times, turned from persecuted into persecutors and vice versa. So it was with I. Selvinsky, Vs. Ivanov, V. Shklovsky, Yu. Olesha, M. Aliger and many others. M. Bulgakov and V. Mayakovsky, A. Akhmatova and A. Fadeev, B. Pasternak and N. Tikhonov coexisted in a single space; the volume of life was full of the most real, genuine drama. Every day I had to make a choice.

It cannot be discounted that most artists at first did not feel the gap between time and themselves, understanding came gradually, and those who understood what reality was, and those who tried not to notice anything, and those who believed that they had adapted , - sat in the same cage called the Union of Soviet Writers.

Excerpts from diaries and letters, memoirs and stories - this is the rumble of voices, allowing you to hear the polyphony of the time, to feel the intonation of the people of that generation.

The bitter life of both "bad" and "good" writers needs to be described. To see it in the context of time, based on the remaining oral stories, household traditions, is a task that makes sense; you can still find contemporaries of those years. Manuscripts, letters and diaries remained - they contain a trace of destroyed works, broken destinies.

Boris Pasternak, who occupies one of the central places in this book, compassionately called many of the heroes of this era "dumb individuals." Not because they were silent, but because they lost themselves, merged with the mass.

Soviet writers have occupied a lot of “not their own” place for several decades. They took away the air from others, exiled, unprintable, exiled. By republishing their volumes and collected works, they crowded out those who existed in samizdat reprints. For many in print, even good writers, this ultimately became a verdict. Over the past decade, there has been a reaction of substitution, historically just, but leading to another distortion in understanding the scope of literary life.

In the early thirties, Stalin decides to unite the writers under a common roof. And not only organizationally - in the Writers' Union, but also in everyday life.

This is how the critic K. Zelinsky recalls this. At a meeting with Gorky in October 1932, after the defeat of the RAPP, Stalin says: “... a writer's town. A hotel for writers to live in, a dining room, a large library - all institutions. We will provide funds for this." Stalin's main idea at the same time was this: “There are different industries: artillery, cars, cars. You are the manufacturer of the product. A very necessary commodity for us, an interesting commodity - the souls of people. (Zelinsky remarks: “I remember that I was very struck by this word “goods”.)** <...>

At first, writers were settled in rooms in the famous Herzen House (“Griboyedov”) on Tverskoy Boulevard, beginning proletarian writers lived in a hostel at 3 Pokrovka. (!) of the year, the settlement of a huge writers' house in Lavrushinsky Lane will begin. The circle of writers is getting closer and closer - they crowd in the restaurant of the Writers' Club, at the dachas in Peredelkino, collectively travel on creative trips, and more and more kill time at general meetings.

In the late thirties, the writer's hive buzzes almost uniformly, it is already a large and well-controlled community. However, this is only an appearance. Official. Everyday life - with friendship, love, breaks - reveals the true face of that life. <...>

• G. Kozintsev. Black, dashing time. - M., 1994, p. 43.

** K. Zelinsky. Evening at Gorky's (October 26, 1932) // Past. Historical almanac. T. 10. M. - St. Petersburg, 1992, p. 110-111.

Natalia GROMOVA