Translated material
The fate of the drummer
Valeria Novodvorskaya - about the writer of Arcadia Gaidar
Illustration for the fairy tale of Arkady Gaidar "On the Boys-Kibalchisha" drawing by V. Sharkova
He is still standing on our shelf, Arkady Petrovich Gaidar, who plunged with his head into the red evil, which is not stuck to him; Kabalchish boy who owned the great secret creation of alternative reality; Writing parallel Soviet history, in which there was neither Stalin, nor the Gulag, nor Lubyanka.
1939 photo RIA Novosti
The oldest of the Gaidars was born on January 22 <1904>, and for his short life, who was breaking away in 1941, as he wanted - in battle, he tried to teach three generations not to hide in the bushes, but to meet danger face to face. The boy’s parents were revolutionaries. But the harsh romanticism of Gaidar flows from another exalted source: he was a distant relative of Lermontov.
The rebellious young man always searched for the storm and easily found her: he was sucked by a tornado of the civil war. His father, Peter Golikov, becomes the commissar of the headquarters of the division, and the boy runs to him to the front to fight for the "bright kingdom of socialism." He believed in him no less than the lad by Bartholomew - in the kingdom of heaven. A kind, good home boy, a scribe and idealist, finds himself in a flaming firebox of a fratricidal war. First, command courses, then the service of Tukhachevsky, that is, the suppression of the uprising of desperate Tambov men. I had to serve in Chon, terrible parts of special purposes, Red Sonderkomandy.
Young Arkady could not stand cruelty, blood and torture: he almost lost his mind, washed down, lost his health for his life. He was expelled from the party for six months, in 1924 he was fired from the army, dumping all adult sins on him. The young man was thrust into a meat grinder, gave weapons and allowed to kill. This crippled him for a lifetime.
In the works of Gaidar, kindness and purity fight with ideological blindness. But his books have not yet moved anyone to evil. In 1923, Gaidar began to build his reality, where there are no executions and concentration camps, fear and hatred. But there is an honor and duty. His heroes, pale and proud, like a boobalchish boy, "go to a thunderstorm." Dima and Zhigan save, risking their lives themselves, the good commissar, the intercessor of orphans, in the mysterious "R.V.S." (1926). In the Military Secret (1935), even five-year-old baby Alka, the son of Maritsa Margulis, executed in Romania, is dies.
The world in which Arkady Gaidar did not let in Stalin, where there is no big terror, where Dzerzhinsky for the Polish communist of Vlada (“Military Secret”) is a “cute knight”, where there is only faith, and honor, and oath, and courage, never existed. But the author even today does not seem to us a liar. His talent outweigh the nightmarish reality and outlined a magical circle for the childhood world.
The rebellious young man always searched for storms and easily found her: he was sucked by a tornado of the civil war
Only the shadow of fascism hangs over this bright world, and in the “Blue Cup” (1936), the boy Sanka, who called the girl Berth “Jews” who fled from Germany, his little comrades pour contempt with contempt. Fascism even dreams of a hek of Chuk and Huckle (1939): “Around the Fire! In the snow traces! Soldiers' ranks are coming. And the fascist flag and the cross are dragged from distant places. ”
Arkady Gaidar lived according to the laws of his children's kingdom. He even defended his ex -wife, who had deprived him of his son and housing, when she ended up in a camp with a new husband. Gaidar went to the front by a correspondent, although he was not subject to the call, and, according to eyewitnesses, was looking for death.
And his last, posthumous hero, is his grandson Egor Gaidar, pale and proud under the volleys of slander of contemporaries, who gave his life for the "bright kingdom of capitalism."
Arkady Gaidar today teaches us eternal civil anxiety and civilian oath: “Straighten, drummer! Straighten until it's too late! It's time! "
First published in NT No. 1 of January 20, 2014