Reading "Sofya Petrovna"

Dmitry Volchkek: One of our recent programs was dedicated to Lydia Chukovskaya’s book “Dark”. In her memoirs, Lidia Chukovskaya tells the story of the creation of the famous story “Sofya Petrovna”. The manuscript of a story written in the 39th year about the times of the Ezhovschina, the first work of art about the great terror, was preserved by Lydia Chukovskaya’s friends, distributed in Samizdat, was first published in the USSR in 1988, and then entered the collections of Chukovskaya works. And only now the first separate publication “Sophia Petrovna” has been published. At the presentation of the book, held at the Anna Akhmatova Museum in St. Petersburg, Tatyana Voltskaya visited.

Tatyana Voltskaya: This thin book, almost a brochure, are really more difficult than the volumes of the premier, in any case, for me personally, even the volume of the Solzhenitsyn “Gulag” does not outweigh it on famous Libra. “Gulag” - he is an archipelago, powerful and unbearable, and “Sofya Petrovna” is just a secret spring inside the human soul, but with which only the terror mechanism can be launched. If there weren’t such a spring in everyone, it is still unknown if the “archipelago” would have developed. Today they almost stent about this - without condemning without realizing without mourning. But in Arkhangelsk they took, yes, “Sofya Petrovna”, and even so that the cover is a reduced copy of the same notebook with a glued paper and the inscription by the hand in which it was written in the 39-40th, and then stored in different people in a blockade and many years later. “Sofya Petrovna” is the story of a woman who was arrested by her son. A year later, a letter comes, a scream for help: mom, they tortured, beat me, forced me to stipulate myself. Help, write a statement about this and testify that I have not seen my accomplice, a former classmate from school, and, therefore, I am not guilty. Mother betrays her son: in fear that she will also be nurtured, burns a letter. The story was first printed in the journal Neva. About how it was, the writer, journalist Samuel Lurie, who was then the editor of the prose department, told the book of the book at the presentation of the book. He believes that if Tvardovsky in the “New World” did not print “one day of Ivan Denisovich”, but “Sofya Petrovna”, then maybe the fate of the country would have developed differently, and that “Sofya Petrovna” came out too late.

Samuel Lurie: In the 88th year, no one read anything. That is, they read, of course, but the magazines simultaneously the sadness of Nabokov, Khodasevich, and Solzhenitsyn, Platonov was already approaching. All this was absolutely not learned. Another misfortune of the country that all this was hastily swallowed, absolutely not assimilated, not thought out, not discussed, but simply accepted for attention quickly and also quickly forgotten. Here is the fact, today I only realized that we are really the presence of the first separate publication “Sophia Petrovna”, a book that actually would really have to be a table book. This is one of such rare cases in the history of literature that a non -genius work is a great work. She looks like Gogol's “Overcoat”, and would have had, if the country had not been morally killed by this moment, a huge moment is educational, liberating significance. But already in the 88th year it was too late. In the 91st, such Vadim Bakatin was appointed the head of state security, and he worked for three months, he even promised to identify state security agents in embassies, on television channels, and newspapers. At least them, not to mention how to do it as in Poland, Germany or Hungary - publish lists and so on. But as soon as he said this, after three weeks he was quietly removed, and he still managed to give such an interview and say that this is actually impossible, because if you publish lists of all agents, informants and so on, then not a single whole family will remain in the country. Here, in fact, at what moment “Sofya Petrovna” came out.

Tatyana Voltskaya: The story “Sofya Petrovna” represented Akhmatova and the head of the Returned Names Center for the Russian National Library, the publisher of “Leningrad Martyrologist” Anatoly Razumov, who said that he simply had the right to give his hands.

Anatoly Razumov: I have been involved in the compilation of lists of executed in the Soviet Union for 20 years. For myself, I accepted this book cannot be a look, a matter of one person. So you need to try so that it develops polyphonic. Every day I ask someone: please, if there is mental strength, put on the paper what you tell me, what you write to the site “Returned Names”. And people decide. At first, they do not resolve (“What writers are we and what will we write?”), But then they write the very necessary words, and something is made up of this, people begin to think. Thinking is very difficult, in our country - even more so. You see, if somewhere they raised children-mans, then in the case of Sophia Petrovna, we are talking about parents-mant sheets, and all this, of course, does not go away. But I personally do not have the opportunity for pessimism. I see these responding bright faces, eyes, mind, which everyone understands and, in the end, this is important. In the ninth volume of Martyrologist, we put a letter from two girls who write a letter to Uncle Stalin. They do not know that their father was put in the camp, and then at Kolyma they were lost. Two years after his execution, they write a letter to the Kremlin: “We are excellent students, we learn remarkably, we help mom.” And it ends with huge capital letters: “Uncle Stalin, dear, send daddy's home.” It's okay, the time and these are the girls. And in our time, everything is known about this, the whole truth is said, but a significant part of the people who simply pushing it away from themselves. Neither our society nor our state found the strength to realize the depth of disaster and tragedy, which suffered the country in the last century. But if such forces, in the end, were found, gradually they would somehow grow up. And if the next day, suddenly, finally, the points of truth in all this great story would be set, a huge number of people the next day would have been understanding with us. But this is not.

