"Trotsky chased you with invigorating words"

Soviet writers about Trotsky - red leader, husband of Lenin and assistant poets

In the series “Russian Path: Pro et Contra”, the publishing house of the Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy is an anthology dedicated to Leo Trotsky. The publication includes memories, journalism and propaganda texts - Trotsky is represented in them both as a politician and as a person. Gorky selected the most entertaining excerpts from the works of art, in which the revolutionary was exalted or denigrated: the poems of the poor and Inber, as well as prosaic fragments from the texts of Averchenko, Ivnev and Platonov.

Demyan is poor. Kazan comrades

Comrades. Yesterday.
Trotsky chased you with invigorating words.
Our Red Leader said goodbye to you
On your powerful response "Hurray".
At the farewell hour
With what greed I peered at you,
Carefully watching your every look!
When you click, friends, a steel detachment
With working Moscow and Red Petrograd,
I will recognize you all.
I know: brief period of separation
And not for a long time you said goodbye to the leader.
Comrades, rifles in their hands.
We are waiting for you with the Red Army.

Arkady Averchenko. Conversation at the table

But ... just allow me to reduce light for the mood. Listen to me in the darkness. So ... What I will say is very scary. So: on the orders of Trotsky, as you know, thousands of people are shot - completely innocent - on charges of counter -revolutionary. And now! If Trotsky got into my hands, I would not kill him. And he would take the last shot of these thousands, would take the warm corpse of this man killed by Trotsky and would tightly tied him to Trotsky - his chest with his chest, his face with his face. And I would feed and sew Trotsky so that he would live, but the corpse of a person who was killed by him would not unheard of him. And so-gradually killed by Trotsky begins to rot on Trotsky ... Trotsky every minute, every second sees a blue decomposed face with grinned teeth, Trotsky’s head is spinning from an unbearable cadaverous smell, and when he feels something alive near his chest, when a ball of cadaver worms is Zavoroch ...

Arkady Averchenko. International auditor

Gri Moscow morning. Kremlin. The granuted chamber.
Lenin and Trotsky are sitting peacefully behind tea.
Trotsky, covered in the morning in a dandy jacket, shod in varnished boots with spurs, with a cigar inserted into a long amber mouthpiece, personifies the main, strong, masculine principle in this amazing marital union. Lenin is Madame, a representative of a subordinate, weaker, female, beginning.

And he is dressed accordingly: a shaking robe, on Nice something like a scarf, because in the granutant ward it is always somewhat damp, red woolen stockings from rheumatism and soft carpet shoes on his feet.
Trotsky, sucking the mouthpiece, completely, with his head, went into the newspaper sheet; Lenin grinds glasses with a towel. Silence. Only the samovar plays his monotonous centuries -old song.

“Pour more,” says Trotsky, without taking his eyes off the newspaper.
- You are stronger or weaker?
Silence.
- Yes, quit your newspaper! The nose will always burns so that it needs to be asked ten times.

“Ah, leave me alone, mother!” Not up to you here.

- Yeah! Now no longer up to me! And when he lured me from abroad to Russia, then it was before me! .. All of you men are the same.

E. Baklazhanov (A.P. Platonov). A story of no longer in the gloomy

And then the nonsense went with us. The old Red Army men laugh at us: they are gone, they say, now you, comrades. It is better to ask Comrade Trotsky's vacation to a visit - he’s in the club, go.
We, three people came to the club.
- There, show, Comrade Trotsky.
“Duck Togue Visibility, we say,” Partret.
No, - they answer, - this is not visibility, it is the bourgeois of visibility and deception, but with us, the proletarians, the truth and a living person. Ask for vacation. We at once: Comrade Trotsky, allow home to the village to the father-mother to visit, we will soon return, and the teperach needs to go home ...
And Comrade Trotsky answers with bass:
- Well, you, comrades, wanted to desert. Before you came, a visit to you.
- Yes, we, Comrade Trotsky, are not used to missing the house yet ...
- Well, go, an unconscious element, but turn more lively, therefore. Do not go on the road: smear boots, take the buttons, do not be a roof, you are a future red warrior.

