Screams of an official donkey

Excerpt from Oleg Budnitsky’s book “Red and White”

The new book of the historian Oleg Budnitsky included the biographical essays of the figures of the Civil War from both sides, the collective portraits of famous military formations and the “stop cadre” of sign events. We publish a fragment dedicated to not the most famous page in the life of Samuel Marshak-his early socio-political poetry, which sometimes sounds extremely topically.

Starting from February 24, 2022, we were all in the face of the advancing barbarism, violence and lies. In this situation, it is extremely important to preserve at least the remnants of culture and support the values ​​of humanism - including for the sake of the future of Russia. Therefore, the editorial office of Gorky will continue to talk about books, reminding our readers that the world remains in the world and fiction.

Oleg Budnitsky. Red and white. M.: New Literary Review, 2023. Content

Here is a fragment of one of the first poems by Marshak, printed in Yekaterinodar, the then capital of the White movement in the south of Russia, explaining, along with the other, the headline of this chapter. The poem is called "Nah Faterland (new camping march)." It was published in the newspaper Native Earth on October 14, 1918. At this time, the defeat of Germany on the Western Front was already completely determined, and it was clear that the end of the World War II was a matter of several months or weeks. As it turned out - days. Accordingly, the German troops had to leave the territory of the former Russian Empire. The poem contained the following lines:

The campaign is played by the musician
On the shore of the Dnieper:
"Nah Faterland, nah Faterland,
It’s time to Germany. "

The front of Hindenburg is eagerly waiting
The sweetest of the teams:
“On the shoulders of the gun. March on a campaign.
Back - Nah Faterland! "

In the Kremlin alarming is dreaming
Leaders of Soviet gangs ...
“Where is the sealing car.
Run - Nah Faterland! "

I think it should not be reminded that in April 1917, Lenin returned in a sealed carriage to Russia, having passed through Germany. The idea that the Bolsheviks were just German agents was widespread among their opponents was a constant motive for anti -Bolshevik propaganda. It seemed that the Germans would leave, and the obsession would dissipate. Who would have thought that the vector in the propaganda war would soon change radically: now the Bolsheviks, who were not at all obsession, but Constant, will accuse the whites that they are the Entente hires. I will add, the “native land” was the organ of the southeast clan, and its publisher and editor was Socialist-Revolutionary Grigory Schreider, in 1917-the mayor of Petrograd. On October 24, 1917, Schreider headed the public security committee created by the Petrograd City Duma to eliminate the Bolshevik performance, but the Duma itself turned out to be liquidated. In November, Schreider was arrested for refusing to submit to the order of the Bolshevik authorities on the dissolution of the City Duma, but he was soon released. Then the Bolsheviks had not yet dared to deal with the socialists. To finish this plot: the whites were ready to endure the left -wing allies (on the basis of the fight against the Bolsheviks) only until a certain moment - in 1919, Schreider was arrested and sent abroad. Probably for the better: he died in Medon (a suburbs of Paris) in 1940 at the age of 80, avoiding the mournful fate of most of his party comrades who remained in Russia.

The above-mentioned Yernic poem was signed by one of the "traditional" pseudonyms of Marshak 1912-1913: "Dr. Frichen." How did Marshak come to his life and how did he end in Yekaterinodar? In May 1917, Marshak's parents moved to Yekaterinodar: Father, Yakov Mironovich Marshak, found a job there, and it was easier to feed himself in the south. Together with the parents of Samuel Yakovlevich, his wife Sofya with a three -month son Immanuel left for the Kuban. Marshak remained in Petrograd, where he had literary affairs. In the spring - at the beginning of the summer of 1918, he worked in a children's colony in Petrozavodsk. Obviously, in the summer or closer to the fall of 1918 he reunited with his relatives in Yekaterinodar. The situation of the family was negligent: in November 1917, the mother of Samuel Yakovlevich died, in 1918 the wife was ill with a typhoid; It was hard to live, they survived with difficulty. We do not know how Marshak made our way to Yekaterinodar. Perhaps through Ukraine. On August 17, 1918, Yekaterinodar was taken by “volunteers”, after which their time came-in the literal and figurative sense of the word, because they continued to live in the old style, so that time went back, and instead of August 17, the 4th came again. White retained control over the city until March 17, 1920. A significant part of this time Yekaterinodar was the capital of the white movement.

Samuel Marshak began to earn a living with a pen. In the power of the White in the Kuban, about twenty newspapers came out; The same is in Rostov-on-Don. The newspapers were of different directions, censorship worked and at times raged, but all this could not compare with Soviet Russia. The poem of Marshak, dated November 1918, is dedicated to Soviet censorship. The meaning of the name is explained by the epigraph - the lines of Vladimir Solovyov, either inaccurately reproduced from memory, or consciously rewritten, but completely adequately conveying the original meaning:

You are punished, Rus', omnipotent rock,
As the once unfortunate Valaam:
Frowned by your prophets
And the free word is given to your donla.

