Red Hogwarts. Series 8. Sail
If we are talking about Fadeev, one cannot help but recall another student of the Moscow Mining Academy - Nikolai Konstantinovich Kostarev.
He was born in 1893 in Perm in the family of a Cossack and a raznochinets. In this very 1893, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov sailed to Sakhalin, looked at the lead waves of the steaming Sea of Okhotsk Sea for a long time, and in the evening he wrote in a booklet: “When a blanket falls from a boy reading the Maine Reed at night, it will chill, and then he dreams is the sea . "
The boy Kolya, who was born that year, had such dreams.
Perm today is a rather brutal city, and even before the revolution, okromya factories and taverns there was little that was there. Fortunately, no environment can cancel books that have all that is not enough in reality - a dream, adventure, romance and miracles.
Among the guttering candles and evening prayers,
Among the spoils of war and peaceful bonfires,
There lived book children who did not know the battles,
Exhausted from their petty catastrophes.
Children are forever annoyed by their age and life,
And we fought to grazes, to mortal grievances,
But our mothers ’clothes were patched to us in time,
We swallowed books, getting drunk from the lines.
N.K. Kostarev. This is the only image remaining.
Kohl read avidly - and the commemorated Mayne Reed, and Walter Scott, and Alexander Dumas and Emilio Salgary and Louis Bussenard - and in general he grinned everything he could find. I read both in Perm and Tyumen, where the family moved, and where Kohl went to a real school.
As all parents know, the fascination with book adventures is unsafe - sooner or later the child will begin to look for them in reality. That is exactly what happened to Kolya - while still in high school, he became keenly interested in politics, became close to anarchists, studied and quoted Bakunin and Kropotkin, and generally became mired in political activities. An unreliable realist should not have dreamed of a university, so after school Kohl, having received a deficient specialty as a locksmith, wandered in search of adventure throughout Russia. He worked at the Novy Lessner plant in Petrograd, there he became acquainted with the Marxists, began to write notes in the Pravda newspaper, with which he collaborated in 1912-1913. Dosotrudnichalsya - was arrested, he began to write poetry in prison, and after his release he went to the other end of the mainland to the glorious city of Vladivostok, where he worked as a mechanic in a military port. After the outbreak of the First World War, he was called up and was at the front.
The long military epic of Nikolay Kostarev began.
Lipley hair to us on the sweaty foreheads,
And sucked under the spoon sweetly from the phrases.
And our heads circled the smell of struggle,
From the yellowed pages of flying to us.
And we tried to comprehend, who did not know wars,
Accepting the belligerent cry for the
Mystery, the words “order”, the setting of boundaries,
The meaning of the attack and the clang of war chariots.
The slang of war chariots still did not want to stop, and the two revolutions did not change anything in this sense — even in Perm’s native, where VKP (b) member Nikolai Kostaryov turned out to be in 1917, it smelled of powder no less distinctly than in the trenches on the German front . However, the smell of this young man was already familiar, and the feeling of coming great blood, without which, you see, can not do, did not scare, but rather stimulated the political activity of the former book boy.
Since March 1917, Comrade Kostarev is a member of the Executive Committee of the Perm district (Ural) Council of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies. One of the editors of the newspaper "News of the Ural Council of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies." In June 1917, he participated in the famous 1st All-Russian Congress of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies. And here, in Perm, in 1917 he published his first book - a collection of poems "Contrasts: Lyrics of Prison and Will".
And after the October Revolution, it finally became clear that it was impossible to do without war. The world bourgeoisie will not allow them to build the desired Land of Justice.
In February 1918, Kostarev was the organizer of the Red Army units in the city of Perm. From 1918 he participated in the Civil War: first in the Ural region, in the detachment of Vasily Konstantinovich Blucher. Together with the future marshal, the entire legendary 54-day and 1,500-kilometer raid on the white lines was held, for which Blucher became the first military to be awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Then, as is well known, the 51st Infantry Division with fights went from Tyumen to Lake Baikal, and Nikolay Kosarev walked along this path.
Commander of the Order of the Red Banner Vasily Blucher in 1919.
In Transbaikalia, he fought at the headquarters of Sergei Lazo - Kostareva was lucky to be famous commanders. By order of Lazo, Kostarev moved to the Far East, in Primorye, where, under the pseudonym "Tumanov", he became the commander of the headquarters of partisan detachments in the Spassk-Yakovlevka area. Member of the regional committee and the Military Council of the partisan detachments of Primorye.
Then Nikolai Kostarev became the first literary teacher of Alexander Fadeev, who fought in his partisan detachment. Two owners of pseudonyms — the commander of the Tuman squad and the fighter of Bulyg — got close to each other on the basis of a love of literature as such and adventure literature — in particular. Oddly enough, but even the real Civil War did not abolish the love of yellowed pages and disheveled bindings. Pirate brigs, musketeer cloaks, the treasures of Eldorado and other fort-stagnas-stayssel and od-bom-bramseli still worried about both of them - despite the war, personnel, the international situation and the World Revolution.
