Memoria. Nikolay Oleynikov

Poet Nikolai Oleinikov was born on August 17, 1898

Private bussiness

Nikolai Makarovich Oleinikov (1898-1937) was born in the village of Kamenskaya (now the city of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, Rostov region) into the family of a wealthy Cossack. Graduated from the 4th grade of the Donetsk District Men's School. After several years of further study at a real school, he entered the Kamensk Teachers' Seminary in 1916, where he seriously studied literature and mathematics.

In March 1918 he volunteered for the Red Army and took part in the Civil War. In 1920 he joined the RCP(b). In the same year, he returned to his native village and, by appointment of the Kamensky district party committee, became a member of the editorial board of the newspaper “Red Cossack”.

At the same time, Oleinikov became a student of a three-year teacher's course, and in 1921 he went to Rostov and entered a pedagogical college. However, his student life did not last long - soon he was invited to the city of Bakhmut, Donetsk region of Ukraine (in 1924-2016 - Artemovsk) to the position of executive secretary of the newspaper "All-Russian Stoker".

Together with the writers Mikhail Slonimsky and Evgeniy Shvarts, who came from Petrograd, from September 1923 he published a literary and artistic supplement to the “Stoker” - the magazine “Zaboi”. Schwartz's first literary experiments were published precisely in Oleinikov's "Stoker" and "Stoker". It was then that their friendship began, which lasted almost their entire lives.

In 1925, already an experienced editor, Oleinikov received from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks a call to Leningrad and an appointment to the Leningradskaya Pravda newspaper. Soon his collaboration began with the editors of the children's magazine "New Robinson", which later grew into the famous children's department of the State Publishing House, under the leadership of the luminary of children's literature Samuil Marshak. “The children's department was located on the fifth floor of Gosizdat, which occupied the house of the former Singer company, Nevsky, 28; and this entire fifth floor shook with laughter every day during all working hours. Some visitors to the Children’s Department were so weak from laughter that, having finished their business, they went out onto the landing, holding their hands to the walls, like drunk people,” Nikolai Chukovsky wrote about childhood in Soviet children’s literature.

In collaboration with Marshak, Oleinikov develops his own independent position in children's literature. He created a new, previously non-existent genre of prose, which can be called journalism for children. He came up with problems, riddles and tricks that allowed him to become familiar with the principles of logic, mathematics and physics. He organized a club for the curious, which was abbreviated as KUR - a circle of smart guys.

In 1926-1928, Oleinikov, collaborating with Leningrad and Moscow magazines, was simultaneously organizing children's radio broadcasting. He is preparing the first children's radio programs, attracting many talented writers and actors to the new work, experimenting in the field of sound recording, including for the first time introducing on the radio the alternation of voices when reading stories and poems.

In 1928, Oleinikov organized the publication of the children's magazine "Ezh" ("Monthly Magazine") in Leningrad and became its editor. “The world's best magazine for children,” as the advertisement claimed, had indeed made history. In the relaxed and creative atmosphere of “Hedgehog,” a team of authors gathered who later became the glory of Russian literature. Among them are famous masters K.I. Chukovsky and S.Ya. Marshak. Boris Zhitkov, Vitaly Bianki, Mikhail Prishvin, Evgeny Schwartz, Irakli Andronikov and many other future masters collaborated with the magazine. Young poets who were part of the artistic group “OBERIU” (association of real art) – Daniil Kharms, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Alexander Vvedensky – also got involved in children’s literature in “Ezhe”. Oleinikov himself joined the Oberiuts.

He most often published his works in the magazine "Hedgehog" under the pseudonym "Makar the Fierce", creating the image of a brave horseman, a tireless inventor and an inquisitive traveler, whose stories about incredible adventures were published from issue to issue. The artist Boris Antonovsky “depicted him in many small square pictures as indistinguishably similar to Oleinikov - curls, forelock, a somewhat complex nose, cunning eyes, Cossack dashing in his face. The captions under these pictures were written by Oleinikov; they were always brilliantly funny and formed into small stories, very popular among Leningrad children of that time.” Stories about Makar the Fierce are called “the first Soviet comics.”

Since 1930, on the initiative of Nikolai Oleinikov, another periodical for children began to be published - “Chizh” (“Extremely interesting magazine”). If "Hedgehog" was aimed at an audience of pioneer age, then "Chizh" was intended for very young readers. But the tradition of the older edition was preserved: inexhaustible invention, humor, and the ability to simply talk about the most complex issues reigned here; the editor’s pedagogical credo—education without instruction—was brought to life.

Both magazines often published stories by Nikolai Oleinikov. Books written by him for children were published one after another and were repeatedly republished during the author’s lifetime. The funny books “Who is More Cunning” (1927) and “Cunning Craftsmen” (1929) offered puzzling tasks to the children. They were introduced to the world of nature and introduced to the knowledge of the laws of its development “Living Riddles” (1928). The ironic “The Flea Teacher” (1930) and “The Geography Teacher” (1932) made it possible to see familiar things and events of the surrounding life from an unusual perspective.