Well, now - the actual poem of Marshak:

Free printing mouth
Closed a monstrous castle,
Fearing well -deserved curses,
Autocratic owl.

There are no words and opinions of free.
But a roar is heard everywhere
Enthusiastic, smug,
Unnecessary donkeys.

And you are from the kingdom of the Council of People's Commissars
You run, dreaming somewhere
From this music of a friend
A tired soul to rest ...

Already throughout Rus' of the Great
You will not find the corner
Where these days you can’t hear a scream
An official donkey? ..

Official donkeys were enough in the camp of the White, and Marshak dedicated many toxic lines of the official press of the Swan camp, especially the Denikinsky department of propaganda-Osvagu (informative and information agency). The difference with the “Sovdepia” was that under the rule of white criticism of the policy of the authorities and the official press, although very limited, was possible, and under the Soviet regime, it was excluded.

Marshak became the head of the editorial and full -time feuilletonist of the newspaper Morning South. It was the body of the Union of Renaissance of Russia. The “Union of Renaissance” arose in March - May 1918 in Moscow as a coalition of the political parties of the left and centrist, which opposed the Bolsheviks and their then allies Left Socialist Revolutionaries. The union was established by representatives of cadets, people's socialists and Socialist -Revolutionaries; Later, it included the Mensheviks and some other social democratic groups. It was something like a levocentric coalition. The newspaper was released from November 23 (December 6), 1918 to March 4 (17), 1920. She was the successor closed by the authorities of the "native land". Like her predecessor, the newspaper was a moderately socialist direction. Among its employees were V. A. Myakotin, A. V. Peshekhonov, A. A. Yablonovsky, but the genuine “star” was the feuilletonist “Dr. Frichen” - S. Ya. Marshak.

Marshak was episodically published in some other publications, but the lion's share of his texts of 1918-1919 appeared on the pages of the South in the morning. Almost all of his poetic texts appeared signed by Dr. Frichen. In general, these are texts on the anger of the day, and local plots occupied a significant share, often it was “small feuilletons” on household topics. By and large, this is a division, but among dozens of poetic texts, in my opinion, there are simply excellent ones. In 1919, the collection “Dr. Frichen” “Satire and Epigrams” was published in Yekaterinodar. A 62 pages, which included 40 poems, is the first book of Marshak. Not part of his works.
Among the "All -Russian" (in this case - Ukrainian) objects of his satire - Simon Petliura, Vladimir Vinnichenko, generally figures of the Ukrainian national movement. And of course, the Bolsheviks. Of the most striking anti -Bolshevik texts, the “debate about Petrograd” published on the days when the White troops waged an attack on Petrograd:

Trotsky dust, inspired,
He is a great enthusiast
But impassive wise Lenin,
Like an old man ecclesiaste.

On the assumption of commissars
Puffed Trotsky beat the alarm,
Calling "Kommunar"
Defend your Petrograd.

Commissars with a formidable roar
Supported a passionate cry,
But hummed them with a wise word
Reasonable Ilyich.

“No,” he said. - Petrograd,
Frankly
We, comrades, do not ...
That we have the strength to spend in vain!

Petrograd, empty and beggar,
I forgot my previous hops
It turns into a cemetery
Our glory has a cradle.

Set the dispatches daily
Petrogradsky to me the Council of People's Commissars
Asks affectionately and angrily:
“We need bread. We need bread! ..”

Let Yudenich with the Finnish gang
The extinct city will be taken.
(True, the Palace of Kshesinskaya is sorry,
He was my first shelter!)

Let them take our Peter from the sea
Foreigners. I'm ready
To give in to him without arguing ...
There will be less excess mouths!

I will get rid of the burden
From worries and from costs ...
Let the British and French
Red Petrograd! ”

The claim that Marshak “presented” to the Bolsheviks in one of the first publications in Yekaterinodar was their attempt on historical names. In honor of the anniversary of the October Revolution, Nevsky Prospekt was renamed the avenue on October 25. Dr. Frichen responded to this with a feuilleton “The death of Nevsky Prospekt”, in which he wrote:

A wave of a pen - and the Nevsky disappeared.
Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky
Safe him ...
However, this is nothing!
Pushkin was a bourgeois and dandy.
The Black Highlight was Gogol.
Dostoevsky, they say
There was a famous retrograde ...