We hardly ever know what the two were discussing at the campfire in the taiga at night and what they were talking about on seemingly endless foot marches. But something the same books can tell us. To be more precise, two volumes with Fadeev Kostarev's autographs, kept in the rare book's collection of the Kh.I. Grodekov. One inscription - on the book “The Last of Udege” of the sample of 1931 - is quite traditional: “Dear Kohl! At the evening devoted to the Far Eastern partisans, I am glad to present you this book about the partisans - to you, with whom we spent our best partisan years. A. Fadeev. 04/07/1931 . But the second dedication is more than interesting. In 1927, Fadeev signed his recently published best-selling book “Razgrom” as follows: “Jack Sail by Jack Sailor, who turned, however, ... just a man in the street. Alexander. 9.11.1927 .
Such a Montigomo Hawkclaw appears on the background of Spassk's assault nights and volochaevsky days.
However, any war ends sooner or later. And although the Civil War in the Far East dragged on for more than two years compared with European Russia, it has also declined. When it became quieter, to everyone's surprise, the partisan commander in considerable ranks, Comrade Tumanov, became not a party worker, as everyone expected, but a journalist, a correspondent for the local newspaper Krasnoye Znamya (whose editorial board during my time as Vladivostok journalist was right above us) and ... avant-garde poet under the pseudonym "Nikola".
“The poet Nikola” was very famous in the creative circles of Vladivostok - he was a member of the Literary and Artistic Society, maintained close creative relations with the poets of the “Creativity” group like Nikolay Aseev and Sergey Tretyakov. In 1919–1924 he published his first works in Vladivostok - the poems “IDEEFIXE: The Tragedy of Human Daring,” “The White Flag ... They Killed: (Lyrical Expression)” and “Aeropoem”.
Figure N.Tyrsy to the book of N. Kostarev "My Chinese diaries"
But all the same - with poetic creativity, as you can imagine, Kostaryov’s life was not exhausted. The wrong personnel situation was in the Republic in order to rush to proven comrades committed to the Revolution. In 1920-1921, Kostarev was on a business trip in China, where he carried out some delicate assignments, in particular, according to rumors — he meets in Harbin with Nikolai Ustryalov, the founding father of the ideology of “national Bolshevism” and the ideologist of smenovekhovstvo. Moreover, the meeting seemed to take place under the mediation of the editor of the Harbin-based Smenowekhovsky magazine “Window” by poet Sergey Alymov, the author of the song “Flowers are good in the spring, even better are girls” in the spring ”concluded in Solovki and participant in the tragic defense of Sevastopol in 1941-42.
In the fall of 1921, Kostarev moved to Moscow - Fadeev, who remained in the new capital after a party congress and injured, says in one of his letters that our Far Easterners are here more and more, and that the poet Nicola and his wife arrived. By the way, at the end of 1921 in Moscow at the First State Theater of the RSFSR (now the Theater named after Meyerhold) the opening of the winter season was marked by the premiere of the play by N.K. Kostareva "Idee Fixe".
However, the poet Nikola did not become a professional playwright, but he entered the Moscow Mining Academy with A. Fadeyev. In the letter I.I. To Dolnikov, on May 1, 1922, the future “literary minister” of the Soviet Union wrote:
“I now live in the dormitory of the Mining Academy, where a lot of good lads, in particular, my roommate Kostarev is now, not discouraged that I do not listen to him, vehemently proves to me that nature does not like constancy, and proves this position mostly with obscene words - Well, may Jehovah forgive him! However ... damn it! he spits his saliva and climbs to fight. Kostarev! .. But Beletsky came to whom I went to the Vitebsk gubernia, he will beat Kostarev on his side, for his uncle is healthy, and I will finish the message with epic calm ”.
Everything is clear with Fadeev - he is barely in his twenties, but Kostarev is something! And what about Kostarev? And Father Commander Kostarev — for a second — was also twenty-nine.
__________________________
Intermedia:
The Beletsky mentioned in the letter is Ivan Yakovlevich Beletsky, another character from the memorable photo - the second big-hearted brigand from the right flank.
About Ivan Beletsky almost nothing is known. Of the peasants, Belarusian by nationality, come from the Vitebsk province, a participant in the Civil War, a graduate of the Mining Academy. While studying at the academy he was friends with Fadeev, the future classic even went to his home in a Belarusian village for the holidays. In 1925, he was the commandant of the most legendary hostel on Staromonetny Lane, 33, where almost all my heroes lived. He did not stay behind the post, and next year he transferred the post of commandant of the hostel, Leonid Evgenievich Miller, in the future to one of the first bimetal developers in the country, the order bearer and the Stalin Prize laureate. He was under curfew for a long time, several years, right up to the end of the MGA. And in 1928-29, Beletsky became one of three members of the dean's office of the mining department of the Moscow Mining Academy.
Mining engineer, a student of Alexander Mitrofanovich Terpigorev. In 1933 he edited the book “Coal combines” in Gosgorizdat under the editorship of his teacher. That is, in fact, all that I managed to dig about this man. But back to Kostarev.
______________________
Engineers are rarely obtained from poets, and if they are, they are usually quite bad. Therefore, it is probably for the best that Kostarev, like Fadeev, did not finish his studies at the Mining Academy. Since 1924, we have already seen him in Leningrad, as a journalist, as a special correspondent for Rabochaya Gazeta. By that time, he wrote the play “The Tragedy of Human Daring”, partisan stories and stories “Hike”, “Farewell to the Horse”, “The End of Ivan Shevchenko” and others. However, adventure literature became his main love and main object of creativity in the 1920s .
