The play “The Golden Cockerel” based on the fairy tale of the same name by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, which was staged scandalously on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater famous director Kirill Serebrennikov aroused the wrath of Orthodox believers.

A group of Orthodox activists, outraged by the mockery of the production of “The Golden Cockerel” “at shrines, the priesthood and the Russian Orthodox Church” and the “humiliation of the dignity of Orthodox Christians” allowed in it, wrote an open letter to Patriarch Kirill demanding that Serebrennikov’s performance be banned.

It is not very clear in what exact way the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church able to stop “sacrilege and blasphemy towards Orthodox faith" The representative of the Bolshoi Theater press service, Katerina Novikova, has the same opinion, who noted that since Kirill Serebrennikov’s “The Golden Cockerel” does not promote violence, national hatred and pornography, “it is impossible to ban anything, some like one thing, others like another.”

This is not the first time in Russian history that mockery and blasphemy of faith and the glorious deeds of our ancestors have occurred; we can recall the story of the play “Bogatyrs” by D. Bedny.

"Bogatyrs"

D. Bedny's play, staged in 1936 at the Chamber Theater, was removed from the repertoire for mocking Russian history.

These are the heroes

In the center is Prince Vladimir with a black beard.

About the play "Bogatyrs" by Demyan Bedny
Minutes of the Politburo meeting No. 44, 1936

Approve the following draft resolution of the Committee on Arts:
Due to the fact that Demyan Bedny’s opera-farce “Bogatyrs”, staged under the direction of A. Ya. Tairov at the Chamber Theater using Borodin’s music,
a) is an attempt to glorify the robbers of Kievan Rus as a positive revolutionary element, which is contrary to history and completely false in its political tendency;
b) indiscriminately denigrates the heroes of the Russian epic, while the most important of the heroes are, in the popular imagination, bearers of the heroic traits of the Russian people;
c) gives an ahistorical and mocking image of the baptism of Rus', which was in fact a positive stage in the history of the Russian people, since it contributed to the rapprochement Slavic peoples with peoples of higher culture,
The Committee for Arts Affairs under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decides:
1. The play “Bogatyrs” should be removed from the repertoire as alien to Soviet art.
2. Invite Comrade Kerzhentsev to write an article in Pravda in the spirit of this decision.

Certificate from the secret political department of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR “On the responses of writers and artists to the removal of D. Bedny’s play “Bogatyrs” from the repertoire
"...Stanislavsky, People's Artist USSR: “The Bolsheviks are brilliant. Everything that the Chamber Theater does is not art. This is formalism. This is a practical theater, this is a Koonen theater.”
...Sadovsky, People's Artist of the RSFSR, artist of the Maly Theater: “A reasonable resolution. They correctly slapped hands on Tairov and Demyan Bedny. The history of the great Russian people cannot be distorted.”
...P. Romanov, writer, prose writer: “It was good that they slammed. Demyan takes over with his order, connections and rudeness. This time it didn't work out. This is one thing, and secondly, it’s very good that they stood up for Russian folklore, Russian heroes. We must also look for Russian heroes.”
...Yu. Olesha, writer: “The play does not play the main role here. Demyan got fed up, Demyan got punched in the face. Today for him, tomorrow for another. There is no need to be particularly happy. Demyan is being paid for his past sins.”
...Dzerzhinsky, composer, author " Quiet Don": "I'm going to write the opera "Pugachev." After this committee decision, I don’t know what to do. I would like to talk to some of the leading comrades. Now the historical topic must be approached with extreme caution."

From a recording of a conversation between I.V. Stalin, A.A. Zhdanov and V.M. Molotov with S.M. Eisestein and N.K. Cherkasov about the film "Ivan the Terrible" (from the magazine "Russian Who's Who", No. 2, 2003)
Molotov. Historical events must be shown in the correct understanding. For example, there was a case with Demyan Bedny’s play “Bogatyrs”. Demyan Bedny there mocked the baptism of Rus', but the fact is that the adoption of Christianity for its historical stage was a progressive phenomenon.
Stalin. Of course, we are not very good Christians, but the progressive role of Christianity at a certain stage cannot be denied. This event was of very great importance, because it was a turn of the Russian state towards closure with the West, and not an orientation towards the East.

Kerzhentsev's article in the newspaper Pravda

Falsification of the people's past (about "Bogatyrs" by Demyan Bedny) [Revival of national and cultural traditions of Russia] (11/15/1936)

For the production of Borodin's old comic opera, the Chamber Theater ordered a new text from Demyan Bedny.
The old text by Viktor Krylov, written as a parody of pseudo-folk opera, needed to be replaced...
In the new edition, the previously missing theme of robbers was added... The main gross mistake of Demyan Bedny is that his play is an attempt to glorify the “robbers” of Kievan Rus as some kind of positive and even revolutionary element in our history...
For Demyan Bedny, the exaltation of the “robbers” and their transformation into bearers of revolutionary heroism is the main element of his entire historical concept of our past...
In the folk epic, the heroic line is led not by “robber girls”, as in Demyan Bedny, but by heroes, who are indiscriminately denigrated and blasphemed by the play, staged with such choking appetite by Tairov at the Chamber Theater...
Meanwhile, the images of heroes reveal the thoughts and aspirations of the people. They have lived among the people for centuries precisely because they personify the heroic struggle of the people against foreign invasions, the people's prowess, ingenuity, courage, cunning, generosity, which found particularly vivid expression in certain turning points history of the people and their struggle for their better lot...
And this heroism of the Russian people, this heroic epic... is transformed by Demyan Bedny into material for the general denunciation of the heroes...
Under the pretext of ridiculing all sorts of Anik-Warriors and Buyers who deserve contempt and ridicule, Demyan Poor shows the heroes as drunkards, cowards, and revelers. To show the heroes of the folk epic in this way means to distort folk poetry, to slander the Russian people, their historical past...

Having distorted the folk epic, Demyan Bedny did not stop there. For some reason, he also needed to distort history. He portrays the Baptism of Rus' as something done drunk, without any sense or understanding.

The change of religion, which was one of the largest historical events of Kievan Rus, is depicted by Demyan Bedny as a drunken Sabbath of crazy fools... It has been fairly well established that the adoption of a new faith went through many difficult stages, after negotiations, discussions, and comparisons of different faiths. It is known that Vladimir was baptized two years before the mass baptism of Rus'. But the main thing is that Demyan Bedny’s false interpretation of the history of Kievan Rus, playing along with people “without clan, without tribe,” distorts the historical past. - .

Meanwhile, how many times did Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin note in their works that at a certain historical stage, feudalism, and later capitalism, were progressive eras of human history that raised labor productivity, culture, and science.

And it is sufficiently known that the baptism of Rus' was one of the most important conditions, which contributed to the rapprochement of the Slavs with Byzantium, and then with the countries of the West, that is, with countries with a higher culture.
It is well known that the clergy, in particular the Greek, significantly contributed to the spread of literacy, book learning, foreign languages, etc. in Kievan Rus...

Thus, in its historical part, Demyan Bedny’s play is a distortion of history, an example of not only an anti-Marxist, but simply a frivolous attitude towards history, a spitting on the people’s past...
Such plays are alien to Soviet art - they only please our enemies.

P. Kerzhentsev - signature Pravda. 11/15/1936

this is modern art

The first Soviet writer and order bearer, Demyan Bedny, was not a poor man at all: he lived in the Kremlin for many years, his books were published in large editions. 70 years ago - in May 1945 - he died, leaving behind a very ambiguous memory...

