I have the honor

Today Boris Lvovich Vasiliev, a writer and a nobleman, a career officer, is buried, who, even from the front, having fallen into three percent of the miraculously surviving boys born in 1924, considered himself liable for military service to defend what the country so lacked: honor and humanity. He lived impeccably and left impeccably, constantly mentally reporting to his parents: mother Elena Nikolaevna Alekseeva, who came from an old noble family, and father Lev Alexandrovich Vasilyev, a permanent officer of all Russian armies, from Russian to Soviet.

The front determined a lot in the life of the future writer, he left to fight as a volunteer, after the 9th grade, he was surrounded, left, fought again, even returned from the minefield alive, although heavily shell-shocked. When in 1943 he was rejected as an infantryman and paratrooper, he entered the Military Academy of Armored and Mechanized Forces. Citizenship started for

him in 1954: Vasiliev felt that he had something to say.

For some reason, Glavlit clung to him very much: after two screenings, the Main Political Directorate of the Army banned the play "Tankers", although it was already 1955. And even the text for the Theater magazine was scattered at the typing stage. The harmless "Ivanov Kater" lay in the "New World" after the death of Tvardovsky for three years and was released in 1970.

Boris Vasiliev, an aristocrat of blood and spirit, shied away from “campaigns”, did not climb into the presidiums, did not sign nasty letters against arrested or persecuted colleagues, did not praise or blame Khrushchev, did not promote the Soviet Union and did not say a word about the wonderful life of Soviets and Soviet intellectuals . He was lucky: he did not thunder in the camps under Stalin, and even then he did not humiliate himself, but worked part-time at KVN. His back remained straight, his head proudly raised, his spirit high and unbroken. After the camps, this would be impossible, all the “seeds” know. The sycophants read his silence and loneliness correctly: rejection.

But after the story "The dawns here are quiet ..." he became inaccessible to envious people and enemies. Since 1969, he has become a regular contributor to Youth. The magnificent version of "Dawn" by the Taganka Theater and the bitter symbolism of Dmitry Krymov's version in the play "Gorki-9" will remain in history. So that's what the embrasures were closed with: girls. Mom of little Igor Rita; desperate "glamorous" Zhenya; the forest girl from the gatehouse Liza, who did not shoot at all, but simply drowned in the swamp; an excellent student Sonya and an orphanage Galka, who also died without having time to kill a single German. No bureaucracy, no pathos. Outrageous humanity.

Then comes the equally quiet story about the Brest Fortress "He was not on the lists." Pregnant lame Mirra, an old storekeeper, a young lieutenant who had not been shot at. The last defenders. But the enemies gave this garrison military honors.

The Magnificent Six (1980) is about war horses that starved to death. "Whose are you, old man?" (1982) - about useless, half-starved, living out old people, who were finally warmed by a kind soul. It was difficult for front-line soldiers, and even more so for front-line soldiers, to survive in peacetime. They did not take root in peaceful soil. A tribute to pity and memory of such a front-line soldier, Lieutenant Tonechka, who died a terrible death not at the front, but in peacetime, is the story "The Burning Bush" (1986).

And in general, the righteous in Rus' have a hard life and a painful end. They don't get into saints for free. And here is the story of the “poor-bearer” Yegor, an honest man, a forester, who died from a poacher’s hand for killed and boiled swans (“Do not shoot at white swans”, 1973). Here is a prosaic old policeman not from our reality, very kind, saving sinful violators. Of course, they kill him to take away the gun ("The Very Last Day", 1970).

In 1984, Boris Vasilyev dragged through the motifs of the year 1937, when no one printed it anymore and no one dared to wear it in the editorial office (“Tomorrow there was a war”).

For three years, the writer paid tribute to the Russian nobles, participants in the Russian-Turkish war (“There were and weren’t”, 1977 - 1980).

And if you ask why Boris Vasiliev did not write something secretly and did not publish it in Tamizdat, then he was a career officer. The oath is not taken back. Officers do not run to complain to the newspapers and do not go to rallies. They silently shoot themselves, like Oleksin, Vasily's favorite hero.