Jack Sail did not forget youthful dedication. In 1924 - 1926 in collaboration with the poet Venedikt Mart-Matveyev, whom he met in Vladivostok and continued acquaintance in Harbin, publishes under the pseudonym "Naked Mat" an adventure novel-trilogy "The Yellow Devil" (volume one - "The Thunderstorm Exploded", volume two - " Teeth of yellow: Insurgency ", volume three -" Teeth of yellow are broken "). It was one of the first Soviet adventure novels in which intelligence, special services and counterintelligence of various countries collided in the Far East. This novel, oddly enough, has not been forgotten until now, Boris Strugatsky recalls it in his second and last solo novel, The Powerless of the World.
In 1925, the literary duo Kostarev - March, but already under the pseudonym “S. Narimanov "publishes a book in the genre of" adventure novel "called" White anchor ". According to the annotation, in the book “insidious saboteurs and omnipresent spies, the white emigration of the brilliant detective of the Soviet search line and his misdemeanor’s assistant are constantly opposing the white emigration on the panels of Constantinople. Chases, disguises, shootouts and Ju-Jitsu techniques are included . ”
These are very interesting books. No, well, this is, of course, thrash, “Soviet Pinkerton,” but this is such a unique thrash of the first years of socialism that it already ceases to be pulp fiction and becomes evidence of an epoch. It is interesting that of all the books of Kostarev, only this adventure has survived. All other creations are long forgotten, and the three-volume book of the Yellow Devil was republished in 2015, the White Anchor in 2016.
Unfortunately, the duet soon fell apart, and here, probably, it is necessary to say a few words about co-author Kostarev.
Benedict Mart, who, according to his passport, was Venedikt Nikolaevich Matveyev, came from the culture-treyger family of Matveyevs known to all of Vladivostok. Papa, Nikolai Petrovich Matveev, was born in the family of a medical assistant of the Russian Orthodox mission in Japan and became first the first European born in Hokkaido, and then the famous Vladivostok poet-local lore journalist who voluntarily adopted the pseudonym "Crab" and the father of 12 children, poets (Nikolai “Matveyev-Bodry”, Venedict, Gabriel) and local historians (Zotik).
The co-author of Kostarev, Benedict Matveyev, remained in history as a futurist poet, which is somewhat offensive. Indeed, at one time they were actively hanging out with the futurists who had invaded Vladivostok with Brother Gabriel, but Benedict quickly slanted Burliuk and the company and even published an article entitled “Futurism - Museum Mold”.
In general, Benedict was an ideal, reference model of a bohemian poet and cooked up a biography for himself - everyone was jealous, decadent in its brightest manifestations. He began writing poems in the gymnasium, the first collection of “Gusts” was published in 1914, at his father’s printing house. With the beginning of the war, he was drafted into the army, where he bayoned a non-commissioned officer, after which he began to mow and landed not under a tribunal, but into a Durku. In an insane asylum he became infected with typhus and almost died. The assistant nurse of Jewish nationality, Serafim Lesokhina, saved him. She fell in love with Benedict and took him to her home. Hardly oklevavshis, the grateful poet sneaks away from the savior home in Vladivostok, where he publishes several collections of poems and his own translations of ancient Chinese poets Wang Wei and Li Bo, as well as the Japanese Emperor Mutsuhito.
V.Matveev in military service
The poet, however, underestimated the stubbornness of the “daughter of Israel”, who, knowing the address, soon showed up in Vladivostok in a house on Abrekovskaya 9, and moreover in a hopelessly pregnant state.
I had to get married. The first child did not survive, the second son, whom the poet father mercilessly wrote down "Zangvildom", was born on December 1, 1918. Pope-poet, meanwhile, almost all of 1918 spent traveling around Japan at the invitation of an outstanding Japanese poetess Yosano Akiko and her spouse poet Yosano Hiroshi. In 1919, during the regular absences of Benedict, his wife threw a note “Your husband is killed” and she went crazy. Soon, her relatives took her to Petersburg, where she would stay in an insane asylum until the end of her days and die in the blockade. And papa-poet and his son, who was not even two years old, moved to China, to Harbin.
In China, Benedict again released several collections of poems, and also sat deeply on morphine and opium smoking. Therefore, soon reached the handle. In 1921, an announcement was published in the evening Harbin newspaper: “A Russian poet-journalist is looking for work (no matter what). I can work with children, work at the library, secretariate, I know newspaper business (ten years), corrections, expeditions, newspapers, etc. I can sell the copyright to my publications. I can make reports, direct literary endeavors. I agree to be a laborer, janitor, watchman, etc. I'm not afraid of any work. Address: Harbin, Nakhalovka, Royal Street. №8, V.N. Matveyev-Mart .
Benedict Mart. Hi-shing-wei (the Chinese name of Vladivostok is VN). Songs. Chinese etudes. Harbin, 1922.
In 1923, the poet still manages to get off the drugs and moves with his son to Moscow. It was then that co-authorship with Kostarev happened, and everything would be fine, but vodka quickly took the place of opium. Benedict lives in Tomilino at the poet's dacha Konstantin Fofanov, kutit with Esenin and drinks like a horse, rumors about his alcoholic exploits go all over Moscow. As a result, for a restaurant brawl he receives three years of exile in Saratov without the right to return to Moscow. By now, the ten-year-old Zangvild will live for some time on the street with street children until his relatives pick him up.
And the promising duet of authors of adventurous prose disintegrates forever. Yes, and the cheerful recklessness of the twenties was already coming to an end, lead thirties were advancing.