He was once called the “battle singer of the working class.” What remains of the poet’s legacy now? The most diligent ones remember a few song lines: “How my own mother saw me off...”, “They wanted to beat us, they wanted to beat us, they tried to beat us...”, “Hey, company commanders, give me machine guns!”, and sometimes we use the expression he invented “ Shaitan-arba”, without suspecting, of course, the authorship. Well, maybe someone else will remember the saying “Demyan Poor is a harmful man.” Meanwhile, in the 20s of the last century, a more effective agitator for Soviet power, perhaps it was not.

Bastard of the Grand Duke

Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov(1883–1945) - that was actually the name of Demyan Bedny - from a young age he searched for the truth and walked into the fire of enlightenment. He walked, trying to establish his literary talent. A peasant son, he became not only one of the first poets Soviet Russia, but also the most temperamental of the many subverters of the old culture.

A peasant in the village of Gubovki, Aleksandrovsky district, Kherson province, until the age of seven, Efim lived in Elisavetgrad (now Kirovograd), where his father served as a church watchman. Later he had a chance to take a sip of the peasant's share in the village - together with the “amazingly sincere old man” grandfather Sofron and his hated mother. Relationships in this triangle are a haven for lovers of psychoanalysis. “Mother kept me in a black body and beat me to death. Towards the end, I began to think about running away from home and reveled in the church-monastic book “The Path to Salvation,” the poet recalled.

Everything in this short memoir is interesting - both the embitterment of an unloved son and his confession of a passion for religious literature. The latter soon passed: atheistic Marxism turned out to be a truly revolutionary teaching for young Efim Pridvorov, for the sake of which it was worth renouncing both the past and everything that was most cherished in him, except, probably, the love for the common people, for “grandfather Sofron.” Efim ended up in the school of military paramedics in Kyiv, and the then fashionable Marxism fit well with the boyish dissatisfaction with army discipline and other manifestations of autocracy.

However, in those years, the future Demyan remained well-intentioned. Myself Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich(poet and curator military educational institutions) allowed the capable young man to pass the gymnasium exams as an external student for admission to the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. By the way, Bedny later supported the rumor that the Grand Duke gave him the “court” surname... as his bastard.

Moscow 1920–1930s. Courtesy of M. Zolotarev

At the university Efim Pridvorov finally came to Marxism. At that time, he composed poetry in Nekrasov’s civic spirit.

But over the years, his beliefs became more and more radical. In 1911, he was already published in the Bolshevik Zvezda, and the very first poem was so loved by left-wing youth that its title - “About Demyan the Poor, a Harmful Man” - gave the poet a literary name, a pseudonym under which he was destined to become famous. The nickname, needless to say, is successful: it is remembered right away and evokes the right associations. For Zvezda, Nevskaya Zvezda, and Pravda, this sincere, caustic author from the people was a godsend. And in 1914, an astonishing quatrain flashed through a witty poetic newspaper hack:

There is poison in the factory,
There is violence on the street.
And there’s lead and there’s lead...
One end!

And here the point is not only that the author cleverly linked the death of a worker at the Vulcan plant, who was shot by a policeman at a demonstration, with factory lead poisoning. The laconic text has a poetic substance that sets it apart from other poetic journalism. To Demyan’s credit, many years later, at a meeting with young writers in 1931, he recognized this old miniature as one of his successes.

Fighting with censorship, the poet composed “Aesop’s Fables” and a cycle about the merchant Derunov: from his pen, rhymed swear words addressed to the autocracy and anthems of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party came out almost daily. Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) from his “distance” he called on his comrades to nurture Demyan’s talent. Joseph Stalin, who headed the party press in 1912, agreed with him. And all his life the poet was proud of the fact that he collaborated with the leaders long before October.

So that I don't hit small game,
And he would hit the bison wandering through the forests,
And by the fierce royal dogs,
My fable shooting
Lenin himself often led.
He was from afar, and Stalin was nearby,
When he forged both “Pravda” and “Star”.
When, having glanced at the strongholds of the enemy,
He pointed out to me: “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to come here.”
Hit with a fabulous projectile!

“The Red Army has bayonets...”

During the Civil War Demyan Bedny experienced the highest rise in popularity. His talent was perfectly adapted to working under time pressure: “Read, White Guard camp, the message of Poor Demyan!”

The most masterly of the propaganda of those years was called "Manifesto of Baron von Wrangel"- reprise on reprise. Of course, all this had nothing to do with the real Peter Wrangel, who spoke Russian without an accent and received orders for fighting the Germans in World War I, but such is the genre of unfriendly cartoon. The poet dragged in everything he could here, portraying the general of the Russian army as “Wilhelm the Kaiser’s servant.” Well, after the war, anti-German sentiments were still strong - and Demyan decided to play on them.

It is possible that this best example Russian macaroni poetry (a kind of comic poetry characterized by a mixture of “French with Nizhny Novgorod”): unless Ivan Myatlev Yes Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy they just as wittily and abundantly introduced foreign words into the Russian rhymed text. And the phrase “We will watch” has become a catchphrase.

Definitely, in the white camp there was no satirist equal in enthusiasm and skill! Poor in Civil outplayed all the venerable kings of journalism of the Silver Age. And he won, as we see, not only by “following the reader, and not ahead of him” with ditty democracy: no one would refuse the “baron’s little thing” Nekrasov, nor Minaev, nor Kurochkin. Then, in 1920, perhaps the best lyric poem by the militant leader of the working class, “Sadness,” was born.

But - a provincial stop...
These fortune tellers... lies and darkness...
This Red Army soldier is sad
Everything is going crazy for me!<…>

The sun shines dimly through the clouds,
The forest goes into the deep distance.
And so this time it's hard for me
Hide my sadness from everyone!

On November 1, 1919, in a few hours, Demyan wrote the front-line song “Tanka-Vanka.” Then they said: “Tanks are Yudenich’s last bet.” The commanders feared that the soldiers would falter when they saw the steel monsters. And then a slightly obscene but coherent song appeared, at which the Red Army soldiers laughed.

Tanka is a valuable prize for the brave,
She was a scarecrow to a coward.
It’s worth taking the tank from the whites -
White people are worthless.

The panic disappeared as if by hand. It is not surprising that the party valued an inventive and dedicated agitator. He knew how to intercept an opponent's argument, quote it and turn it inside out to benefit the cause. In almost every poem, the poet called for reprisals against enemies: “A fat belly with a bayonet!”

Adherence to the simplest folklore forms forced Demyan Bedny argue with modernists of all directions, and with “academics.” He consciously adopted a ditty and a patter: here is both a simple charm and an undoubted trump card of mass accessibility.

This is not a legend: his propaganda really inspired ideological Red Army soldiers and turned hesitant peasants into sympathizers. He covered many miles of the Civil War on a cart and an armored train, and it happened that he accurately hit distant front-line “tanks” from Petrograd and Moscow. In any case, the Order of the Red Banner was well deserved by Bedny: a military order for combat poetry.

Court poet

When the Soviet system was established, Demyan was showered with honors.

He is in full accordance with real name- became a court poet. He lived in the Kremlin and shook hands with the leaders every day. In the first Soviet decade, the total circulation of his books exceeded 2 million, and there were also leaflets. By the standards of the 1920s and 1930s, this was a colossal scale.

The former rebel now belonged to the officialdom, and not by talent great fame, to be honest, was ambiguous. Sergey Yesenin liked to call his “colleague” Efim Lakeevich Pridvorov, and he himself was the People’s Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky ridiculed Poor in an unkind epigram:

Poet, do you already feel
Himself as a Soviet Beranger.
You really are “Be”, you really are “Zhe”
But still you are not Beranger...