Vera Inber

In the light of the lamp - green light ...
Usually at the end of the day
In a six -collar office
You accept me.

Tighten the floor with cloth cherry,
And like guns on a rock,
Four formidable phones
Shine on a desk.

To the left of the windows, and right,
In the inter -collar void,
Neighboring powers hang,
Flattened on canvas.

And greater than others,
In the ring of your seas and mountains,
Soviet Russia hangs
The size of a large carpet.

And we are talking. And these
Conversations flow slowly
As long as the pendulum will celebrate
Fifteen bronze minutes.

And hourly report
I obey as a soldier.
You say: “On Sunday
I will be glad to see you. "

And leaning over the decree,
And the forehead with a shading hand,
You forget about it
As if there was no me.

Rurik Ivnev. Bohemia

The owner of the office is a young beautiful Bolshevik, known in the ranks of the party as one of the organizers of the Red Army, who received a mandate from the hands of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, sat at the desk, putting his elbows on the countertop. With one eye, he looked at the brown folder lying in front of him, and the other at the poets entered. Yesenin was the first:
- Hello, Comrade Trotsky, will you not recognize me? I am Yesenin, and these are my comrades, also poets. Of course, you heard their names: Rurik Ivnev, Anatoly Mariengof, Matvey Roizman.
“Sit down,” Lev Davidovich said dryly.
“Here, Comrade Trotsky,” Yesenin continued, “we have a small publishing house, we release a magazine, we are conducting cultural work, and since we need funds for the publication of almanacs and collections, we opened a cafe.”
- Cafe? - asked Trotsky, busy, obviously, with his thoughts.
-Yes, a cafe-club, where our needy comrades-poets receive free dinners. “And at the club, a library, chess and Marxist mugs are organized,” Roizman blurted out.
Mariengof stepped on his leg and whispered quietly: "Do not go."
“And now,” Yesenin sang, “all this great cultural work is facing destruction.”
“I don’t quite understand you,” Trotsky said tiredly, “and then I am, and then ... is it possible ... I have business and ... a meeting.”
“Comrade Trotsky,” Yesenin prayed, “we understand that you are a man of business, and if you decide to encroach on your time, then ...
“The fact is,” Roizman interrupted him, “that our cafe is placed in two floors, and so, the lower floor slammed shut.”
- They slammed?
- Well, yes, closed.
- I don't understand anything. Who closed?
- Addodel of the Moscow City Council.
- How can this be closed, and the other can not be closed?
“So we don’t understand this ... We came to you ... We have a paper prepared ... Here, Comrade Trotsky, sign it ... They will open it to us then.”
With these words, Roizman pulled pre -prepared paper out of his pocket and laid it in front of a amazed party. Lev Davidovich read out loud: “To the Addel of the Moscow City Council. I ask you to assist the rule of the “Association of Poets, Artists and Musicians” in the full functioning of their club “Parnassus”. ”
- What does “complete functioning” mean? And then, comrades, I have nothing to do with Addel ...
“But you are so respected there,” said Roizman.
“Comrade Trotsky, help us out,” Yesenin prayed.
Mariengof and I sat silently, could not squeeze out a single word ...
“I can’t prescribe anything to Addel and I can’t sign such papers.” The largest thing I can do is call. He took up the telephone. Yesenin looked at Roizman, which frantically twisted a strand of hair at the temple.
- The office of the manager of the Advis ... Yes ... thanks ... Sasha, you? Says Trotsky ... Great ... Listen, what's the matter? Then the poets came ... from Parnassus ... Club-cafe ... They slammed them. What? Didn't you slam? Closed only individual rooms? The center of prostitution? Understand. Yes, yes. Sheep. Ha ha ha. Well, be healthy! - He lowered his head, similar to a miniature guillotine.
“It's over,” Esenin Mariengof whispered.
Trotsky silently looked at Yesenin and Roizman. Mariengof and I looked away.
“Well,” Yesenin sighed, “we will go.”
“I don’t delay,” Trotsky muttered, and it was impossible to make out whether he was laughing or angry.