The man of the day: Grigory Oster

On November 27, 1947, the poet Grigory Oster was born, the author of "Harmful Soviets"

Personal business

Grigory Beneconovich Oster ( 76 years ) was born in Odessa in the Tokar family. A year after his birth, the parents moved to Yalta, where they passed the childhood and youth of the future writer. In Yalta, he graduated from school, from there he was drafted into the army. He served in the Northern Fleet on the Kola Peninsula.

By the time of his return from the army in 1969, the Khrushchevskaya thaw was over, censorship raged in the country again. In 1970, Gregory entered the department of drama of the Literary Institute. M. Gorky in Moscow. He studied in absentia, lived and worked in Yalta. At the Lithuanian Institute, Oster studied for 12 years, having graduated only in 1982.

According to his own admission, for children, Oster began to write “for mercantile reasons”, because he could not make a dime earn a living with poetry for adults. In those days, before him, like many other writers, was a small choice - to go either to children's literature or to translators. “Since I didn’t really have foreign languages, I began to write for children. I took up children's literature for considerations of survival, but I liked this business so much that I began to do this further, ”says the writer.

The first book for children “How good to give gifts”, published in 1975, brought oster fame. The four of her heroes - the monkey, the parrot, the elephant and the boa constrictor - later became the characters of the famous cartoon "38 Parrots". After it, the writer released several plays: “A man with a tail” (1976), “All wolves are afraid” (1979) and “Hello Monkey” (1983).

In the 1970s and 1980s, many scripts for cartoons were created by the oster, a novel for preschool children “Fairy Tale with Details” (1989), stories and poems. Cartoons according to his scenarios “38 parrots” (1976-1991), “A kitten named Gav” (1977-1980), “Monks” (1984) became hits.

In 1983, for the magazine Kolobok, Oster wrote the poem “Brave Cook”. In reduction, it looks something like this:
“If you stayed at home without parents alone
It is necessary to pour moms in my father's boots ...
Throw into the soup that my mother has cooked in the morning,
And cook with a closed lid for exactly 70 minutes.
What happens - you will find out when adults come. ”

Later, Oster, he said, suddenly saw that it was a harmful advice. “We then lived in the days of the Soviet regime, there were continuous advice around us: from childhood we were given a lot of useful tips, we gave each other advice, and advised children. And then I decided that there are already enough useful tips, let's try to give harmful ones. There were too many obedients in the country, and if a huge number of obedient children gather at one point, then a huge number of obedient citizens grow from these obedient children, and this is a very dangerous phenomenon in any state. ”

In 1990, the first book “Harmful Tips” was published. She instantly became a bestseller, and her main admirers were adults. After some time, “harmful advice-2” came out, then “harmful advice-3”, and then Grigory Oster began to give the name to books in accordance with the general idea of ​​harmful advice in them. At the moment, more than 10 books have been published with a wide variety of tips. Including for adults-“harmful advice to crooks and thieves and wrestlers with corruption”, “harmful advice to naughty businessmen”, “harmful advice to the fathers of young children”, “housing and communal harmful advice”, etc.

Later, similar techniques were based on the writer, the basis of a mathematical taskman for a younger school: “Lena admitted to the light that she kissed one boy twice, but in fact kissed only once a cheek. Sveta boasted to Lena that she kissed three times with five boys, but in fact she had not kissed anyone yet. How many extra kisses did both girls add to themselves? ”

In 2007, Grigory Oster received the title of Honored Artist of the Russian Federation.

From September 2008 to July 2009, together with singer Glucoz, he led the program "Children's Pranks" at the STS.

Married to Maya Oster (Chernova). Lives in Moscow in the residential complex "Krylatsky hills".

What is famous

Grigory Oster is a children's writer, whom adults read, perhaps, even more than children. On his fairy tales, verses and cartoons have already grown up several generations. The author of the famous “harmful advice” and humorous “tasks” for children, the creator of several popular animated series - including “Kitten named Gav” (1976), “38 parrots” (1976), “Baba Yaga against!” (1980), “Acquaintance” (1976) - and many others. And the second of the first Russian hypertextual novel “A Tale with Details”.

In addition to “harmful advice” and mathematical tasks, Oster invented and intends to develop the third genre: stories about how parents and children have changed places - when children behave like parents, and parents as children. According to the author himself, these will be "certain psychological workshops that will need to be read together both to children and parents."

Oster also wrote several books for adults: “Tips for the fathers of young children”, “Harmful advice to crooks and thieves and wrestlers with corruption”, “harmful advice to naughty businessmen”, “Book of food for a delicious and healthy woman”, etc.