However, this did not prevent Demyan from being at the epicenter of historical events. For example, according to the testimony of the then commandant of the Kremlin, a Baltic Fleet sailor Pavel Malkova, the proletarian poet was the only person, with the exception of several Latvian riflemen, who saw the execution of F Annie Kaplan September 3, 1918.

Fanny Kaplan (1890–1918), who shot Lenin on August 30, 1918 (left)
Demyan Bedny (1883–1945) was one of the most successful proletarian poets. Courtesy of M. Zolotarev

“To my displeasure, I found Demyan Bedny here, running at the sound of the engines. Demyan’s apartment was located just above the Automotive Armored Detachment, and along the stairs of the back door, which I forgot about, he went straight down into the courtyard. Seeing me with Kaplan, Demyan immediately understood what was going on, nervously bit his lip and silently took a step back. However, he had no intention of leaving. Well then! Let him be a witness!

- To the car! – I gave a curt command, pointing to a car standing at a dead end. Shrugging her shoulders convulsively, Fanny Kaplan took one step, then another... I raised the pistol..."

When the body of the executed woman was doused with gasoline and set on fire, the poet could not stand it and lost consciousness.

Memoirs Pavel Malkova, written using Andrey Sverdlov, the son of the first chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, make us remember the indignation Alexandra Pushkina regarding the publication in France of “The Notes of Sanson, the Parisian Executioner”. In 1918, the realities of executions were too close to literary destinies, as well as to any others; after all, Yesenin’s canon “He did not shoot the unfortunate in prison” became a response to the fabrication popular among emigrants that “Yesenin, among other ways to seduce girls, there was one like this: he invited the girl to watch the executions in Cheka, “I, they say, can easily arrange this for you” (as he wrote Ivan Bunin in "Autobiographical Notes", citing the article Vladislav Khodasevich). But Bedny really had similar “entertainments”

“He approached the altar with mockery...”

From the first days of October, the revolutionary poet carried out propaganda not only topical issues Civil War. He attacked the shrines of the old world, and above all Orthodoxy. Demyan continually exhibited caricatures of priests (“Father Ipata had money…”), but this was not enough for him.

The poor even took Pushkin as an ally in his poetic Preface to the Gabrieliad, unequivocally declaring about the great poet: “He approached the altar with mockery...” Such a militant atheist Demyan - it’s better not to come up with an anti-God agitation, because he’s not an infidel, not a foreigner, but a proletarian of peasant origin, an undoubted representative of the majority.

First - a book of poems “Spiritual Fathers, Their Sinful Thoughts”, endless rhymed feuilletons against the “church dope”, and later – the ironic “New Testament without the flaw of the Evangelist Demyan”, in which Bedny tried to rethink the Scripture with a ditty.

These attempts caused consternation even against the backdrop of hysterical anti-religious propaganda Emelyan Yaroslavsky. It seemed that Demyan had been possessed by a demon: with such frenzy he spat at the already defeated icons.

In Bulgakov's main novel, it is his features that are discerned in the images Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz And Ivan Bezdomny. And what is true is true: Poor s great power vanity passionately desired to remain in history as the number one fighter against God. To do this, he rhymed the subjects of Scripture, diligently lowering the style to the “bottom of the body.” The result was an absurd story about alcoholics, swindlers and red tape with biblical names... Demyan had grateful readers who accepted this ocean of mockery, but “A Testament without Flaw” was embarrassed to be republished even during the years of new anti-religious campaigns. We cannot even quote two or three lines from that opus as an example: every word is spit.

In the obscene poem, Poor appeals to the well-known anti-church plot of the Gospel of Judas. The shocking idea of ​​rehabilitating “the first fighter against Christian obscurantism” was in the air then. Actually, already in the decadent tradition of the early twentieth century, interest in the controversial figure of the fallen apostle appeared (remember the story Leonida Andreeva"Judas Iscariot") And when in the streets they sang at the top of their voices, “We will climb into heaven, we will disperse all the gods...”, the temptation to exalt Judas was impossible to avoid. Fortunately, the leaders of the revolution turned out to be not so radical (having received power, any politician involuntarily begins to cruise towards the center) and in Lenin’s “plan for monumental propaganda” there was no place for a monument to Judas.

Vladimir Lenin, Demyan Bedny and the delegate from Ukraine Fyodor Panfilov at the VIII Congress of the RCP(b). Moscow. 1919/Courtesy of M. Zolotarev

The routine of “literary propaganda work” (this is how Demyan himself defined his work, not without coquetry, but also with communard pride) gave rise to such rough newspaper poetry that sometimes the author could be suspected of conscious self-parody. However, satirists and parodists usually do not see their own flaws - and Bedny quite smugly responded in rhyme to topical events in political life. Here are lines from the 1919 poem “Turn. Radio telegram to London. Lloyd George":

Lenin at the Eighth Congress of Soviets,
Having touched upon many subjects in his speech,
Didn't mention your name - not even once!
But he fired off this phrase:

“Our policy: less politics.
We are not some paralytics.
If someone hits us, we will fight back,
But for us now the main thing is economic tasks.

The last thing now is proclamations,
Communism is nothing without electrification;
We have arrived at what we have been striving for for a long time:
The first places will be taken by engineers and agronomists!”

The poet created volumes of rhymed political information, although they became outdated day by day. The authorities remembered how effective an agitator Demyan was during the Civil War, and his status remained high in the 1920s and early 1930s. He appeared a real star Pravda, the main newspaper of the “entire world proletariat,” wrote widely propagated poetic messages to party congresses. He was published a lot, glorified - after all, he was an influential figure.

At the same time, people were already laughing at the pseudonym Bedny, retelling anecdotes about the lordly habits of the worker and peasant poet, who had collected an invaluable library in the revolutionary turmoil and NEP frenzy. But at the top, the everyday addictions of the non-poor Poor were tolerated.

“In the tail of cultural Americas, Europe...”

The problems started because of something else. The misanthropic attitude towards the Russian people, their history, character and customs, which appeared every now and then in Demyan’s poems, suddenly aroused the indignation of patriotic leaders of the CPSU(b). In 1930, his three poetic feuilletons – “Get Off the Stove”, “Pererva” and “Without Mercy” – gave rise to a harsh political debate. Surely, the poet did not spare derogatory colors, castigating the “birth traumas” of our history.

Russian old unfortunate culture –
Stupid,
Fedura.
The country is immensely great,
Ruined, slavishly lazy, wild,
In the tail of cultural Americas, Europe,
Coffin!
Slave labor - and predatory parasites,
Laziness was a protective tool for the people...

Rappites, and above all a frantic zealot for revolutionary art Leopold Averbakh, these publications were greeted with delight. “The first and tireless drummer and poet of the proletariat, Demyan Bedny, gives his powerful voice, the cry of a fiery heart,” they wrote about them then. “Demyan Bedny embodied the party’s calls in poetic images.” Averbakh generally called for a “widespread delusion of Soviet literature”...

And suddenly, in December 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution condemning Demyanov’s feuilletons. At first the resolution was associated with the name Vyacheslav Molotov- and Bedny decided to take the fight: he sent a polemical letter Joseph Stalin. But very quickly I received a sobering answer:

“When the Central Committee was forced to criticize your mistakes, you suddenly snorted and began shouting about a “noose.” On what basis? Maybe the Central Committee has no right to criticize your mistakes? Maybe the decision of the Central Committee is not binding for you? Maybe your poems are above all criticism? Do you find that you have contracted some unpleasant disease called “arrogance”? More modesty, Comrade Demyan...<…>

The revolutionary workers of all countries unanimously applaud the Soviet working class and, above all, the Russian working class, the vanguard of the Soviet workers, as their recognized leader, pursuing the most revolutionary and most active policy that the proletarians of other countries have ever dreamed of pursuing.

