Moscow botanist X

Anna Narinskaya about “The History of the Hairdressing Doll” by Alexander Chayanov

This material (information) was produced, distributed and (or) sent by a foreign agent Anna Anatolyevna Narinskaya or concerns the activities of a foreign agent Anna Anatolyevna Narinskaya.

It is with trepidation that I begin, dear reader, to write these lines. For a long time I tried to put off this moment, deliberately going on long evening walks, winding through the passageways of Pokrovka, going down along the yellow ribbons of Moscow autumn boulevards right down to the black waters of the Yauza, peering into the darkness and convincing myself that, no, it’s not time to tell yet everyone about the Barber doll, that you can still own it almost alone. But it’s impossible to delay any longer - the time has come to share with everyone the knowledge about the Moscow botanist H.

It seems quite easy to imitate the style of the stories of Alexander Chayanov (yes, the same one whose name is the street on which the Russian State University for the Humanities is located). But only it seems: unlike our exercises, Chayanov’s prose, which processes and absorbs the styles of the past it describes, is not a pastiche at all. It would be tempting to call this “postmodernism before postmodernism,” but this is not entirely true. Chayanov is interested not in the cast of the past and not in the gap between “that” man and the modern man, but precisely in their unity. Dedicating his stories to Hoffmann or clearly referring them, for example, to Odoevsky, he sees their creations not frozen in the past, albeit beautiful, but absolutely suitable tools for opening a window into the indescribable strangeness of life.

Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov was born in 1888 in the Moscow Ogorodnaya Sloboda (it is around this place, in the Lefortovo-Pokrovka-Tverskaya space, that the action in his texts takes place) into a respectable, mixed family. In 1906, he entered the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy, famous for its populist spirit.

In the first post-revolutionary years, Chayanov’s scientific career as a theorist of agricultural cooperation developed rapidly: he created the Research Institute of Agricultural Economics, became a member of the board of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture, and even went as an adviser to the Genoa Conference. And exactly at the same time he wrote sparkling, phantasmagoric stories, studied art history and the history of Moscow. Chayanov’s most famous “local lore” work is “The History of Miusskaya Square” (that’s why in 1992 the street on Miussy was renamed in his honor), in which he traces the name of the square to the legendary Razin ataman Miuska and claims that the rebellious spirit of the ataman still lingers somewhere - then in those places.

By the end of the twenties, it became clear that the Soviet government was not on the path with peasant cooperation - in 1929, at the congress of agrarian-Marxists, Chayanov’s ideas were branded in a speech by Stalin himself: “It is not clear why the anti-scientific theories of “Soviet” economists like the Chayanovs should have free circulation in our press." In July 1930, Chayanov was arrested on charges of subversion as part of the Labor Peasant Party and sentenced to five years in prison. In the fall of 1937, he was arrested again and sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on October 3, 1937.

In the sixties, Chayanov’s mystical stories were circulated in reprints. They were not even successful in narrow circles, but became part of the secret language of some intellectual companies. One of these companies was the circle that formed around the poets Stanislav Krasovitsky and Leonid Chertkov. They, who were trying to separate themselves not only from Soviet officialdom, but also from the hierarchy of uncensored literature, were captivated by Chayanov by his complete “non-belonging” and - what is even more important - by the tangible non-bindingness and therefore the special freedom of his writings.

It was from Stanislav Krasovitsky - who had already converted to Orthodoxy and abandoned his past creativity - that I, as a child, heard about “The extraordinary but true adventures of Fyodor Mikhailovich Buturlin, described according to family legends by the Moscow botanist X.” He read this story to us children before bed, read it, as I now understand, with cuts, releasing all the passionate scenes. What I heard then remained in my memory as some kind of shadow theater: swirls of snow, pointed hats of the Illuminati, the crooked fingers of Count Jacob Bruce, who somehow survived until the end of the 18th century.

In 1989, Chayanov’s stories were published as a separate edition, with a preface stating for safety that his agricultural theory was highly valued by Lenin and even relied on it in his article “On Cooperation.” Growing up, I opened this book - the first story there was signed by that same botanist X: “The History of a Hairdressing Doll, or the Last Love of the Moscow Architect M.”

There are impressions that you want to keep as a secret, or rather, as a secret - in my childhood there was such a game: you had to press a bottle glass into the ground with a collage of, for example, a candy wrapper, a bead and a flower placed under it, admire it a little, and then bury it . Because it’s so beautiful-only-for-you that you don’t really want to share it.

Moreover, this is an erotic text. Moreover, it develops (no, this, God forgive me, is not a spoiler, this becomes clear on the very first pages) one of the most titillating topics in the world: love for Siamese twins. At this point, as if taken from pornographic postcards of the Art Nouveau era, Chayanov develops a touching, romantic, cuttingly sad and, yes, incendiary story of forbidden love - in principle, the same recipe in “Lolita”.

“The Barber Doll” contains, in my opinion, the best sex scene in Russian literature (by the way, Nabokov - if we remember Lolita - said that they don’t know how to write them in Russian at all).

I will give it in full along with the title and epigraph.

ХV Catastrophe

Tongues greedily squeeze each other in kisses,
And thigh pressing against thigh ignites passion
Ovid Nazon
…………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

This, you see, is somehow nice and important to have as a secret or secret. But now I'm sharing. Read.