What you need to know about

In 2002, 11-year-old schoolgirl Veronika Petukhova from Kaluga invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to create a presidential site for children. Soon, Grigory Oster was offered to lead the development of this project. He received an offer to participate in creating the site from Alexander Voloshin, who was then the head of the presidential administration.

The site "President of Russia - School Citizens", which lasted a year and a half, has become a collective brainchild of a group of artists, technical designers, children's psychologists and other experts, but its main idea and most texts belong to the oster.

“Why did I agree to this? Yes, everything is simple. I am not engaged in lycerateism there! I teach small citizens how to resist the authorities, how to understand when the power is bad, and when it is good, how to find out if the president copes with his work, ”the writer explained his consent to participate in this project.

On the site, in particular, there is a section “Questions about the President”, which explains how people should relate to power. “When I came to make this site in 2003, I told the children not about what a wonderful president we have, but about how a normal democratic society should be arranged. Everything that says, the president read, agreed with everything. Today, this site turned out to be a mine on the way of our country to totalitarianism, and this mine rushed. A huge number of people in the country are engaged in what the president himself warned them from: do not fall in love with state power. What is the president forbidden? Violate the constitution. For example, the Constitution says that the president cannot be elected for three in a row, and even if the whole country is delighted with his president, this cannot be done, because it will be a scam, ”said Oster.

The answer written by him to the question "How to find out if the president copes with his work?" It sounds like this: “If one day you hear, read, or see that they say the same thing about the president from morning till night: they admire him, praise him, say that he is great and beautiful, irreplaceable and infallible - know: the president could not cope with his work, there was a misfortune and there is no more freedom of speech in your country. So, there is no democracy. ”

According to Oster, everything that was written by him for the site was read by Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. And both were agreeing with his position.

Direct speech

About the experience of raising children: “This person does not gain experience, growing children. Believe me. Each child is a separate story, it is an individual situation, and therefore you will still not acquire any experience, growing one, two, three, ten children. This is like the next war. The generals are always preparing for the past war. Therefore, growing a child, the parent always, receiving a new child, is preparing for what happened to the old "

About children's lies: “Writing talent usually manifests itself at the very early age. In the form of lies. At the same time, parents of the future writer should remember that the baby most often lies not because he wants to deceive. His powerful imagination simply cannot stop. But, of course, in order to become a writer, one must learn not only to lie, but to create military works. To do this, you first have to study everything that the previous generations lied to us. By the way, the greatest work of the ancient children's militaryistature sounds like this: "I will no longer ...". And the second brilliant work, created by two geniuses in co -authorship, is even shorter: "He was the first to start ..." . "

About my books for children: “I always wrote for the child that I remember myself. And now I also write for the same child who lives in me, whom I remember "

About the upbringing of girls: “Never tell your daughter that you are disgusted to look at her. Say that she is actually a beauty, but chalk, jam, soot on her cheeks and ketchup on her nose still do not really go, and they spoil all the beauty a little. ”

The poet and journalist Alexei Didurov about Gregory of the coast ( the author’s program of Dmitry Bykov): “If Oster had not taken up children's poetry, it would be a poet of the level of the Silver Age.”

7 facts about Gregory of the coast

• The surname "Ostor" considered to be the pseudonym of the writer is an editorial error. “In fact, I have no pseudonym, and this story has been stretching since my work in“ Funny Pictures ”. There, the editor over the letter “E” is by chance, consciously, set two points. Since then, I won’t get rid of them, ”the writer said.
• In the late 1990s, Mikhail Epstein and Alexander Genis included Grigory Oster in the list “Who is in Russian postmodernism”. In this list of 170 names, Oster is the only children's writer who "made a contribution to the development of posttotalitarian Russian literature."
• In the Anthology of Children's Literature, “Harmful Tips” of Grigory Oster, published in Canada, 12 million copies came out of a circulation, while the rest of the authors were awarded the circulation of a maximum of 300-400 thousand.
• Oster himself calls his “harmful advice” “vaccinations from stupidity”: “The child reads a harmful advice, laughs and no longer falls into a trap when such nonsense comes to his mind.”
• According to the writer, only more than half a million copies were published only by the pirate publications of his tasks (textbooks in mathematics).
• Grigory Oster is the father of five children.
• Oster’s children did not study at school - they studied at home with tutors and passed exams by an external, as the writer wanted to control the training process himself. His youngest son Nikita graduated from the external school at 12 years old.

Materials about Gregory Coastal

Grigory Oster: "Want to become a children's writer - write to yourself ..."

Writer Grigory Oster: "Do not love power as their own parents"

"I put terrible experiments on my children." Interview with the newspaper "Today", 10/21/2010

Larisa Rudova. "Oster: from harmful tips to the presidential site"

Article about Gregory coast in Wikipedia