In December 1931, several poets were arrested, who were both Oberiuts and collaborated with Marshak and Oleinikov in the magazines “Chizh” and “Yozh” - Vvedensky, Kharms and Bakhterev were arrested on charges of participating in an “anti-Soviet group of writers” and exiled. This year was the last year of the existence of OBERIU - after that the Oberiuts “no longer stuck out much” and did not perform officially.

From the beginning of 1937, Oleinikov headed the publication of the children's magazine "Cricket".

On the night of July 3, 1937, in his Leningrad apartment, Oleinikov was arrested by NKVD officers. On November 19, 1937, he was sentenced to death as “a member of the counter-revolutionary Trotskyist organization.”

Nikolai Oleinikov was shot on November 24, 1937 in Leningrad. Buried on Levashovskaya Heath.

What is he famous for?

Nikolay Oleynikov

Nikolai Oleinikov is one of the most original and bright representatives of the Russian poetic avant-garde of the 1920-1930s, whose name is associated with an entire artistic movement of so-called “absurdism” (D. Kharms, A. Vvedensky, N. Zabolotsky, etc.). In addition to the significant contribution he made to the formation and development of children's literature of the 20-30s of the 20th century, he was also an original and unique representative of adult literature and poetry - ironic poetry, the satirical roots of which go back to the pseudo-intellectual maxims of Kozma Prutkov .

“Oleinikov was formed in the twenties, when there existed (along with others) a type of shy person who was afraid of lofty phraseology, both official and relict of the intelligentsia. Oleinikov was an exponent of this consciousness. People of this type felt the inadequacy of big values ​​and big words that were not paid according to a strict social and moral account. They used jokes and irony as a protective cover of thought and feeling. And only from the depth of jokes was the real thing that they wanted to say about life released and made its way out. A ban was imposed on the lofty in its direct expression, not controlled by laughter,” wrote Lydia Ginzburg about Oleinikov’s poetics - one of those who was close to the Oberiuts, talked a lot with them.

A victim of Stalin's repressions, the poet was erased from Soviet literature for many years. His works were not published; most of them remained in manuscripts and lists preserved by the poet's family and friends.

What you need to know

Biographies of the poet claim that as a young man he joined the Red Army, and during the days of the White offensive, in hiding, he reached his father’s house. But his father personally handed him over to the whites as an apostate, after which Oleinikov was beaten half to death and thrown into a barn to be shot in the morning with a party of prisoners. But he managed to escape and made his way to another village, to his grandfather, who hid him.

In 2015, philologist Oleg Lekmanov said that he had in his possession a document according to which Oleinikov “during the civil war, on the basis of political disagreements, killed his father.” The poet informed the members of the commission for checking the composition of the RCP(b) cell about this, which was recorded in the protocol.

“But why should we believe in the authenticity of this particular fact, which (with obvious benefit for himself at that time) Oleinikov told the members of the commission for checking the non-working members of the RCP (b) cell No. 9?,” Lekmanov himself later wrote. - After all, the members of the commission were absolutely deprived, if not of the opportunity, then certainly of the desire to find out the true circumstances of the death of Oleinikov’s father: its meeting took place in Rostov-on-Don, and not in the village of Kamenskaya. So Oleinikov the son could well afford a shocking and cynical gesture of those to which he was highly inclined. In 1935, appearing before the Leningrad Purge Commission, Oleinikov did not say a word about the fact that he had killed his father. “For personal reasons I separated from my father,” he will briefly explain.”

Direct speech

It's scary to live in this world

It lacks comfort

The wind howls at dawn

Wolves are gnawing a bunny

A bird flies away from an oak tree,

Looking for meat for children,

Providence is rough

Presents her with worms

Little calf crying

Under the butcher's dagger

Poor fish, sleepy

Climbing into the fisherman's net

The lion roars in the dark of the night

The cat moans on the pipe

The burgher beetle and the worker beetle

They die in the class struggle.

Everything will die, everything will disappear,

From bacillus to elephant -—

And your love and songs,

And the planets and the moon

(Nikolai Oleynikov)

About myself: “It cannot be that I really am a poet. I rarely write. And all good writers are graphomaniacs. Probably – I’m a mathematician.”

L. Ginzburg about Nikolai Oleinikov: “Oleinikov is one of the smartest people I have ever seen. Accuracy of taste, sophisticated understanding of everything, but at the same time his mind and behavior are somehow differently structured than most of us; He doesn’t have the old intelligentsia heritage.”

