Odessa, 116

When the satellite scribbled over the world.

When a hydrogen bomb burst at the training ground. (This was the first, timid experience of Andrei Sakharov in destruction. He still has to crush the empire.)

Then there were no schools with number 116 in Odessa.

When the laser awakened in the laboratory of Basov and Prokhorov invisible (hidden from world imperialism?).

When Gagarin went in orbit a couple of months earlier and the American Senate urgently transferred billions of dollars to secondary education reform, so as not to allow the Russians to be the first to be the first.

Then this school was already there, some graduates already had admission and honorary status of disadvantages.

Among the galaxy of the Nobel or classified great worlds, who built the Great Iron Wall of strategic missiles and bombs, which needed reactors, accelerators, training grounds the size of a middle European state, enclave states of closed cities, experimental lakes and almost planets, who seemed to be modestly asking. The work itself needed a paper with a pencil (theoretical mathematics), and from the empire - just a few three -story houses and not at all professorship betting. Special physical and mathematical schools for gifted, exquisite children. Is the surname (pseudonym?) The scientist and the public figure coincided with the name of the birthplace of Lomonosov - the symbol of the Russian breaking genius? Academician A.N. Kolmogorov. Honestly, I know very little about this person.

But his deeds experienced on himself: I studied at the 116th school.

As always in Rus', the metropolitan ideas were transformed along the way to the province beyond recognition. Instead of a boarding school, several dozens of specially fenced (which was at Moscow State University), a school for 500 people (only senior grades) took all eighth -graders from the microdistrict, learned car deles and radio components - like vocational schools - as a lyceum and, meanwhile, had a couple of physical and mathematical, personifying column carriers. Of the Steshtnatiki, at least half of the Odessa KVN teams, including the national teams of the US and Israel, experts, experts and Breingovites, consisted of at least half of the Odessa KVN teams. But this is only an iceberg peak. How many doctors and candidates are scattered on the archipelago of the military -industrial complex and academic science ...

Like other Kolmogorovschina, the 116th school was a refuge, a reserve, an enclave. The scheme, precisely described by the Strugatsky in the "ugly swans": if the gentlemen, the generals want personnel for creating new weapons, then please allow you to have an island of non -frightened freethinkers, because involuntary people will not create anything new.

It began small: here it was possible to criticize teachers. Publicly: in wall newspapers, radio programs, scenes, performances, which was done in large numbers. The classes were in one shift, up to two hours, but in the bustle in the corridors this time was not easy: countless electives, circles, clubs, self -government tips, theaters, editors and ... a buffet that worked, happened until ten in the evening. It was possible to come to school for the whole real life, only to spend the night at home. After brilliant lessons (half of the graduates of physical education, the second half of their life began in the MIF, MEFI, etc.).

Here, Mandelstam, Brodsky, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn and Bulgakov were transmitted from hand to hands with the then scarce books about the technique of sex then. Here Vysotsky, Bitles, Kim, Galich, Rolling Stones and Time Machine, were sung and played. Here they were composed, read, written in wall newspapers and their own poems were sang, from love lyrics to political pamphlets, from epigrams to obscene ditties. Here is a quote from the sung of the end of the 60s. Let me remind you: the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia and the victory of Czech hockey players on the Soviet in the final of the World Cup.

For each of your leg, we have a tank and leg.
For each of your hand in our bomb and hand.
For each of yours, we have a club and a gun.

Chorus (on the motive "Boxes"):

And we also have intercontinental nuclear weapons.

Every Saturday, the school took place with a disco with a disco ... no, not “disco”, but alive school and invited rock and anti-aircraft guns-at a time when rock was still semi-underground art. Physics is indistinguishable from car delesyers in toilets, drank cheap port around the corner, diverged in an embrace with girls and shared a modest intimate experience with each other, of course, drugs were not sold at school (there was totalitarianism), but the Primorsky Boulevard, where it was still easy to find grass, was nearby. Tried - I did not like it. We converged in the opinion that it was better to drink one hundred grams. And even better: the school itself was a powerful drug, only spiritual, and not physiological.

Here they photographed, putting their heads in the mouth of a monumental wall -mounted Red Army man in Budenovka, and at the same time they saturatedly sang about commissars in dusty helmets. The almost prohibited Bulat Okudzhava sang his songs at the ... Komsomol meeting. I remind you, if a young reader suddenly comes across that B.Sh. Okujava is a prominent perestroika figure, and the Komsomol is the Communist Youth Union. When I was at the age of 15, in 1966, in the 116th school, they ordinaryly asked: "Are you believed in communism?" - It was like a blow to the head. The very formulation of such a question was deafeningly seditious, but any answers and disputes were allowed here . By the way, in the literal sense, I have never received on the head in this school. It was somehow not accepted.

