Boris Raikov - interlocutor from the past

Many years ago, my older friend, the famous St. Petersburg linguist Lev Rafailovich Zinder, told me: “Why read memoirs? After all, everyone is lying! " Since then, I have read if I do not have a whole library, then at least a large cabinet of essays in this genre, and worse - wrote my own ...

There were not so many uninteresting memoirs: to write memories for printing is not an easy task, and when publishing, the selection still takes place. Here is the book of the author unknown to us - and he, it turns out, knew the Blok himself (for example). The other participated in around the world (fought near Stalingrad, worked at Jung himself, received a Fields award, and in his youth crossed the desert alone, etc.).

Actually, the memoirist does not have to travel in the ice or be a violin-virtuoso, but be sure to be able to tell about it on paper . Have you noticed that in the memoirs of even very famous people the most remarkable is not a success story and not even a story about the search for your path, but a description of children's dreams or fishing in the company of an older brother, a story about the first visit to the theater, etc.

It is most interesting for me to read about how this or that character was formed, i.e. About the process of self -contribution. Therefore, I often open notes of persons whose names I have not heard before. So I began to read the memoirs of Boris Evgenievich Raikov (1880–1966).

B.E. Raikov is known mainly in the pedagogical environment as a specialist in the methodology of teaching natural science at school (textbooks, programs, articles) and publisher of the relevant magazines. He has a lot of works on the history of natural sciences: he is the author of several fundamental biographies of biologists, in particular, the scientific biography of Karl Baer.

Of course, this topic is very far from me. However, after reading about 1,600 pages of Raikov’s memoirs, unpretentiously entitled by the author “on the life path” and carefully published by the St. Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg: “Kolo”, 2011), I would say that this person is remarkable in that he was a specialist in life , and not just survival [1] .

At first glance, Raikov’s trajectory is by no means unique - including even his arrest in 1930 and staying in the camp, and then in the settlement until the start of the Patriotic War. However, the fate of Raikov as a person of his time , of course, deserves a detailed description - which he did in his memoirs.

... many people born in Russia in more or less wealthy families in the 80-90s of the century before last, finished gymnasium, entered the university, they joined the student movement and illegal activities. Many, like Raikov, experienced a prison and exile, forced to graduated from the university by externs, etc. Few, however, managed to cope with the most difficult life and everyday difficulties so worthily, without ceasing to acquire new knowledge and skills , while not losing interest in life in its various manifestations.

Boris Evgenievich Raikov loved and knew how to write. The number of his scientific works exceeded 600, and he also systematically wrote poetry - amateur, but not bad. All his life he collected books; He lost one library and immediately began to collect another. He had a huge correspondence and, of course, a unique memory.

The story of several generations of the family of Boris Evgenievich is very bizarre: in the memoirs, the author devoted about two hundred pages of fascinating text to these plots. Next, I will limit myself to the most necessary.

So, for various personal reasons, Raikov’s mother in 1891 decided to settle in Helsingfors with two children, where there was a small Russian classical gymnasium. She did not give, however, the general -imperial certificate of maturity, because of which the gymnasium student Raikov had to work out already in St. Petersburg.

To characterize my hero, it is very important that from an early age he was not afraid of any new business, methodically gaining various practical skills, at first glance - far from obligatory. So, at the insistence of his mother, he at first at first visited a binding workshop, and later-the carpentry, so that he took possession of these skills to the level of a reducer master twice a week at the end of his mother. By this time, Raikov had already had a decent chemical and physical laboratory at home. To establish the printing of a secret school literary magazine on a hectograph, and later - proclamations - was already a simple task.

From an early age, Raikov read a lot; The full set of “bells” accidentally hit him in Helsingfors, he read from crust to crust a completely boy and even composed an enthusiastic poetic message to Herzen. He wrote poetry from the age of 11; And in general, he wrote easily and was distinguished by an excellent memory.

Returning with his mother and sister to St. Petersburg, Raikov entered the 8th classic gymnasium (the one where the director of Annensky was the director), and, having graduated from it, became a student at the natural faculty of St. Petersburg University in 1899.

At that time, student organizations in Russia had, as a rule, a political orientation, which is why the authorities considered at least suspicious - and, possibly, harmful - any independent activity of students. As you know, in Russia, the end of the 1890s and the early 1900s were marked by a series of attempts and murders of large government officials, which was accompanied by repression among students as the most active social group. So, in 1901, the Minister of Education of Bogolepov was killed in Kyiv: before participating in the riots, 183 students of Kyiv University of St. Vladimir were given to soldiers. In St. Petersburg, student protests against the "Soldier" took a truly massive character.