While one is sitting in Saratov, the second is again traveling along the Celestial. In 1926-27 Kostarev is again on a business trip in China, as a journalist, accompanies his old comrade Vasily Blucher, who at that time was planning and implementing the northern campaign of the Kuomintang troops as the main military adviser to Sun Yat-sen. Following the trip, Kostarev published the book “My Chinese Diaries”, which became very popular and sustained five editions in a short time. The book was published with the author's dedication “I dedicate to Comrade Blucher. Author". Subsequently, precisely because of this dedication after the arrest of Blucher, she was withdrawn from the libraries while the author was alive.
Since the late 1920s. Kostarev finally matured and became a solid person. He abandoned both poetry and adventure novels, and completely switched to the documentary-artistic genre, until the end of his life he wrote only essays. He headed the Leningrad association of proletarian essayists "Drafts" (elegant name, you see), where several well-known Soviet writers studied, in particular, the author of the trilogy "Old Fortress" Vladimir Belyaev.
In 1929–1937, the former poet Nicola regularly published in the journal Znamya; the author of the sketch books "The Border at the Castle" (1930), "The Sakhalin Records" (1937), "Meetings with Sergey Lazo" (1937). By the way, Kostarev is the author of the popular fake that S. Lazo was burnt down by the Japanese in the steam locomotive - it was in his essay that this legend first saw the light.
In Leningrad, he lived in the House-commune of engineers and writers (aka “The Tear of Socialism”) at ul. Rubinstein, house number 7. He was friends with many literary functionaries, now almost forgotten, and only with Fadeev something happened to them, and friends became almost enemies. The details are not known to anyone, and it is unlikely that they will come up, but Fadeev never remembered Kostarev anywhere, and the books of the former commander were literally smashed in the magazines “Lava” and “At the Turn”, A. Fadeev was a member of the editorial board.
Through the efforts of one of the new friends, also an essayist, General Secretary of the USSR SP in 1936-1941, Vladimir Stavsky, Kosarev in the mid-30s moved from Leningrad to Moscow, and settled in the “literary” cooperative house at 5, Nashchokinsky Pereulok. Together with his wife and daughter, he occupied a room in apartment No. 26, and the second room was occupied by the Mandelstam family. The ensuing "communal war" is described in detail in N.Ya. Mandelstam, where a neighbor is repeatedly commemorated, “instilled to us by the Writers' Union under the guarantee of Stavsky. He called himself a writer, and sometimes reported that he was equal to the rank of a general. His name is Kostyrev . ”
In these memoirs, Kostarev appears as the one he most likely became at that time - a literary functionary, close to the powerful and maintaining close informal ties with the special services. According to the literary critic and publicist Igor Volgin, N. Kostaryov is generally one of the prototypes of Aloiz Mogarych in the Bulgakov Master and Margarita. And only in one episode, the former Kosterev, the poet and warrior, wanders through the books of the romantic partisans, flashes when he reprints Mandel'shtam's poems found in a shared bathroom, paying tribute to his unloved neighbor's talent.
In this picture - a solid essayist, short-sightedly peering at someone else's sheet and finger-tying the buttons of a typewriter - it is best to finish this story. Anyway, happy-end does not work.
Beloved commander Vasily Blucher will die on November 9, 1938 in the NKVD prison on Lubyanskaya Square, on March 10, 1939, in hindsight, will be deprived of the rank of marshal and sentenced to death for "spying for Japan."
Osip Mandelstam’s unloved neighbor will be arrested in the Moscow region on the night of May 1, 1938, soldered to five years of camps, he will die on New Year's Eve, on December 27, 1938, in the transfer camp on First River in beloved Kostaryov Vladivostok.
The poet Mart-Matveyev will serve time, return from exile, take his son and go with him to Leningrad, and from there to Kiev. He will not run away from anyone - they will take him in Kiev on June 12, 1937, on charges of spying for Japan, and will be shot on October 16, 1937.
His son Zangvild will remain in occupied Kiev during the war, and then he and his wife will go west with the Germans. Sinking in Munich, then move to the United States. He will change his first and last name, become one of the most famous poets of the Russian diaspora, Ivan Elagin, and write the famous “Amnesty”.
Still alive the man
Who shot my father
in Kiev, in the thirty-eighth summer.
Probably retired ...
Nadezhda Mandelshtam will live a long but hardly happy life, and will die in Moscow. Also on New Year's Day - December 29, 1980, in the ninth decade.
Literary functionary-essayist Vladimir Petrovich Stavsky will be a war correspondent in Khalkhin-Gol and in the Finnish war, where he will be seriously wounded. During the war - a special war correspondent for the newspaper Pravda (in which Kostarev began his journalistic activities) on the Western and Kalinin fronts. He died in 1943 during a sally into the neutral zone along with a sniper Claudia Ivanova near Nevel. Buried in Velikie Luki.
Two years earlier, in 1941, Nikolai Kostarev, who was arrested and convicted in 1939, will die in what camp the enemy of the people will die in.
Jack Sailor will survive Jack Sails by 15 years - he will shoot himself in the heart with a revolver at a cottage in Peredelkino on May 13, 1956.
With a quote from Chekhov about children's books, we began this essay, with a quote about children's books and finish.
Only children's books to read,
Only children's thoughts to cherish,
All great to dispel far,
From deep sadness to rise.
I am dead tired from life,
I do not accept anything from it,
But I love my poor land
Because I have not seen another.