The leaders of the revolutionary workers of all countries are eagerly studying the most instructive history of the Russian working class, its past, the past of Russia, knowing that in addition to reactionary Russia there was also revolutionary Russia, Russia Radishchevs And Chernyshevsky, Zhelyabovs And Ulyanov, Khalturins And Alekseevs. All this instills (cannot help but instill!) a feeling of revolutionary spirit in the hearts of Russian workers. national pride, capable of moving mountains, capable of performing miracles.<…>

What about you? Instead of comprehending this greatest process in the history of the revolution and rising to the height of the tasks of the singer of the advanced proletariat, they went somewhere into the hollow and, confused between the most boring quotes from the works of Karamzin and no less boring sayings from Domostroi, began to proclaim to the whole world , that Russia in the past represented a vessel of abomination and desolation, that today’s Russia represents a continuous “Pererva”, that “laziness” and the desire to “sit on the stove” is almost a national trait of Russians in general, and therefore of Russian workers, who, having done Russians, of course, did not stop being part of the October Revolution. And you call this Bolshevik criticism! No, dear Comrade Demyan, this is not Bolshevik criticism, slander against our people, the debunking of the USSR, the debunking of the proletariat of the USSR, the debunking of the Russian proletariat.”

Already in February 1931, Bedny repented, speaking to young writers: “I had my own “holes” in the line of satirical pressure on the pre-October “past”...

After 1930, Demyan wrote a lot and angrily about Trotsky and the Trotskyists (he began back in 1925: “Trotsky - quickly place a portrait in Ogonyok. Delight everyone with the sight of him! Trotsky prances on an old horse, Shining with crumpled plumage ..."), but the leftist deviation, no, no, and even slipped. The new embarrassment was worse than the previous one, and its consequences for the whole Soviet culture turned out to be colossal.

The old scandal had almost been forgotten, when suddenly someone pushed the poet to come up with a farce about the Baptism of Rus', and even caricature the epic heroes... The comic opera “Bogatyrs” based on Bedny’s libretto was staged at the Moscow Chamber Theater Alexander Tairov. Left-wing critics were delighted. And many of them disappeared during the next purges...

Molotov left the performance indignant. As a result, the Central Committee’s resolution to ban the play “Bogatyrs” by Demyan Bedny on November 14, 1936 marked the beginning of a large-scale campaign to restore the old foundations of culture and “master the classical heritage.” There, in particular, it was noted that the Baptism of Rus' was a progressive phenomenon and that Soviet patriotism is incompatible with mockery of native history.

"Fight or Die"

It is known: the first time is forgiven, the second is forbidden. For “Bogatyrs,” a year or two later, Demyan, a party member since 1912, was expelled from the CPSU(b) and the Writers’ Union of the USSR. An amazing fact: they were kicked out of the party, essentially, for their disrespectful attitude towards the Baptism of Rus'! “I am being persecuted because I wear the halo of the October Revolution,” the poet used to say among his loved ones, and these words were delivered to Stalin’s table in a printed “wiretap.”

Back in the fall of 1933 Osip Mandelstam created the famous “We live without feeling the country beneath us” - a poem about the “Kremlin highlander”: “His thick fingers, like worms, are fat...”

IN THE MOST DIFFICULT TIMES
THE DAYS OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR THE POET WROTE:
“I believe in my people with an indestructible thousand-year-old faith”

There was a rumor that it was Bedny who sometimes complained: Stalin took rare books from him, and then returned them with grease stains on the pages. It’s unlikely that the “highlander” needed to find out where Mandelstam learned about “fat fingers,” but in July 1938 the name Demyan Bedny suddenly it seemed as if it had disappeared: the famous pseudonym disappeared from the newspaper pages. Of course, work on the collected works of the proletarian classic was interrupted. He prepared for the worst - and at the same time tried to adapt to the new ideology.

Demyan composed a hysterical pamphlet against “hellish” fascism, calling it “Fight or Die,” but Stalin sarcastically said:

“To the newly-minted Dante, that is, Conrad, that is... Demyan Poor. The fable or poem “Fight or Die” is, in my opinion, an artistically mediocre piece. As a critique of fascism, it is pale and unoriginal. As a criticism of the Soviet system (don't joke!), it is stupid, although transparent. Since we (have Soviet people) there is already quite a bit of literary trash, it is hardly worth multiplying the deposits of this kind of literature with another fable, so to speak... I, of course, understand that I am obliged to apologize to Demian-Dante for the forced frankness. With respect. I. Stalin."

Demyan Bedny was driven out with a filthy broom, and now poets who resembled white-cowed men were in honor. Vladimir Lugovskoy wrote distinctly “old regime” lines: “Rise up, Russian people, for mortal combat, for a formidable battle!” - and along with the music Sergei Prokofiev and cinematic skill Sergei Eisenstein(film "Alexander Nevsky") they became key in pre-war heroics. The rapid rise of the young poet Konstantin Simonov with the tradition of military glory was linked even more tightly.

Demyan was finally excommunicated from the Kremlin, not only figuratively, but also literally. Disgraced, he was forced to move to an apartment on Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. He was forced to sell off relics from his very library. The poet tried to return to the literary process, but it did not work. Fantasy seemed to work well, he even came up with the image of a dual, according to the Indian model, deity “Lenin-Stalin”, which he sang - excitedly, fussily. But he was not allowed further than the threshold. And his character was strong: in 1939, at the peak of his disgrace, Bedny married an actress Lidia Nazarova– Desdemona from the Maly Theater. They had a daughter. Meanwhile, the bullets passed close: Demyan at one time collaborated with many “enemies of the people.” They could well have treated him like Fanny Kaplan.

"I believe in my people..."

On June 22, 1941, he demanded a trip to the front - just like during the Civil War. He was refused: he was not the right age. But they returned it to the big press: the demand for fighting lines was again high. In terms of popularity, Demyanov’s rhymes could not be compared with the works of new public favorites - Tvardovsky, Simonov, Isakovsky, Fatyanov, yes even Marshak And Lebedeva-Kumacha. And yet his word helped the fighters. Front-line soldiers received parcels - pouches with tobacco. And in them are poems by Demyan:

Eh, fragrant makhorka,
It's good to smoke it...
Beat the damned fascist
Don't let him breathe!

In the most difficult days of the Great Patriotic War, he wrote: “I believe in my people with an indestructible thousand-year-old faith.” The main publications of the war years took place in Izvestia, under the pseudonym D. Combat, with drawings Boris Efimov. The poet returned, his poems appeared on poster stands - as captions for posters. He loved calls:

Listen, Uncle Ferapont:
Send your felt boots to the front!
Send urgently, together!
This is what you need!

Ferapont is mentioned here not only for the sake of rhyme: collective farmer Ferapont Golovaty at that time he contributed 100 thousand rubles to the Red Army Fund. The keen eye of the journalist could not help but grasp this fact.
Re-educated by party criticism, now Pridvorov-Bedny-Boevoy praised continuity heroic story countries with victory on the Kulikovo field and exclaimed:
“Let us remember, brothers, the old days!” He glorified Rus':

Where the word of the Russians was heard,
The friend has risen, and the enemy has fallen!