All this, in terms of temporary insanity, seeming unthinkable, a mixture of communism, freedom, education, science, culture and subculture, like the whole era, was embodied in Alevtina Ivanovna Kudinova, a school director. The daughter of a repressed with disabilities. Member of the city party committee (then - the main body) in the millionth city. The talented administrator and an outstanding teacher. And it would be necessary to recall pedagogy that it was no less perfect with us than rockets (otherwise where would the rockets come from?). Sukhomlinsky, Ivanov, Mudrik, Solovechik, Gazman, Amonashvili, Tubelsky, Shchetinin, Karakovsky did all this either, but in those days they were almost not published and did not conduct seminars. Did Alevtina Ivanovna recognize some secret paths? Was it intuitively created? ..

The main "weapon", which was produced by the 116th, was a passive defensive - an invisible barrier that defended the school from the outside world. The generation of school graduates is still remembered by the large -scale television series Major Whirlwind - the forerunner of the immortal Stirlitz. Unlike the collective image of Colonel Isaev, the whirlwind had a real prototype - an officer of Soviet foreign intelligence, the Krakow episode of his official activity was reproduced in the film with almost documentary reliability. But there was a post -war biography. Evgeny Stepanovich Bereznyak, having fulfilled more than one building of his homeland, left the organs and, like many retirees, changed his pistol and a radio to a chair with overshielders - became a small official in ... the Ministry of Education of Ukraine. In his talent, of course, he made a career to a deep old age, far beyond the retirement age, worked as the head of the Main Directorate of Schools of the Ministry of Industry of Ukraine. In 2001, the 86-year-old NKVD veteran and Hero of Ukraine came to Odessa for the flight of graduates of the 116th. Only then did the director and the civilian part partially "split." The finest tricks of the backstage games fenced the 116th from the world. Evgeny Stepanovich was the patron, speaking of the bureaucratic slang, the "hand" of Alevtina Ivanovna. Naturally, disinterestedly, for ideological considerations, which is quite typical of the knights of the cloak and dagger. Two talents of a huge scale acted hand in hand in this intrigue.

When the 116th was nevertheless closed (reformed in the pedagogical school, it is now in this building), beautiful teachers scattered through other schools, some work in the neighboring and in location and at the 117th number. She is located on Richelevskaya Street (former Lenin, former Richelevskaya), and for a long time after the Great Crime Revolution, the bas -relief of Vladimir Ilyich hung with a triple to “study!”. The decree of the converted anti-communist-president Kravchuk (former head of the ideological department of the Central Committee) on the destruction of communist symbols came exactly in the middle of the school year. And the builders, in addition to the crazy amount for dismantling, demanded ... stop classes for a month. It is hefty, the leader of the world proletariat with Tolstice rods was welded to the supporting construction of the building, and according to all the safety rules for the duration of such work of living people, it is necessary to evacuate. These were real builders - not destroyers, they turned out to be wiser than you and me. We pulled out of the country, from society, the features know that with meat, offended by lack of meat, and when Solzhenitsyn jumped about the danger of "die under the wreckage of the empire" , it was too late ...

In the early 90s, Alevtina Ivanovna knitted socks and traded them at the benefits. Pensions, after paying for utility services, she remained exactly for slow death from hunger ... Then another phenomenon acting to the present appeared, something that encourages that school is not only education, but also education. "Club 116" is a public organization of school graduates who help their old teachers with quite material assistance. In the fundamental difference from most local charitable organizations feeding on Western grants or tapping thresholds of commercial offices and officials, this is typical for developed countries, but almost unrealistic for our economic structure. Relatively small charitable contributions come regularly and truly voluntarily from many individuals - graduates. The Steshtnatics published two books about the school, all copyright and publishing work were made not by volunteers, but by volunteers, without a center of “compensation” (as they bashfully call the salary in the Western type in public organizations). Books are sold (and bought!) At a disproportionate charity price - other sticot. At the World School graduates, the auction was implemented by Alevtina Ivanovna socks, decorated in a frame and under glass. Money from donations and sales of books goes to food, medicines, doctors, hospitals ... more and more often for the funeral. Alevtina Ivanovna Kudinova died on May 23, 2003 at the 83rd year of her life.

From the book “116th June”: “The goal of mankind is a good person, and there is no other goal and cannot be. The graduates of the 116th retained the amazing ability to look at life, to find that spiritual light in the world, cruel and pragmatic, which gives teachers, the joy and meaningfulness of life, and the students bring peace with themselves and the purity of themselves and the purity of thoughts.”

Today, in 2004, a memorial plaque appeared on the school building. The day of its opening is timed to the birthday of Alevtina Ivanovna: March 5, it is the day of Stalin's death. In a strange and symbolic way, several milestones of our ambiguous history coexisted at the same time on the corner of the Greek and cable streets. The revolution trampled the banners, the romantic era of the first flights into space drowned in the ocean of time along with space stations, the creators of hydrogen bombs are wiped into shopping tours and are behind the shelves. But behind the fallen rocket-nuclear husk, the impleased creation of a real teacher became better: graduates of the 116th, despite the change of times, are still distinguished by the success of life. Among them are many outstanding, but the rest are simply good and prosperous , despite the catastrophes that have befallen us.