The essay used poems VS Vysotsky and O.E. Mandelstam I thank LJ-user alter_vij, whose posting about Kostareva once introduced me to this person.
He was born in 1893 in Perm in the family of a Cossack and a raznochinets. In this very 1893, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov sailed to Sakhalin, looked at the lead waves of the steaming Sea of Okhotsk Sea for a long time, and in the evening he wrote in a booklet: “When a blanket falls from a boy reading the Maine Reed at night, it will chill, and then he dreams is the sea . "
The boy Kolya, who was born that year, had such dreams.
Perm today is a rather brutal city, and even before the revolution, okromya factories and taverns there was little that was there. Fortunately, no environment can cancel books that have all that is not enough in reality - a dream, adventure, romance and miracles.
Among the guttering candles and evening prayers,
Among the spoils of war and peaceful bonfires,
There lived book children who did not know the battles,
Exhausted from their petty catastrophes.
Children are forever annoyed by their age and life,
And we fought to grazes, to mortal grievances,
But our mothers ’clothes were patched to us in time,
We swallowed books, getting drunk from the lines.
N.K. Kostarev. This is the only image remaining.
Kohl read avidly - and the commemorated Mayne Reed, and Walter Scott, and Alexander Dumas and Emilio Salgary and Louis Bussenard - and in general he grinned everything he could find. I read both in Perm and Tyumen, where the family moved, and where Kohl went to a real school.
As all parents know, the fascination with book adventures is unsafe - sooner or later the child will begin to look for them in reality. That is exactly what happened to Kolya - while still in high school, he became keenly interested in politics, became close to anarchists, studied and quoted Bakunin and Kropotkin, and generally became mired in political activities. An unreliable realist should not have dreamed of a university, so after school Kohl, having received a deficient specialty as a locksmith, wandered in search of adventure throughout Russia. He worked at the Novy Lessner plant in Petrograd, there he became acquainted with the Marxists, began to write notes in the Pravda newspaper, with which he collaborated in 1912-1913. Dosotrudnichalsya - was arrested, he began to write poetry in prison, and after his release he went to the other end of the mainland to the glorious city of Vladivostok, where he worked as a mechanic in a military port. After the outbreak of the First World War, he was called up and was at the front.
The long military epic of Nikolay Kostarev began.
Lipley hair to us on the sweaty foreheads,
And sucked under the spoon sweetly from the phrases.
And our heads circled the smell of struggle,
From the yellowed pages of flying to us.
And we tried to comprehend, who did not know wars,
Accepting the belligerent cry for the
Mystery, the words “order”, the setting of boundaries,
The meaning of the attack and the clang of war chariots.
The slang of war chariots still did not want to stop, and the two revolutions did not change anything in this sense — even in Perm’s native, where VKP (b) member Nikolai Kostaryov turned out to be in 1917, it smelled of powder no less distinctly than in the trenches on the German front . However, the smell of this young man was already familiar, and the feeling of coming great blood, without which, you see, can not do, did not scare, but rather stimulated the political activity of the former book boy.
Since March 1917, Comrade Kostarev is a member of the Executive Committee of the Perm district (Ural) Council of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies. One of the editors of the newspaper "News of the Ural Council of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies." In June 1917, he participated in the famous 1st All-Russian Congress of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies. And here, in Perm, in 1917 he published his first book - a collection of poems "Contrasts: Lyrics of Prison and Will".
And after the October Revolution, it finally became clear that it was impossible to do without war. The world bourgeoisie will not allow them to build the desired Land of Justice.
In February 1918, Kostarev was the organizer of the Red Army units in the city of Perm. From 1918 he participated in the Civil War: first in the Ural region, in the detachment of Vasily Konstantinovich Blucher. Together with the future marshal, the entire legendary 54-day and 1,500-kilometer raid on the white lines was held, for which Blucher became the first military to be awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Then, as is well known, the 51st Infantry Division with fights went from Tyumen to Lake Baikal, and Nikolay Kosarev walked along this path.
Commander of the Order of the Red Banner Vasily Blucher in 1919.
In Transbaikalia, he fought at the headquarters of Sergei Lazo - Kostareva was lucky to be famous commanders. By order of Lazo, Kostarev moved to the Far East, in Primorye, where, under the pseudonym "Tumanov", he became the commander of the headquarters of partisan detachments in the Spassk-Yakovlevka area. Member of the regional committee and the Military Council of the partisan detachments of Primorye.
Then Nikolai Kostarev became the first literary teacher of Alexander Fadeev, who fought in his partisan detachment. Two owners of pseudonyms — the commander of the Tuman squad and the fighter of Bulyg — got close to each other on the basis of a love of literature as such and adventure literature — in particular. Oddly enough, but even the real Civil War did not abolish the love of yellowed pages and disheveled bindings. Pirate brigs, musketeer cloaks, the treasures of Eldorado and other fort-stagnas-stayssel and od-bom-bramseli still worried about both of them - despite the war, personnel, the international situation and the World Revolution.
We hardly ever know what the two were discussing at the campfire in the taiga at night and what they were talking about on seemingly endless foot marches. But something the same books can tell us. To be more precise, two volumes with Fadeev Kostarev's autographs, kept in the rare book's collection of the Kh.I. Grodekov. One inscription - on the book “The Last of Udege” of the sample of 1931 - is quite traditional: “Dear Kohl! At the evening devoted to the Far Eastern partisans, I am glad to present you this book about the partisans - to you, with whom we spent our best partisan years. A. Fadeev. 04/07/1931 . But the second dedication is more than interesting. In 1927, Fadeev signed his recently published best-selling book “Razgrom” as follows: “Jack Sail by Jack Sailor, who turned, however, ... just a man in the street. Alexander. 9.11.1927 .