New poems have already begun to appear in Pravda, signed with the usual literary name Demyan Bedny: allowed! Together with other poets, he still managed to sing the glory of Victory. And he died two weeks later, on May 25, 1945, having published his last poem in the newspaper Socialist Agriculture.

According to a not entirely reliable legend, on the fateful day he was not allowed into the presidium of a certain ceremonial meeting. The evil genius of Poor - Vyacheslav Molotov-as if he interrupted the poet’s movement towards the chair with a question and shout: “Where?!” According to another version, his heart stopped at the Barvikha sanatorium during lunch, where actors were sitting at the table next to him Moskvin And Tarkhanov.

Be that as it may, the next day all newspapers of the USSR reported the death of the “talented Russian poet-fabulist Demyan Bedny, whose fighting word served the cause with honor socialist revolution" He did not live to see the Victory Parade, although in one of his last poems he spoke about “victorious banners on Red Square.” Demyan’s books were again published by the best publishing houses, including the prestigious “Poet’s Library” series. But he was reinstated in the party only in 1956, at the request of Khrushchev, as a “victim of the cult of personality.” It turned out that Bedny was the favorite poet of the new first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee...

The old Bolshevik, Stalin's comrade-in-arms and the first proletarian poet Demyan Bedny is clearly not one of those authors whose names come up first when talking about literary persecution. However, in November 1936, to the delight of his colleagues, he found himself in disgrace because of something so seemingly worthy of a Bolshevik as a mocking depiction of the Baptism of Rus'. The performance of the play “Bogatyrs” was removed from the repertoire of the Chamber Theater, and Bedny himself was subjected to severe criticism. They stopped publishing him, and in 1938 he was even expelled from the party and the Writers' Union. After the outbreak of the war, Stalin forgave the poet, whose main feature was, in his own words, “biographical tenderness” towards the leader. But Demyan Bedny never returned to his former heights in the hierarchy of Soviet writers.

From the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the ban on Demyan Bedny’s play “Bogatyrs”
November 14, 1936

Approve the following draft resolution of the Committee on Arts: Due to the fact that the farce opera by Demyan Bedny, staged under the direction of A.Ya. Tairov in the Chamber Theater using Borodin’s music, a) is Kievan Rus as a positive revolutionary element, which contradicts history and in its political tendency; b) the Russian epic, while the most important of the heroes are, in the popular imagination, bearers of the heroic traits of the Russian people; c) gives an ahistorical and, which was in fact a positive stage in the history of the Russian people
<…>
The Committee for Arts Affairs under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decides: 1) The play "Bogatyrs" for Soviet art. 2) Invite Comrade Kerzhentsev to write an article in Pravda.

...to be removed from the repertoire as alien...

From Platon Kerzhentsev’s article “Falsification of the People’s Past”
"Pravda", November 15, 1936

Demyan Bedny's play is a distortion of history, an example of not only an anti-Marxist, but simply a frivolous attitude towards history, a spitting on the people's past. After all, Demyan Bedny once called Russian history “rotten” before. He remembered the heroes only by their “heroic snoring,” wrote about Russian culture that “Russia’s old unfortunate culture is a fool,” and depicted the Russian people “sleeping on the stove.” The sad belching of these dislocations, alien to the Bolsheviks and simply Soviet poets, was reflected in this play.

An attempt to exalt the robbers...

From the certificate of the secret political department of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR "On the responses of writers and artists to the removal of D. Bedny's play "Bogatyrs" from the repertoire"
November 16, 1936

A. Tairov
(shocked by the committee’s decision to remove “Bogatyrs”, he declared himself ill - a heart attack. Art workers came to his home and expressed condolences. According to A. Koonen, many came as if they were visiting a dead person): “I made a big mistake. I take full responsibility for it.” responsibility, despite the fact that the arts committee that accepted the performance approved it.<…>The mistake occurred because I placed great trust in Demyan Bedny as an old communist.<…>What really scares me is whether they will let me continue working. What outrages me is the desire to make me out to be a renegade of the people<…> ".

Demyan Bedny
<…>indicated that he was having an attack of sugar sickness.<…>Further, asking not to be included in the transcript, Demyan said that his enemy was his library. This was pointed out to him, but he did not understand it. He declared that he would burn his library.<…>

Meyerhold, People's Artist of the Republic:
“Finally, they hit Tairov the way he deserved. I keep Tairov’s list of prohibited plays, on this list “Bogatyrs” will be a pearl. And that’s what Demyan needs.”<…>

Y. Olesha, writer:
“The play doesn’t play the main role here. Demyan got bored, Demyan was hit in the face. Today he’s, tomorrow someone else. There’s no reason to be particularly happy. Demyan is being paid for his previous sins.”<…>

Eisenstein, Honored Artist and Film Director:
“I haven’t seen the performance, but I’m extremely pleased at least that they gave Demyan such a great time. Serves him right, he’s too arrogant.”<…>

A mocking depiction of the baptism of Rus'...

From the note Secretary General Union of Writers of the USSR Vladimir Stavsky to Nikolai Yezhov
November 17, 1936

I inform you that on November 16 of this year D. Bedny called me and asked me to visit him so that “Before it’s too late to tell how the story with the “Bogatyrs” happened.”

I stopped by to see him; for almost two hours D. Poor spoke—I attach a transcript of his speech.

I don’t have a leader’s head, I still have an artistic head.<…>The first mistake was that I took this job. This mistake, frankly speaking, is the root of this whole matter.<…>It turned out that there was a bias towards the infringement of the heroes. When this viper crawled through all the authorities, and no one objected to this viper, I thought: “Well, well done, so I managed.” But I didn’t think about baptism.<…>Firstly, the old anti-religious burp showed up in me. I've been used to working in this business for a very long time.<…>

For me, the question is this: if I have disgraced myself so much, then at least save my honor as a revolutionary. I already had an experience once, a shock with “Get off the stove.” I also had a hard time with this incident. I said: where was the editor? Why did they let me through?<…>But it was moral suffering. In other respects I was treated kindly.<…>I now have no reason to expect boundless caresses. I’m generally sour and I don’t understand anything.

In the spirit of this decision...

They talk about the setting of the episode with the “Bogatyrs”, which put a demonstrative end to the spitting rudeness against our historical past.

This play by Demyan Bedny was performed ten times at the Tairov Theater. And nothing. They even say that Kerzhentsev himself saw her. And also nothing. Many, out of inertia, praised: “he’s great... really, “heroes”..., but what about the baptism? Hehe...”

Molotov V.M. came. to the performance. I looked, everything is fine. At the end of the Tairs, come to him with a book for honored visitors. Do not refuse, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, to write down your opinion for us as a keepsake.

- My opinion? Let me wait until tomorrow. In a day or two you will recognize him - from the newspapers.

And a day or two later Tairov found out, and with him - urbis et orbis. Tairov - to his own misfortune, the rest - to great joy. Indeed, how can you not rejoice?..

Totally false...

From a letter from Pravda editor-in-chief Lev Mekhlis to Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov and Nikolai Yezhov
July 19, 1937

Today Demyan Bedny came to the editorial office of Pravda and brought me a poem entitled “B o r i s i l u m i r a i .” Under the title of the poem there is a signature: "Konrad Rothkaempfer. Translation by German." At the end - translated by Demyan Bedny. A number of places in this poem make a strange impression<…>.

When I pointed out these and some other places in the poem to Demyan Bedny, he willingly agreed to cross them out.<…>By the end of the conversation, it became clear that no poem by Conrad Rothkaempfer existed and the very name of this supposed author was fictitious. The poem was written by Demyan Bedny. As he explained, this is a kind of literary device.

