Sofya Ostrovskaya and her "Diary"

In the memoir series of the publishing house "New Literary Review" was released "Diary" of the Leningrad translator S.K. Ostrovskaya (1902-1983). [Ostrovskaya S.K. Diary/Entry. Article T.S. Pozdnyakova; Postwell. P.Yu. Barskova; Prep. text and comment. P.Yu. Barskova and T.S. Pozdnyakova. M .: 2013] .

Sofya Kazimirovna Ostrovskaya (1902-1983) lived all her life in Leningrad. Her "Diary" covers the period from 1913 to 1953. Since the beginning of the 60s, Sofya Kazimirovna began to blind, although she remained sociable and hospitable. She broke up with her “diary” even earlier-for some reason, unknown to us.

Until recently, the name of S.K. Ostrovskaya meant something only for a small number of people who visited it in the last years of life, as well as for Akhmatova’s work specialists. Apparently, thanks to the efforts of the people of this circle Ostrovskaya, it was possible to order several typewritten copies of her diary, adding something and excluding something from it-thereby preparing the material for the future reader.

Even before the Patriotic War and the blockade of S.K. Ostrovskaya, it was well known in the literary circles of Leningrad, and in 1944-1949 it was friendly with A.A. Akhmatova, about the "labors and days" of which Ostrovskaya, alas, systematically reported to a large house.

We know (at least) of the two of the two sources that deserve confidence about this aspect of Ostrovskaya’s life. Firstly, the well-known Soviet spin-“cutting”, former general O. Kalugin, without naming the name of S.K. Ostrovskaya, cited convincing excerpts from intelligence reports, textually coinciding with then not yet published diary records of Ostrovskaya, regarding the life and life of Akhmatova, and in particular the circumstances of Akhmatova’s meeting with I. Berlin.

Secondly, this plot is not only the reporting of S.K. Ostrovskaya, but no less sad role of her friend Antonina Orange (“Ants”, whom Akhmatova trusted to the end) was analyzed in detail and documented in the work: I. Kopylov, T. Pozdnyakova, N. Popova. “And that was so” ... Anna Akhmatova and Isaia Berlin. - St. Petersburg: Anna Akhmatova Museum in a fountain house; LLC "DREV", 2009.

Ostrovskaya reported, besides Akhmatova, we do not know. Undoubtedly, however, that the value of her memoirs (as well as possible doubts about this) lies in a different plane. The most important part of Ostrovskaya’s “diary”, for the sake of which it, first of all, had to be published, are not notes, where Akhmatov was mentioned, but Ostrovskaya's block diaries.

It should be noted that Ostrovskaya herself considered it necessary to save precisely these notes at all costs, by virtue of which she accompanied the corresponding notebook with a kind of testament addressed to the future reader.

The essence and pathos of Ostrovskaya’s blockade records are discussed in detail in the afterword of Polina Barskova, one of the publishers of the Diary. The reader of Ostrovskaya, as I hope, recalls the "Tale of Pity and Cruelty" by L.Ya. Ginzburg, block diaries L.V. Shaporina and memoirs O.M. Fraidenberg (still, unfortunately, only partially available).

The extremity of blockage everyday life remains for us inexhaustible material for the analysis of existence on the verge - and beyond the line. Outside of this tragic situation, we would not recognize a person who was Sofya Kazimirovna Ostrovskaya. But even then she herself was able to see her capabilities, moreover, her foundations as a person. What is undoubted - Ostrovskaya was insightful and talented.

So, by the beginning of the Patriotic War, Ostrovskaya is a beautiful and well -groomed woman; He lives with her mother and brother, dresses well, she always has fresh flowers in her room, and her supply of French spirits will “live” to the blockade. S.K. It works a lot as a translator of scientific and technical texts, reads a lot, happens in theaters and in the Philharmonic, is friends with writers, scientists, large military. She is not married, and if she has a romantic relationship with the opposite sex, then she does not trust them with a diary.

At the same time, Ostrovskaya has a rather peculiar past, partially reflected in her diary.