Nikolai Chukovsky about Oleinikov: “Kolya Oleinikov was a Cossack, and a very typical one at that - blond, ruddy, curly, with a face similar to Kozma Prutkov, with a forelock created by God in order to stick out from under a cap with a band. He was the son of a rich Cossack who ran a tavern in the village, and hated his father. He was completely imbued with hatred of the Cossacks and everything Cossack. He argued that the Cossacks are the stupidest and laziest people in the world. In the Cossack lands, he said, only women are smart. And men are slackers and outstanding fools. All views, tastes, and preferences grew in him out of hatred for the Cossack life that surrounded him in childhood. <…> He even studied and read books out of hatred for the stupidity and ignorance of his Cossacks. The Cossacks were anti-Semites, and he became a Judeophile - since childhood, his closest friends and acquaintances were Jews, and he preached to me more than once that Jews are the smartest, noblest, best people in the world.”

Leonid Panteleev about his visit to the children's department of Lengosizdat: “...And so we step with trepidation onto the tiles of the long publishing corridor and suddenly we see two adult men cheerfully stomping towards us on all fours: one is bushy-haired, curly-haired, the other is thin-faced, handsome, with hair combed smoothly into a side parting.

Somewhat dumbfounded, we press against the wall to let this strange couple pass, but the four-legged ones also stop.

- Anything you want, boys? - the curly-haired man addresses us.

“Marshak... Oleinikov... Schwartz,” we babble.

- Very nice... Oleinikov! - it is recommended to have full hair, raising the right front paw for a handshake.

- Schwartz! - his comrade extends his hand.

...Later we learned that, while taking a break from work, the editors warmed up in this way, “portraying camels.” Evgeniy Lvovich Schwartz was then twenty-nine years old, Nikolai Makarovich Oleinikov, it seems, even younger.”

12 facts about Nikolai Oleinikov

• After Oleinikov first joined the Komsomol and then the party, the Cossacks from one village tried him for this and flogged him with ramrods in the square. “One day he took off his shirt and showed me his strong, very white back, covered with terrible interweaving of healed scars,” recalled Nikolai Chukovsky.
• Leaving the village of Kamenskaya forever, Oleinikov straightened out a certificate for himself: “This makes sure that gr. Oleynikov Nikolai Makarovich is really handsome. Given for admission to the Academy of Arts." Oleinikov demanded it from the village council, assuring the chairman that only beautiful people were accepted into the Academy of Arts. The certificate was issued in full form - with the seal of the village council and the signature of its chairman.
• Oleinikov, according to the memoirs of N. Chukovsky, never considered himself a poet and did not write poetry at all before moving to Leningrad.
• In the editorial office of Zaboy, Oleinikov was in charge of aspiring poets and copied the most bizarre of their poems into a special notebook. “He accumulated a wonderful collection of bad poems, which gave his mocking mind great pleasure,” recalled N. Chukovsky.
• Oleinikov called himself the grandson of Kozma Prutkov. He even dedicated poems to his memory.
• Oleynikov came up with the board game “The Journey of Makar the Fierce through the Soviet Union.” During the game, children learned the geography of the country and gained knowledge about its nature, wildlife, minerals and the life of various peoples.
• Together with Evgeny Schwartz, Oleinikov created a number of scripts, which were used to stage the films “Wake Up Helen” (1934), “Helen and the Grapes” (1935), and “On Vacation” (1936), which were released across the country’s screens. The film story about Lenochka's adventures was conceived as the first Soviet series for children.
• Officially, Nikolai Oleinikov was not part of the OBERIU group. Although he initially wanted to go out and perform, he refused to go on stage at the last moment. When his friends asked: “How can that be, you were planning to?”, he said: “You see, the guys from the district committee are sitting, I don’t want to call myself an Oberiut in front of them.” Oleinikov never appeared on stage, and remained, as Kharms writes, “acclaimed” under the Oberiuts. That still did not save him from repression.
• In one case with Oleinikov, Leningrad orientalists accused of espionage, including the Japanese scholar N. A. Nevsky, were shot; the poet was familiar with only a few of them.
• Oleynikov was rehabilitated posthumously in 1957. Then his widow received a certificate from the registry office that her husband died “of relapsing fever on May 5, 1942.” This unreliable date was included in many biographical reference books and encyclopedias.
• 60 years after Oleynikov’s death, in 1997, Kharkov composer and director Aleksey Kolomiytsev wrote the rock opera “Vivisection” based on his parable poems about small animals.
• In 2015, the OGI publishing house published the book “The Number of the Unspeakable” - a collection of all of Oleinikov’s works that survived the arrest. For the first time, stories for children from the Leningrad magazines “Chizh” and “Hedgehog”, a comic book about the adventures of Makar the Fierce and 142 poems were published together. More than half of the volume is occupied by a book about Oleinikov, written by philologists Oleg Lekmanov and Mikhail Sverdlov. In 2016, OIG released the second edition of the collection, significantly expanded.

Materials about Nikolai Oleinikov

L. Ginzburg. Nikolay Oleynikov

Life and work of Nikolai Oleinikov

Memoirs of Nikolai Chukovsky about Oleinikov

OBERIU: What was that?

Oberiuts. Language masks by N. Oleinikov

Secrets of the poet Nikolai Oleinikov

article about Nikolai Oleynikov Wikipedia