I have attached a copy of this poem. Please guide me.

From Demyan Bedny's poem "Fight or Die"

The divinely good life has arrived. / Poets write like this. Meanwhile, / In the depths of the people - something else is heard there... / And to listen to the secret speeches of the people - / Everything turns out just the opposite. / It’s time to end the fascist hell! / Who to believe? / If you blurt out a word out of place, / They’ll pour salt on your tail. / Fascist paradise - people's hell? / So, what?

I answer your request about Demyan’s fable “Fight or Die” with a letter addressed to Demyan, which you can read to him.

The latter-day Dante, i.e. Conrad, that is... Demyan Bedny.

The fable or poem "Fight or Die" is, in my opinion, an artistically mediocre piece. As a critique of fascism, it is pale and unoriginal. As a criticism of the Soviet system (don't joke!), it is stupid, although transparent.

Since we (the Soviet people) already have quite a bit of literary rubbish, it is hardly worth multiplying the deposits of this kind of literature with another fable, so to speak...

I, of course, understand that I am obliged to apologize to Demian-Dante for my forced frankness. With respect

I. STALIN

Indiscriminately denigrates the heroes...

Demyan Bedny (Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov) - poet, member of the Union of Soviet Writers. Expelled from the CPSU(b) in July of this year. for "sharply expressed moral decay."

D. Bedny had close connections with the leaders of the right and the Trotskyist-Zinoviev organization. D. Bedny is sharply anti-Soviet and hostile towards the leadership of the CPSU(b).<…>

The embitterment of D. Bedny is characterized by his following statements in the circle of people close to him: “I have become a stranger, I have gone into circulation. The era of Demyan Bedny is over. Don’t you see what is happening here? After all, the entire old guard is being cut off. The old Bolsheviks are being exterminated. They are destroying everyone the best of the best. And who needs it, in whose interests is it necessary to exterminate the entire generation of Lenin? So they are persecuting me because I have a halo on me? October Revolution". D. Bedny systematically expresses his anger against Comrades Stalin, Molotov and other leaders of the CPSU (b).

“I now have no reason to expect boundless caresses” / Banning of Demyan Bedny’s play “Bogatyrs”, November 14, 1936
Calendar of Literary Pursuits / Special Project Weekend

In the year declared the year of literature, Weekend opens new project: calendar of literary pursuits. Each issue contains one of the cases of repression in the history of Russian literature, which occurred on the corresponding dates and is told in the words of participants and witnesses. More in

Demyan Bedny (Efim Pridvorov)

The old Bolshevik, Stalin's comrade-in-arms and the first proletarian poet Demyan Bedny is clearly not one of those authors whose names come up first when talking about literary persecution. However, in November 1936, to the delight of his colleagues, he found himself in disgrace because of such a seemingly worthy Bolshevik deed as a mocking depiction of the Baptism of Rus'.
The performance of the play “Bogatyrs” was removed from the repertoire of the Chamber Theater, and Bedny himself was subjected to harsh criticism. They stopped publishing him, and in 1938 he was even expelled from the party and the Writers' Union. After the outbreak of the war, Stalin forgave the poet, whose main feature was, in his own words, “biographical tenderness” towards the leader. But Demyan Bedny never returned to his former heights in the hierarchy of Soviet writers.

From the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the ban on the play “Bogatyrs” by Demyan Bedny, November 14, 1936

Approve the following draft resolution of the Committee on Arts: Due to the fact that the farce opera by Demyan Bedny, staged under the direction of A.Ya. Tairov in the Chamber Theater using Borodin’s music, a) is an attempt to glorify the robbers Kievan Rus as a positive revolutionary element, which contradicts history and completely false according to its political tendency; b) indiscriminately denigrates the heroes Russian epic epic, while the most important of the heroes are, in the popular imagination, bearers of the heroic traits of the Russian people; c) gives ahistorical and mocking image of the baptism of Rus' which was actually a positive stage in the history of the Russian people
<…>

The Committee for Arts Affairs under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decides: 1) The play "Bogatyrs" removed from the repertoire as alien Soviet art. 2) Invite Comrade Kerzhentsev to write an article in Pravda in the spirit of this decision.

Read more...

...to be removed from the repertoire as alien...
From Platon Kerzhentsev’s article “Falsification of the People’s Past” / Pravda, November 15, 1936

Demyan Bedny's play is a distortion of history, an example of not only an anti-Marxist, but simply a frivolous attitude towards history, a spitting on the people's past. After all, Demyan Bedny once called Russian history “rotten” before. He remembered the heroes only by their “heroic snoring,” wrote about Russian culture that “Russia’s old unfortunate culture is a fool,” and depicted the Russian people “sleeping on the stove.” The sad belching of these dislocations, alien to the Bolsheviks and simply Soviet poets, was reflected in this play.

...an attempt to exalt the robbers...
From the certificate of the secret political department of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR "On the responses of writers and artists to the removal of D. Bedny's play "Bogatyrs" from the repertoire" / November 16, 1936

A. Tairov
(shocked by the committee’s decision to remove “Bogatyrs”, he declared himself ill - a heart attack. Art workers came to his home and expressed condolences. According to A. Koonen, many came as if they were visiting a dead person): “I made a big mistake. I take full responsibility for it.” responsibility, even though the arts committee that hosted the performance approved it.<…>The mistake occurred because I placed great trust in Demyan Bedny as an old communist.<…>What really scares me is whether they will let me continue working. What outrages me is the desire to make me out to be a renegade of the people<…> ".

Demyan Bedny
<…>indicated that he was having an attack of sugar sickness.<…>Further, asking not to be included in the transcript, Demyan said that his enemy was his library. This was pointed out to him, but he did not understand it. He declared that he would burn his library.<…>

Meyerhold, People's Artist of the Republic:
“Finally, they hit Tairov the way he deserved. I keep Tairov’s list of prohibited plays, on this list “Bogatyrs” will be a pearl. And that’s what Demyan needs.”<…>

Y. Olesha, writer:
“The play doesn’t play the main role here. Demyan got bored, Demyan was hit in the face. Today he’s, tomorrow someone else. There’s no reason to be particularly happy. Demyan is being paid for his previous sins.”<…>

Eisenstein, Honored Artist and Film Director:
“I haven’t seen the performance, but I’m extremely pleased at least that they gave Demyan such a great time. Serves him right, he’s too arrogant.”<…>

...a mocking depiction of the baptism of Rus'...
From a note from the General Secretary of the USSR Writers' Union Vladimir Stavsky to Nikolai Yezhov / November 17, 1936

I inform you that on November 16 of this year D. Bedny called me and asked me to visit him so that “Before it’s too late to tell how the story with the “Bogatyrs” happened.”

I stopped by to see him; for almost two hours D. Poor spoke - I attach a transcript of his speech.
_____

I don’t have a leader’s head, I still have an artistic head.<…>The first mistake was that I took this job. This mistake, frankly speaking, is the root of this whole matter.<…>It turned out that there was a bias towards the infringement of the heroes. When this viper crawled through all the authorities, and no one objected to this viper, I thought: “Well, well done, so I managed.” But I didn’t think about baptism.<…>Firstly, the old anti-religious burp showed up in me. I've been used to working in this business for a very long time.<…>

For me, the question is this: if I have disgraced myself so much, then at least save my honor as a revolutionary. I already had an experience once, a shock with “Get off the stove.” I also had a hard time with this incident. I said: where was the editor? Why did they let me through?<…>But it was moral suffering. In other respects I was treated kindly.<…>I now have no reason to expect boundless caresses. I’m generally sour and I don’t understand anything.