Such a Montigomo Hawkclaw appears on the background of Spassk's assault nights and volochaevsky days.
However, any war ends sooner or later. And although the Civil War in the Far East dragged on for more than two years compared with European Russia, it has also declined. When it became quieter, to everyone's surprise, the partisan commander in considerable ranks, Comrade Tumanov, became not a party worker, as everyone expected, but a journalist, a correspondent for the local newspaper Krasnoye Znamya (whose editorial board during my time as Vladivostok journalist was right above us) and ... avant-garde poet under the pseudonym "Nikola".
“The poet Nikola” was very famous in the creative circles of Vladivostok - he was a member of the Literary and Artistic Society, maintained close creative relations with the poets of the “Creativity” group like Nikolay Aseev and Sergey Tretyakov. In 1919–1924 he published his first works in Vladivostok - the poems “IDEEFIXE: The Tragedy of Human Daring,” “The White Flag ... They Killed: (Lyrical Expression)” and “Aeropoem”.
Figure N.Tyrsy to the book of N. Kostarev "My Chinese diaries"
But all the same - with poetic creativity, as you can imagine, Kostaryov’s life was not exhausted. The wrong personnel situation was in the Republic in order to rush to proven comrades committed to the Revolution. In 1920-1921, Kostarev was on a business trip in China, where he carried out some delicate assignments, in particular, according to rumors — he meets in Harbin with Nikolai Ustryalov, the founding father of the ideology of “national Bolshevism” and the ideologist of smenovekhovstvo. Moreover, the meeting seemed to take place under the mediation of the editor of the Harbin-based Smenowekhovsky magazine “Window” by poet Sergey Alymov, the author of the song “Flowers are good in the spring, even better are girls” in the spring ”concluded in Solovki and participant in the tragic defense of Sevastopol in 1941-42.
In the fall of 1921, Kostarev moved to Moscow - Fadeev, who remained in the new capital after a party congress and injured, says in one of his letters that our Far Easterners are here more and more, and that the poet Nicola and his wife arrived. By the way, at the end of 1921 in Moscow at the First State Theater of the RSFSR (now the Theater named after Meyerhold) the opening of the winter season was marked by the premiere of the play by N.K. Kostareva "Idee Fixe".
However, the poet Nikola did not become a professional playwright, but he entered the Moscow Mining Academy with A. Fadeyev. In the letter I.I. To Dolnikov, on May 1, 1922, the future “literary minister” of the Soviet Union wrote:
“I now live in the dormitory of the Mining Academy, where a lot of good lads, in particular, my roommate Kostarev is now, not discouraged that I do not listen to him, vehemently proves to me that nature does not like constancy, and proves this position mostly with obscene words - Well, may Jehovah forgive him! However ... damn it! he spits his saliva and climbs to fight. Kostarev! .. But Beletsky came to whom I went to the Vitebsk gubernia, he will beat Kostarev on his side, for his uncle is healthy, and I will finish the message with epic calm ”.
Everything is clear with Fadeev - he is barely in his twenties, but Kostarev is something! And what about Kostarev? And Father Commander Kostarev — for a second — was also twenty-nine.
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Intermedia:
The Beletsky mentioned in the letter is Ivan Yakovlevich Beletsky, another character from the memorable photo - the second big-hearted brigand from the right flank.
About Ivan Beletsky almost nothing is known. Of the peasants, Belarusian by nationality, come from the Vitebsk province, a participant in the Civil War, a graduate of the Mining Academy. While studying at the academy he was friends with Fadeev, the future classic even went to his home in a Belarusian village for the holidays. In 1925, he was the commandant of the most legendary hostel on Staromonetny Lane, 33, where almost all my heroes lived. He did not stay behind the post, and next year he transferred the post of commandant of the hostel, Leonid Evgenievich Miller, in the future to one of the first bimetal developers in the country, the order bearer and the Stalin Prize laureate. He was under curfew for a long time, several years, right up to the end of the MGA. And in 1928-29, Beletsky became one of three members of the dean's office of the mining department of the Moscow Mining Academy.
Mining engineer, a student of Alexander Mitrofanovich Terpigorev. In 1933 he edited the book “Coal combines” in Gosgorizdat under the editorship of his teacher. That is, in fact, all that I managed to dig about this man. But back to Kostarev.
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Engineers are rarely obtained from poets, and if they are, they are usually quite bad. Therefore, it is probably for the best that Kostarev, like Fadeev, did not finish his studies at the Mining Academy. Since 1924, we have already seen him in Leningrad, as a journalist, as a special correspondent for Rabochaya Gazeta. By that time, he wrote the play “The Tragedy of Human Daring”, partisan stories and stories “Hike”, “Farewell to the Horse”, “The End of Ivan Shevchenko” and others. However, adventure literature became his main love and main object of creativity in the 1920s .