Tatyana Voltskaya: Samuel Lurie thinks about why this is not.

Samuel Lurie: what is the beautiful, significant and unforgettable book “Sofya Petrovna? In general, the same as Orvell’s novel“ 1984 ”. If you remember Orvella, there is generally a refrain several times that I understand how you can drive the whole people, the whole country, all people living here - I can kill everyone, but I don’t understand why. Petrovna ”and, in fact, you need to think about him. I personally think so that there is all freedom, in the end, it seems to me, freedom of fear. There is, ultimately, a fear of physical pain. The fear itself is also a fear of pain. And if a person is tortured with pain or fear of pain, at the same time inspiring him that the truth does not exist if it acts at the same time with pain and lies, yes, and after all. He is crazy, but he himself is perverted, he himself went crazy: the laws of truth, justice, simple logic, causes and investigation, retaliation and guilt do not act in him, and something happens to the person, as it happens with some people who, like Mowgli, were brought up in a flock of wolves, and they would have to go to two-foot This is a completely different review, and this is, yes, there was nothing like this in the history of mankind, but, in principle, such an ominous order, which is sometimes confused by some special services in other countries. Of the people who are not suitable for anything, even on my course, who are not able to, but ready for everything, the easiest way for a mediocre person to master the secret authority, which is omnipotent and omnipotent and, in general, is endowed with some of the Almighty. The locations of a bad climate have developed a disgust for work and misfortune to get away from physical labor, but this requires some gifts to go to the bosses. Evil people, but such a corporation already has its own logic of existence, and I thought a lot about it that, apparently, they, like a corporation, have such a logic: in order to justify their secret power over ordinary people, which, in general, are better than them, they must prove to themselves and every person, that a person represents a person. The belief, pity, freedom that exists in it can actually be knocked out of it now, with a face to beat him on this table It is necessary in order to justify your existence.

Tatyana Voltskaya: Sofya Petrovna, the heroine of the story, is not sick at all - this is a matter of moral choice, says Professor of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov.

Georgy Mitrofanov: Before us, a man whom, in my opinion, no one beat the table with his face, a graduate of the St. Petersburg gymnasium, who married a doctor back in St. Petersburg, and she lives as if it did not exist in her life of this period. Sofya Petrovna seemed to not know this country, this life, her, in fact, was nothing of what Russia lived for centuries, which, of course, allowed our country, despite the dysfunction of its history, nevertheless to become the same Russian Empire, which is the same Petersburg. From childhood, I felt that the city was built for other people whom, for some reason, since childhood I could not find around me. What is, where are these people, where did they go? Therefore, if we are talking about Sofya Petrovna, then we have not a disease, but a position. And there were enough such people. Firstly, we need to give yourself a report that we have before us the second half of the 30s. By this time, let's realize this report, more than 20 million people have already been destroyed in our country. Mostly the best were destroyed, they were destroyed mainly by the worst people. The same backbone of people who, unlike Sophia Petrovna, could resist internally. So Sofya Petrovna is the same remnant who was present in all classes, conformists - a person who is convinced of self -preservation, I am convinced of this, tried to forget all the best, bright that was in her life, and the faith, which, was in the very least, but somehow tried to educate, and Russian culture. The whole world that seemed to form it in many ways. She is his limit. This is not a disease, this is a choice. And in this you need to be aware of. I would like to remind you of the terrible words of one Russian officer who served in the Wehrmacht. He ended up near Stalingrad in 1942, and wrote a letter in which he noted: “I pass the villages that we went through during the Civil War. I do not recognize anything here, but, first of all, I do not recognize people. I come to the conclusion that if the Bolsheviks have survived in Russia for another 25 years, historical Russia will be non -contaminant.” Here are the thoughts of a simple officer. Historical Russia is lost forever. And to a large extent, this is due to the fact that our historical unconsciousness is alas, a very characteristic feature of our life for many centuries, it now, in essence, has triumphed. Until the 90s, we still had the illusion that we could be reborn. In the 90s, we have already stopped existing. That is, there are descendants now. That would be with the son of Sofia Petrovna if he had not been shot, what would happen to his grandchildren? For several generations, we essentially lost any connection - both spiritual, historical, and cultural with Russia, which existed 900 years. This, of course, is a unique phenomenon. And the problem of Sofia Petrovna is as follows: that this one is not sick, but completely healthy, from the point of view of natural life, the woman did what many people in our country were doomed to - survive at all costs, in particular, the cost of lies, which becomes the essence of life. Because if you can’t lie, then you will not survive. Here, as a priest, I want to remind me of the truth that the Savior once announced himself, with his life. That there are actually situations when a person, in order to remain a person, must be ready to die.