...in the spirit of this decision...
From the diary of Nikolai Ustryalov / November 30, 1936

They talk about the setting of the episode with the “Bogatyrs”, which put a demonstrative end to the spitting rudeness against our historical past.

This play by Demyan Bedny was performed ten times at the Tairov Theater. And nothing. They even say that Kerzhentsev himself saw her. And also nothing. Many, out of inertia, praised: “he’s great... really, “heroes”..., but what about the baptism? Hehe...”

Molotov V.M. came. to the performance. I looked, everything is fine. At the end of the Tairs, come to him with a book for honored visitors. Do not refuse, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, to write down your opinion for us as a keepsake.

My opinion? Let me wait until tomorrow. In a day or two you will recognize him - from the newspapers.

And after a day or two, Tairov found out, and with him - urbis et orbis. Tairov - to his own misfortune, the rest - to great joy. Indeed, how can you not rejoice?..

...totally false...
From a letter from Pravda editor-in-chief Lev Mekhlis to Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov and Nikolai Yezhov / July 19, 1937

Today Demyan Bedny came to the editorial office of Pravda and brought me a poem entitled “B o r i s i l u m i r a i .” Under the title of the poem there is a signature: "Konrad Rothkaempfer. Translation by German." At the end - translated by Demyan Bedny. A number of places in this poem make a strange impression<…>.

When I pointed out these and some other places in the poem to Demyan Bedny, he willingly agreed to cross them out.<…>By the end of the conversation, it became clear that no poem by Conrad Rothkaempfer existed and the very name of this supposed author was fictitious. The poem was written by Demyan Bedny. As he explained, this is a kind of literary device.

I have attached a copy of this poem. Please guide me.
_____

From Demyan Bedny's poem "Fight or Die"

The divinely good life has arrived. / Poets write like this. Meanwhile, / In the depths of the people, something else is heard... / And to listen to secret speeches from the people - / Everything turns out just the opposite. / It’s time to end the fascist hell! / Who to believe? / If you blurt out a word out of place, / They’ll pour salt on your tail. / Fascist paradise - people's hell? / So, what?
_____

I answer your request about Demyan’s fable “Fight or Die” with a letter addressed to Demyan, which you can read to him.

The latter-day Dante, i.e. Conrad, that is... Demyan Bedny.

The fable or poem "Fight or Die" is, in my opinion, an artistically mediocre piece. As a critique of fascism, it is pale and unoriginal. As a criticism of the Soviet system (don't joke!), it is stupid, although transparent.

Since we (the Soviet people) already have quite a bit of literary rubbish, it is hardly worth multiplying the deposits of this kind of literature with another fable, so to speak...

I, of course, understand that I am obliged to apologize to Demian-Dante for my forced frankness. With respect

I. STALIN

... indiscriminately denigrates the heroes...
From a certificate from the GUGB NKVD of the USSR for Joseph Stalin about the poet Demyan Bedny / September 9, 1938

Demyan Bedny (Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov) - poet, member of the Union of Soviet Writers. Expelled from the CPSU(b) in July of this year. for "sharply expressed moral decay."

D. Bedny had close connections with the leaders of the right and the Trotskyist-Zinoviev organization. D. Bedny is sharply anti-Soviet and hostile towards the leadership of the CPSU(b).<…>

The embitterment of D. Bedny is characterized by his following statements in the circle of people close to him: “I have become a stranger, I have gone into circulation. The era of Demyan Bedny is over. Don’t you see what is happening here? After all, the entire old guard is being cut off. The old Bolsheviks are being exterminated. They are destroying everyone the best of the best. And who needs, in whose interests it is necessary to exterminate the entire generation of Lenin? So they are persecuting me because I wear the aura of the October revolution.” D. Poor systematically expresses his anger against Comrade. Stalin, Molotov and other leaders of the CPSU(b).

The true history of the Russians. XX century Vdovin Alexander Ivanovich

What was bad about Demyan Bedny’s “Bogatyrs”

Throughout 1936 and subsequent years, Pravda and other central publications had to repeatedly turn to the Russian topic on other occasions. On the eve of the adoption of the new Constitution of the USSR, the significance of the new historical concept was clearly demonstrated in the case of the production of A.Ya. Tairov at the Moscow Chamber Theater of D. Bedny’s play “Bogatyrs”. The heroes of the epic epic were caricatured in the play. Prince Vladimir and his squad were portrayed in reduced comedic tones. The princely court and the constantly drunk “feast” heroes from the princely squad are cartoonishly depicted, contrasted with the real heroes - Ilya, Dobrynya. The positive heroes in the comedy are the robbers - Ugar and his friends from runaway peasants. The intrigue of the play boiled down to the adventures of the knight Nightingale, who kidnaps Princess Rogneda instead of Princess Zabava, to the satirically depicted marriage of Vladimir to the Bulgarian princess, and to the victory of Ugar and his comrades over Nightingale and the heroes from the princely squad.

In the spirit of the anti-religious campaigns of the 1920s, the play presented the baptism of Rus'. According to the text of the libretto written by Demyan Bedny, the prince has just baptized Rus'. IN national history this was an undoubted step forward in comparison with paganism. In the play, according to established vulgar atheistic canons, the event was presented in a mocking spirit, as if it had happened solely “due to a drunken affair.” Prince “he lapped up the guilt of the Greeks, caused confusion among the people in drunkenness,” That's all. As for religion itself, then « old faith I was drunk, / And the new one is even worse.”

The performance was hastily presented by some theater critics as a “delightful thing” and even as a kind of “Russification” of the Chamber Theater, carried out “with great restraint and taste.” The review of the performance noted: the real heroes (daring robbers led by Thomas) are the people; (Vladimirov’s heroes are insignificant and pathetic, it is they who personify the weak and backward Ancient Rus'; the result was a genuine folk-comic opera; the working spectator greeted the author and participants of the performance on behalf of its first spectators.

It seemed that the production using the music of the great Russian composer A.P. Borodin was expecting greater success in comparison with the play “The Baptism of Rus',” however, the reaction to “Bogatyrs” turned out to be completely different. At the premiere of the performance was the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR V.M. Molotov. After watching one act, he defiantly stood up and left. The director was told his indignant assessment: “It’s a disgrace! The heroes were wonderful people!” D. Bedny's play did not in any way correspond to the changed Petition to History, and it was immediately condemned by a special resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee dated November 14, 1936. It noted that the farce opera “a) is an attempt to glorify the robbers of Kievan Rus as a positive revolutionary element, which is contrary to history and completely false in its political tendency; b) indiscriminately denigrates the heroes of the Russian epic, while the most important of the heroes are, in the popular imagination, bearers of the heroic traits of the Russian people; c) gives an ahistorical and mocking image of the baptism of Rus', which was in fact a positive stage in the history of the Russian people, since it contributed to the rapprochement of the Slavic peoples with the peoples of a higher culture.” As a result, the play was banned and removed from the repertoire as alien to Soviet art. The head of the Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR P.M. Kerzhentsev was asked to write an article for Pravda in the spirit of the decision made. The very next day the article was published. The performance was truly destroyed. The official reaction to the production, reinforced by numerous meetings of the creative intelligentsia, clearly demonstrated the seriousness of the authorities’ intentions to discard unsuitable traditions in depicting the “wonderful” history of the Russian people.