Raikov did not remain aside by virtue of his active life position: he organized student canteens who played the role of clubs, participated in gatherings, wrote charters and proclamations, which he did not only regret it later, but the best of his proclamations retained his whole life, despite prisons and links - both royal and Soviet.

It is not surprising that the student of Raikov was excluded twice from the university, twice in exile and in the prison kartsere. He described these “universities” and the people he met and the people he met in great detail, allowing current readers to evaluate the originality of the world that has already completely disappeared.

Raikov’s life changed thanks to a meeting with his future wife, Olga Lyubimovna Cheremisinova, a young widow with four children, of which the eldest daughter was already 16. Once a family man, Raikov was forced, first of all, to take care of receiving a diploma, for which he passed all university exams. In 1905, Raikov became a teacher of natural science in a recently open forest commercial school. This step determined his further life path and - which is especially important - his understanding of the dwarf goals.

Raikov realized himself, first of all, an enlightener . It is important to recall that not only many educational, but also scientific institutions of Russia functioned as private ones, which gave greater freedom in determining the content of training. Raikov worked in private gymnasiums, at the neuropsychiatric Institute. Bekhtereva (who for a long time was essentially a small private university), created circles and biostations, wrote programs and textbooks, organized a publication of mass magazines for teachers of natural science.

In Rakovo, interest in various manifestations of life and the ability not only to see unobvious opportunities for actions, but also the ability to effectively use these opportunities were happily combined. It would even seem to be in a hopeless situation-in the camp on Belomorkanal (he was arrested in Leningrad in 1930), he, firstly, is not inactive, but establishes something , offers to organize - from a well-equipped bacteriological laboratory. Secondly, there Raikov does not lose interest in people and does not focus on his misfortune. But “in the will” he left a pregnant young wife - this is his second marriage; From his first marriage, he had a daughter who lived in Leningrad.

Once after the camp at the settlement, in the village near the Medvezhye Gorus station, he managed to use the skills of working in the clinical laboratory already acquired in the camp and eventually became the head of the clinical laboratory under the railway, i.e. railway employees. This gave Raikov some opportunities - however, in order to use them so skillfully, it was necessary to be district ...

Due to my own family circumstances in the mid-50s of the last century, I met people with similar circumstances of the camp and settlement life-at first, like Raikov, they passed Belbaltlag, and later other “great construction sites”. It was common to them that they received education and fundamental education in pre -Soviet times. (This human type in its highest manifestations is described by A.P. Chudakov in the novel "The haze falls on the old steps ...")

Let me remind you that the wonderful Russian enlightener N.P. Antsiferov, who found himself in Medvezhya Gora at the same time, survived because, having experience of archaeological excavations, he managed to become a practical geologist and gave appropriate lectures for workers related to the construction of Belomorkanal.

Raikov worked simultaneously in four works, mainly leading clinical laboratories and constantly expanding his knowledge. When he managed to buy himself a small wooden house with a plot of land, he started a small peasant farm in this section: a goat, a chickens, a pig and a garden, from which in the first year he collected one and a half tons of potatoes ...

And Raikov’s regular trips to Leningrad are presented with a completely incredible plot, where he, thanks to the help of his long -friend V. L. Komarov, at that time - the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, had not only access to the archive of AN, but could also take books to the house! And all this - with a criminal record not yet removed!

... memoirs can be more or less accurate in the description of events; More or less addicted/objective in the description of the actors. Reading the memoirs of Boris Evgenievich Raikov, we must remember that the author died in the ninth ten years, while remaining in a completely clear mind and repaying his offenders and enemies in a word.

As the most productive years for himself, he mentions the period from 1920 to 1930. Thinking about the fate of Raikov and those with whom he came across one way or another, you once again think about the fact that the 1920s were very different for different people.

In the last, tenth volume of Raikov’s memoirs, I found a small essay on the memory of the famous biology historian, Professor Samuel Lvovich Sobol (1893–1960). My husband and I were friendly with the younger generation of the family of S. L., so we often visited his house. Three generations of the family of Samuel Lvovich huddled in irregular rooms, where since the pre -revolutionary times there was an invalid marble fireplace and stucco molding on the ceiling ...

The accuracy with which Raikov in the most detailed way described the living conditions in this Moscow communal apartment for 12 families. Obviously, Raikov undoubtedly understood his life as a specific mission , seeing himself as the chronicler of the era. He not only retained in an enviable order a colossal array of documents, but during his lifetime he transferred a lot to the archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

1. Read more about the book, see: www.kolohouse.ru/articles/92/16/na-zhiznennom-puti.html