Jack Sail did not forget youthful dedication. In 1924 - 1926 in collaboration with the poet Venedikt Mart-Matveyev, whom he met in Vladivostok and continued acquaintance in Harbin, publishes under the pseudonym "Naked Mat" an adventure novel-trilogy "The Yellow Devil" (volume one - "The Thunderstorm Exploded", volume two - " Teeth of yellow: Insurgency ", volume three -" Teeth of yellow are broken "). It was one of the first Soviet adventure novels in which intelligence, special services and counterintelligence of various countries collided in the Far East. This novel, oddly enough, has not been forgotten until now, Boris Strugatsky recalls it in his second and last solo novel, The Powerless of the World.
In 1925, the literary duo Kostarev - March, but already under the pseudonym “S. Narimanov "publishes a book in the genre of" adventure novel "called" White anchor ". According to the annotation, in the book “insidious saboteurs and omnipresent spies, the white emigration of the brilliant detective of the Soviet search line and his misdemeanor’s assistant are constantly opposing the white emigration on the panels of Constantinople. Chases, disguises, shootouts and Ju-Jitsu techniques are included . ”
These are very interesting books. No, well, this is, of course, thrash, “Soviet Pinkerton,” but this is such a unique thrash of the first years of socialism that it already ceases to be pulp fiction and becomes evidence of an epoch. It is interesting that of all the books of Kostarev, only this adventure has survived. All other creations are long forgotten, and the three-volume book of the Yellow Devil was republished in 2015, the White Anchor in 2016.
Unfortunately, the duet soon fell apart, and here, probably, it is necessary to say a few words about co-author Kostarev.
Benedict Mart, who, according to his passport, was Venedikt Nikolaevich Matveyev, came from the culture-treyger family of Matveyevs known to all of Vladivostok. Papa, Nikolai Petrovich Matveev, was born in the family of a medical assistant of the Russian Orthodox mission in Japan and became first the first European born in Hokkaido, and then the famous Vladivostok poet-local lore journalist who voluntarily adopted the pseudonym "Crab" and the father of 12 children, poets (Nikolai “Matveyev-Bodry”, Venedict, Gabriel) and local historians (Zotik).
The co-author of Kostarev, Benedict Matveyev, remained in history as a futurist poet, which is somewhat offensive. Indeed, at one time they were actively hanging out with the futurists who had invaded Vladivostok with Brother Gabriel, but Benedict quickly slanted Burliuk and the company and even published an article entitled “Futurism - Museum Mold”.
In general, Benedict was an ideal, reference model of a bohemian poet and cooked up a biography for himself - everyone was jealous, decadent in its brightest manifestations. He began writing poems in the gymnasium, the first collection of “Gusts” was published in 1914, at his father’s printing house. With the beginning of the war, he was drafted into the army, where he bayoned a non-commissioned officer, after which he began to mow and landed not under a tribunal, but into a Durku. In an insane asylum he became infected with typhus and almost died. The assistant nurse of Jewish nationality, Serafim Lesokhina, saved him. She fell in love with Benedict and took him to her home. Hardly oklevavshis, the grateful poet sneaks away from the savior home in Vladivostok, where he publishes several collections of poems and his own translations of ancient Chinese poets Wang Wei and Li Bo, as well as the Japanese Emperor Mutsuhito.
V.Matveev in military service
The poet, however, underestimated the stubbornness of the “daughter of Israel”, who, knowing the address, soon showed up in Vladivostok in a house on Abrekovskaya 9, and moreover in a hopelessly pregnant state.
I had to get married. The first child did not survive, the second son, whom the poet father mercilessly wrote down "Zangvildom", was born on December 1, 1918. Pope-poet, meanwhile, almost all of 1918 spent traveling around Japan at the invitation of an outstanding Japanese poetess Yosano Akiko and her spouse poet Yosano Hiroshi. In 1919, during the regular absences of Benedict, his wife threw a note “Your husband is killed” and she went crazy. Soon, her relatives took her to Petersburg, where she would stay in an insane asylum until the end of her days and die in the blockade. And papa-poet and his son, who was not even two years old, moved to China, to Harbin.
In China, Benedict again released several collections of poems, and also sat deeply on morphine and opium smoking. Therefore, soon reached the handle. In 1921, an announcement was published in the evening Harbin newspaper: “A Russian poet-journalist is looking for work (no matter what). I can work with children, work at the library, secretariate, I know newspaper business (ten years), corrections, expeditions, newspapers, etc. I can sell the copyright to my publications. I can make reports, direct literary endeavors. I agree to be a laborer, janitor, watchman, etc. I'm not afraid of any work. Address: Harbin, Nakhalovka, Royal Street. №8, V.N. Matveyev-Mart .
Benedict Mart. Hi-shing-wei (the Chinese name of Vladivostok is VN). Songs. Chinese etudes. Harbin, 1922.
In 1923, the poet still manages to get off the drugs and moves with his son to Moscow. It was then that co-authorship with Kostarev happened, and everything would be fine, but vodka quickly took the place of opium. Benedict lives in Tomilino at the poet's dacha Konstantin Fofanov, kutit with Esenin and drinks like a horse, rumors about his alcoholic exploits go all over Moscow. As a result, for a restaurant brawl he receives three years of exile in Saratov without the right to return to Moscow. By now, the ten-year-old Zangvild will live for some time on the street with street children until his relatives pick him up.
And the promising duet of authors of adventurous prose disintegrates forever. Yes, and the cheerful recklessness of the twenties was already coming to an end, lead thirties were advancing.