Firstly, at the age of 18 this young lady-not just “from a good family”, but from the rich family-threw the university and went to serve in the police, from where she went to work in the threat. True, on this line her career “did not happen” because of a strange incident with a conservation stolen from a warehouse, which is why Ostrovskaya even fell into trial-she was justified. In the future, although she is not a long time, she sat twice in a Soviet prison.

Secondly, in 1925, Ostrovskaya’s father left his family that his daughter had not forgiven him, although at one time he was his favorite, and her father, according to her, remained the most important man in her life. However, she did not regret her father when he, being arrested under the “political” article, picked up the camps, including Solovki and Belbaltlag. As a result, Ostrovskaya has forever became the only minister in the family, especially since her younger brother was a heavy mentally ill.

In the blockade of the family hearth - Ostrovsky’s apartment on the street. Radishchev in Leningrad - becomes for the Ostrovskaya house with the title letter. The emotional and existential center of the house for Ostrovskaya will forever remain a mother who died in a blockade - and Ostrovskaya will subsequently be constantly associated with the departure of the mother as a decisive cause of the crash of the house.

No matter how you recall the drama of Olga Mikhailovna Freidenberg and the bitter story of Lydia Ginzburg! The “dependents” were the first to die in the blockade.

According to numerous skeptical estimates that Ostrovskaya gives many of his friends and interlocutors (Akhmatova), we can conclude that she was more likely arrogant and not inclined to deep, and most importantly - to constant attachments. The insight of Ostrovskaya allows her to see people “in volume” - but at the same time Sofya Kazimirovna repeatedly emphasizes her role only an observer of other people's mental movements.

And the observer is as keen as skeptical: harmonious in the descriptions of Ostrovskaya smells, sounds, clouds, bridges, but very rarely - people. The effective compassion of Ostrovskaya is so characteristic, for example, for L. Shaporina. Here is her friend K.N. Popova was arrested by her husband. Anyone who has not experienced the 1937th or 1952s not at an unconscious age that in a personal diary it is scary about this in detail. But how can you still write - but without sympathy for an unhappy, confused friend? ...

Ostrovskaya always took care of her younger brother, clearly suffering from a serious mental disorder. During the war, her brother was drafted into the army - and, it would seem, she did not want anything so passionately as his return, constantly thinking about him as an unhappy child (although his brother is only two years younger than S.K.). And just as inevitably, she, in fact, rejects her brother, because from the war he returned, as she sees, by another person.

The feeling of attachment to her mother, tenderness and gratitude to her as the creator of the house, undoubtedly, sincere - and after the death of her mother in the diary, these emotions are repeatedly actualized - as a manifestation of a general sensation of abandonment, exhaustion and loneliness of the narrator. In 1944, Ostrovskaya records:

“It is good that I do not let anyone into my world. But I’m entering other people's worlds - sometimes even I live in them - and all other worlds are alien to me and far. I thought a lot before that I have no place in the world anywhere. This is probably so. But now I know my place: with myself . Only". (Diary, p. 500).

This place “with you” does not interfere with the vigilance of the eyes and firmness of the narrator’s hands, but sometimes makes Kai's boy recall. Only in a situation of “limit” the notorious ice floe becomes an disappearing small - alas, not for long.

Nevertheless, and after the death of her mother, people continue to stretch into the house of Sophia Kazimirovna. Ksenia's friend’s brother comes to a visit from the front (it was not destined to return from the war); Ostrovskaya herself sheltered the unfamiliar girl Valera, whom she pulled out of a bombed queue. A long-standing friend S.K., the translator and poet Tatyana Gnedich (she will be arrested at the end of 1944); In 1942, Gnedich and Valerka, a New Year tree for Sophia Kazimirovna, was dressed as a surprise for Sophia Kazimirovna.

Finally, it comes on January 19, 1943 and Moscow reports a breakthrough of the blockade. (This, however, does not mean that the blockade is removed .)

In the meantime, Ostrovskaya listens to the radio and writes: “And all death will not be in the blockade and not from the blockade. It will be just military death - maybe ridiculous, maybe. Unnecessary - very the same and not at all ... "

The blockade of Leningrad will be lifted in a year-January 27, 1944.

Is it strange that, as a Muscovite, I also remember this day? ..