When discussing the production at numerous meetings of theater workers, the media voiced sharp criticism of the distortion in Demyan Bedny’s play of the most ancient layers of Russian history reflected in the epic and chronicles. And indeed, according to later assessments, the performance was, if we think about it in Bulgakov’s images, like a joint concoction of Shvonder and Sharikov, which crossed all boundaries in spitting on the Motherland. Therefore, one can hardly be surprised that D. Bedny’s new opus was condemned as a “sad belching” of the dislocations noted by Stalin in his December (1930) letter to the poet. Both the author of the play and the Chamber Theater headed by Tairov, according to the head of the All-Union Committee for Arts P.M. Kerzhentsev, with his new production, “delighted” not the peoples of the Union, but “only our enemies,” since the heroism of the Russian people, the heroic epic, is dear to the Bolsheviks, just as dear to “all the best heroic traits of the peoples of our country.”

The harshest criticism came, perhaps, from the literary brethren of the hapless author of the play. Speaking at the bureau of the poets' section of the Union of Soviet Writers, A.A. Surkov said: “Demyan Bedny’s entire play is imbued with a vulgar attitude towards questions of history. Fascist literature says that in Russia there is no nationality, and there was no statehood. In connection with this interpretation, the entire concept of Demyan Bedny has a politically harmful direction.” He spoke in the same spirit about “Bogatyrs” and A.A. Fadeev. In the play, in his opinion, the author “wittingly or unwittingly, but firmly pursued the ideology of the fascists, tried to discredit folk heroes past, gave an incorrect description of Russian history." About conscious conduct fascist ideology, it was obviously not worth talking about. However, condemning yet another Russophobic distortion of national history was not only fair, but also necessary.

Criticism of Russophobia in the works of N.I. Bukharin, D. Bedny and others were clearly directed from the highest Kremlin spheres. However, she did not at all talk about the transition of Stalin and his entire circle to nationalist Russophile positions. Internationalism is a doctrine that ultimately involves overcoming national differences, in other words, a national-nihilistic doctrine, nationalist in nature. The Russian nation, due to its large size and stability, could cause internationalists the greatest fears about the feasibility of their plans. The Bolshevik internationalists could not free themselves from Russophobia so easily. Contrary to the doctrine, they had to mask their genetic defect, gradually take the path of concessions to Russian national feelings, and use Russian nationalism to achieve tactical goals, in particular, in order to moderate the excessive claims of nationalists of other nationalities. Russophobia has not only moral, ethical and socio-psychological dimensions. In historical terms, it can be defined as a policy that, with great difficulty, makes the transition from national nihilism to the recognition of a beneficial role national idea, national and national-state patriotism. To the greatest extent, national negativism in the history of our country in the 20th century affected and is affecting the Russian nation. Hence - Russophobia as ignoring and fear of the Russian national factor in deciding the political destinies of Russia and solving the Russian national question.

From the book Computerra Magazine No. 711 author Computerra Magazine

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From the book The Murder of the Chechen-Ingush People. Murder in the USSR author Avtorkhanov Abdurakhman Genazovich

How they were evicted This is how one of the Russian student eyewitnesses describes the eviction of the Chechens and Ingush, whose message is in all respects the most smooth and least “terrible”: “In 1943, I arrived in Grozny together with the Grozny Oil Institute from

From the book True Stories author Kuznetsov Alexander

Victor Babkin AND THE BOGATYRS PLAY “CAT AND MOUSE” At the Berlin World Weightlifting Championships, fans of the “iron game” witnessed the most interesting fight between middleweights Vladimir Belyaev (USSR) and Diese Veres (Hungary). It was not the participant of the five who prevailed

From the book of Parkhaty, the grave will correct, or how I was an anti-Semite author Kolker Yuri

WE WERE HAPPY - In my early youth, - the boy heard in response, - I tried to spread my brains, But realizing that I had no brains in my head, I calmly stand upside down. Spiteful critics lie - and thanks to Comrade Stalin. I grew up in paradise. I had a happy childhood. Nobody, nobody

From the book Without Leaving the Battle author Kochetkov Viktor Vasilievich

THEY WERE THE FIRST

From the book Genius and Villainy, or the Sukhovo-Kobylin Case author Rassadin Stanislav Borisovich

Bogatyrs are not you. The lines from “Woe from Wit” are generally remembered: But we have a head, which is not found in Russia, You don’t need to name it, you will recognize it from the portrait: A night robber, a duelist, He was exiled to Kamchatka, returned as an Aleut, And is firmly in the hands of the unclean; Yes smart person can't help but be a rogue. When about

From the book Meet: MUR author Veniamin Ivanovich Polubinsky

THEY WERE THE FIRST Reference point. Alarming eighteenth... MUR is on the offensive. Identifier Saushkin. Make-up artist and search The running of electric trains and the sky-high roar of fast-winged airliners, the electric scattering of city avenues and the asphalt rolled to a shine

From the book The Vile “Elite” of Russia author Mukhin Yuri Ignatievich

Who were the chroniclers? Based on the chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years,” “serious historians” claim that Slavic tribes, settled northern lands, suffered through the idea that “we have abundant land, but there is no order.” And they decided to find themselves an imported prince, so that he would bring

From the book We are from underwater space author Kasatonov Valery Fedorovich

5. How young we were Four young men, cadets of the diving school, who had just arrived in Feodosia to practice on the diesel submarine “S-338”, immediately decided to celebrate this matter. They rummaged in their pockets, threw all the available cash into their cap, counted them and

From the book Notebooks for grandchildren author Baitalsky Mikhail

3. Were we intelligent? The success of "Shpilka" in the Moldovan region gave rise to oral newspapers both in Peresyp and in the Station district. Soon the Komsomol Provincial Committee decided to begin publishing a youth newspaper. They called it "Young Guard". Rafail became the editor. Rafa in total

From the book Encyclopedia of Russian Life. My chronicle: 1999-2007 author Moskvina Tatyana Vladimirovna

So that we are healthy St. Petersburg residents know very well that it is impossible to be sick. From time to time, statistical data collected by St. Petersburg sociologists regarding the residents of St. Petersburg appear in the federal press. Evil tongues claim that our sociologists since 2003

From the book Every nation has a homeland, but only we have Russia. The problem of the unity of the peoples of Russia in extreme periods of history as a civilizational phenomenon author Sakharov Andrey Nikolaevich

Document No. 29 “It was especially creepy on October 23rd. We had little strength, there were wounded, there were killed. The German, after artillery barrage, went on the attack. There were few people in our battalion.” From a conversation with Red Army soldier Fyodor Ivanovich Cherdantsev, a liaison officer of the 3rd battalion of the 112th

From book 58. Unremoved author Racheva Elena

“In the mental hospital, everyone was like me.” I worked for half a term, as Isaich says, in a sharashka. In the city of Vorkuta, at mine No. 1. It was a wonderful time. Relatively, of course, but I remember it with gratitude. We had relatively good conditions: separate, by us

From the book Living Memory. The Great Patriotic War: the truth about the war. In 3 volumes. Volume 3. author Team of authors

THERE WERE ON THE LABOR FRONT I once heard an argument between two front-line soldiers. - So when do you say the second front was opened? - one inquired. - It’s clear, in 1944... In the summer. - Oh, you have two ears... The second front became our reality on June 22, 1941, and

From the author's book

THERE WERE FRONTLINES The famous writer, frontline soldier Vasil Bykov, once said: “For us, both the memories of prominent military leaders and the modest testimonies of ordinary participants in the war should be equally important...” And meanwhile, time is inexorable. Us, participants of the Great