While one is sitting in Saratov, the second is again traveling along the Celestial. In 1926-27 Kostarev is again on a business trip in China, as a journalist, accompanies his old comrade Vasily Blucher, who at that time was planning and implementing the northern campaign of the Kuomintang troops as the main military adviser to Sun Yat-sen. Following the trip, Kostarev published the book “My Chinese Diaries”, which became very popular and sustained five editions in a short time. The book was published with the author's dedication “I dedicate to Comrade Blucher. Author". Subsequently, precisely because of this dedication after the arrest of Blucher, she was withdrawn from the libraries while the author was alive.
Since the late 1920s. Kostarev finally matured and became a solid person. He abandoned both poetry and adventure novels, and completely switched to the documentary-artistic genre, until the end of his life he wrote only essays. He headed the Leningrad association of proletarian essayists "Drafts" (elegant name, you see), where several well-known Soviet writers studied, in particular, the author of the trilogy "Old Fortress" Vladimir Belyaev.
In 1929–1937, the former poet Nicola regularly published in the journal Znamya; the author of the sketch books "The Border at the Castle" (1930), "The Sakhalin Records" (1937), "Meetings with Sergey Lazo" (1937). By the way, Kostarev is the author of the popular fake that S. Lazo was burnt down by the Japanese in the steam locomotive - it was in his essay that this legend first saw the light.
In Leningrad, he lived in the House-commune of engineers and writers (aka “The Tear of Socialism”) at ul. Rubinstein, house number 7. He was friends with many literary functionaries, now almost forgotten, and only with Fadeev something happened to them, and friends became almost enemies. The details are not known to anyone, and it is unlikely that they will come up, but Fadeev never remembered Kostarev anywhere, and the books of the former commander were literally smashed in the magazines “Lava” and “At the Turn”, A. Fadeev was a member of the editorial board.
Through the efforts of one of the new friends, also an essayist, General Secretary of the USSR SP in 1936-1941, Vladimir Stavsky, Kosarev in the mid-30s moved from Leningrad to Moscow, and settled in the “literary” cooperative house at 5, Nashchokinsky Pereulok. Together with his wife and daughter, he occupied a room in apartment No. 26, and the second room was occupied by the Mandelstam family. The ensuing "communal war" is described in detail in N.Ya. Mandelstam, where a neighbor is repeatedly commemorated, “instilled to us by the Writers' Union under the guarantee of Stavsky. He called himself a writer, and sometimes reported that he was equal to the rank of a general. His name is Kostyrev . ”
In these memoirs, Kostarev appears as the one he most likely became at that time - a literary functionary, close to the powerful and maintaining close informal ties with the special services. According to the literary critic and publicist Igor Volgin, N. Kostaryov is generally one of the prototypes of Aloiz Mogarych in the Bulgakov Master and Margarita. And only in one episode, the former Kosterev, the poet and warrior, wanders through the books of the romantic partisans, flashes when he reprints Mandel'shtam's poems found in a shared bathroom, paying tribute to his unloved neighbor's talent.
In this picture - a solid essayist, short-sightedly peering at someone else's sheet and finger-tying the buttons of a typewriter - it is best to finish this story. Anyway, happy-end does not work.
Beloved commander Vasily Blucher will die on November 9, 1938 in the NKVD prison on Lubyanskaya Square, on March 10, 1939, in hindsight, will be deprived of the rank of marshal and sentenced to death for "spying for Japan."
Osip Mandelstam’s unloved neighbor will be arrested in the Moscow region on the night of May 1, 1938, soldered to five years of camps, he will die on New Year's Eve, on December 27, 1938, in the transfer camp on First River in beloved Kostaryov Vladivostok.
The poet Mart-Matveyev will serve time, return from exile, take his son and go with him to Leningrad, and from there to Kiev. He will not run away from anyone - they will take him in Kiev on June 12, 1937, on charges of spying for Japan, and will be shot on October 16, 1937.
His son Zangvild will remain in occupied Kiev during the war, and then he and his wife will go west with the Germans. Sinking in Munich, then move to the United States. He will change his first and last name, become one of the most famous poets of the Russian diaspora, Ivan Elagin, and write the famous “Amnesty”.
Still alive the man
Who shot my father
in Kiev, in the thirty-eighth summer.
Probably retired ...
Nadezhda Mandelshtam will live a long but hardly happy life, and will die in Moscow. Also on New Year's Day - December 29, 1980, in the ninth decade.
Literary functionary-essayist Vladimir Petrovich Stavsky will be a war correspondent in Khalkhin-Gol and in the Finnish war, where he will be seriously wounded. During the war - a special war correspondent for the newspaper Pravda (in which Kostarev began his journalistic activities) on the Western and Kalinin fronts. He died in 1943 during a sally into the neutral zone along with a sniper Claudia Ivanova near Nevel. Buried in Velikie Luki.
Two years earlier, in 1941, Nikolai Kostarev, who was arrested and convicted in 1939, will die in what camp the enemy of the people will die in.
Jack Sailor will survive Jack Sails by 15 years - he will shoot himself in the heart with a revolver at a cottage in Peredelkino on May 13, 1956.
With a quote from Chekhov about children's books, we began this essay, with a quote about children's books and finish.
Only children's books to read,
Only children's thoughts to cherish,
All great to dispel far,
From deep sadness to rise.
I am dead tired from life,
I do not accept anything from it,
But I love my poor land
Because I have not seen another.
The essay used poems VS Vysotsky and O.E. Mandelstam I thank LJ-user alter_vij, whose posting about Kostareva once introduced me to this person.