So, having rejected the power of traditions,
All names in the capital
Changes the Bolshevik.
He is not used to being shy ...
If only he is in power
For a year will stay, what kind of passions
Can invent a rebel.
Destroy the entire dictionary.
Will drop old rags ...
Instead of the sky - “supra -dwelling”,
Instead of the sun - "centrifrost",
Not the Moon, but the "Luna".
The names of the planets above us
He will replace the names
"Lenin", "Trotsky", "Kollontai" ...
It will be. So know.

So it became, and very soon. True, not distant planets began to be called the names of the Bolshevik leaders, large and small, but what is closer - cities, streets, squares, avenues. Gatchina became Trotsky, Tsaritsyn - Stalingrad, Elizavetgrad - Zinovievsky, and I think you should not remind how Petersburg became called. As for Lunacharsky, his name was bore (and in most cases still wear) one and a half hundred streets in the former USSR, not counting the squares, avenues, lanes, driveways and even entrances. However, Lunacharsky was not the most harmful of the Bolsheviks, but if he sinned with something, then mainly graphomaniac and lack of taste.

Marshak paid tribute to the topic of the spread of the socialist revolution among, say, political correctly, not the most prepared for it of the peoples of the former Russian Empire. Based on the intercepted (or allegedly intercepted) report of the Tashkent Commissioner, that the Kyrgyz authorities (Marshak clearly did not differentiate the peoples of Central Asia) need “banknotes”, he composed the following feuilleton:

I believe with a full conviction
I'm close to the victory.
We enlightened with a learning
Kyrgyz nation.

Soon oppressed their tyrants
This nation will overthrow.
And they will go to them rams
Socialization...

On your camel now
I'm going around the steppes.
Soon in a dead desert
Council will blossom.

The spirit, of course, is very valuable ...
But for agitation
I need, Comrade Lenin,
Also assignments.

In general, it went to Vladimir Ilyich from Samuel Yakovlevich.

No less venomously ridiculed the "Dr. Frichen" of the right. Based on newspaper publications that the Council of the National Center (anti -Bolshevik organization of the right -tocentric lady), chaired by Vasily Shulgin, made a decision on the need for dictatorship, he wrote the “little feuilleton” “dictatorship and its Prophet” (published in March 1919). I will first explain: on March 2, 1917, Shulgin, together with Alexander Guchkov, as representatives of the State Duma adopted the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II:

Tearing the crown from the head of the king,
Shulgin did not know the pleasures ...
One desire for grief -
Farily a grave sin.
The way he then strove
Return events back ...
Easy to destroy the royal throne,
How to create it?

Like instead of the former king
To build another?
Alas, under the blizzard of December
Flowers do not bloom ...
And under the glass of greenhouses,
In artificial heat
You can not grow kings
Like roses in December.

Shulgin is busy now,
Shulgin is indomitable.
“There is no emperor with us
We want a dictator ... "
Let the Russians be again
One ruler.
“One Allah,” says the Qur'an. -
And one magimum! "

On the occasion of the intentions of the Denikinsky Finance Minister of Professor Mikhail Bernatsky, to introduce the Vinno monopoly “Dr. Frichen” in October 1919 published a “new table song”:

For many years in wine
Sorrow heated the people.
But then the treasury
The large income was large.
* * *
Boyko was selling vodka,
Gay!
On a bottle and a hundredth ...
Gay!
And drunks for acute
Pharaoh dragged into the station.
* * *
In the past war
It was decided
Sobering the country
Prohibit wine.
* * *
Each patriot
It was a ban.
Even sometimes people
Drank a denatura.
* * *
In general, we lived without vodka,
Gay!
We drank no more than a hundredth a day,
Gay!
And they did not sleep in a nearby.
* * *
So five years have passed
The collapse has come in the country ...
Our budget is scanted,
There is no money in the treasury.
* * *
According to the newspapers
Now decided
What to save the budget
Maybe only wine!
* * *
Vodka will sell again,
Gay!
On a bottle and a hundred
Gay!
Let's drink again in a part
Gay!
And Long live Bernatsky!

Another object of the satire of “Dr. Frichen” is the allies, on which the opponents of the Bolsheviks laid so many hopes. In relation to the allies, Marshak was not original: the whites could not exist without their support and at the same time suspected that the allies were striving for weakening, and even the dismemberment of Russia. In a poem, entitled “Friendly Hello” (December 1919), Marshak reminded of a Russian man who

... heavily wounded the Prussian bear,
But he fell
In the struggle for you, my lords and my lady,
Monsieur, Madame.

But now he lies, all wounded
And motionless.
And the English friend says,
Leaning over him:

“You supported us all during Marne,
Oh poor friend
And we are cordially grateful to you
For a number of services.

Of course, sorry for you as a person.
But God would give
So that you remains a cripple forever -
Without arms, without legs ... "