Demyan is a poor last name. How poor Demyan turned from a peasant into a classic of the proletarian revolution and how he angered Stalin

Demyan Bedny is one of the founders of Soviet literature; his creative path is inextricably linked with the history of the Russian workers' revolutionary movement. Demyan Bedny dedicated all his talent to the people. He gave his verse, humor, and merciless satire to the Motherland, the Soviet country, chanting its victories and achievements, mercilessly defeating enemies during the civil war, during the era of socialist construction, and during the Great Patriotic War.

Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov (this is the poet’s real name) was born in 1883 into a poor peasant family in the Kherson region: his childhood was spent in an atmosphere of terrible poverty. To earn a living, the boy walked in shepherd's kiosks, read the psalter for the dead, and wrote petitions to his fellow villagers.

In 1886, his father managed to enroll him in a military paramedic school at public expense. Here he became acquainted with the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Krylov. Pridvorov’s first literary experiments date back to this period, which testified to his desire to continue the poetic traditions of Russian classical literature. After serving his military service, in 1904 E. Pridvorov entered the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University and immediately found himself in a new environment for him of revolutionary-minded students.

His political self-awareness was awakened by the 1905 revolution. At this time, the political and creative formation of the poet begins. E. Pridvorov enters literature as a lyric poet. He is greatly influenced by the popular poet P.F. Yakubovich-Melshin, who then headed the poetry department of the magazine “Russian Wealth”, in which E. Pridvorov published his poems in 1909-1910. The poet’s first works (“With terrible anxiety,” “On New Year’s Eve”) developed characteristic themes and motifs of civic poetry of the 80s. But already in these early poems of E. Pridvorov one can feel the inner passion and social pathos that are so characteristic of the subsequent work of D. Bedny. He is also looking for new forms of poetic expression, relying on the traditions of Nekrasov’s civil lyrics and oral folk art. This period of the poet’s ideological and creative quest ends in 1911. “Having previously given a significant bias towards Marxism,” Demyan Bedny wrote in his autobiography, “in 1911 I began to publish in the Bolshevik Zvezda, of glorious memory.” My crossroads converged on one road. The ideological turmoil was over. At the beginning of 1912 I was already Demyan Bedny.”

In 1911, the Zvezda published the poem “About Demyan Poor, a harmful man,” in which the poet called on workers to revolt. The poem immediately becomes popularly known, the name of the hero became the poet's pseudonym. From the emergence of Pravda until the last days of his life, Demyan Bedny was published on its pages. In 1912, his poem was published in the first issue of the newspaper, reflecting the deep faith of the people in the victory of the new revolution:

The cup of our suffering is full,
Blood and sweat merged into one.
But our strength has not faded:
She's growing, she's growing!
A nightmare - past troubles,
In the rays of dawn - the coming battle.
Fighters in anticipation of victory
They are boiling with young courage.

In “Star” and “Pravda” Bedny’s poetry acquired ideological clarity, revolutionary power of sound, and poetic clarity. Working for the newspaper also determined the uniqueness of the poet’s style. Revolutionary lyrics are organically combined in his work with satire. The main poetic genre of D. Bedny becomes the fable.

Expressing the socialist aspirations of the proletariat, Demyan Bedny reflected the interests of all working people in his work. His poetry becomes truly folk. This determines the internal unity of his work despite the diversity of themes. Addressing the masses, Demyan Bedny widely uses folklore images of song and fairy tale traditions. The poet responds to all events in the country's social life. He exposes liberals, liquidators, Mensheviks, and brands all traitors to revolutions (“Cooks”, “Fishermen”, “Dog” and others). During these years, the aesthetic views of Demyan Bedny were formed. Their basis is the Leninist principle of party membership. Demyan Bedny speaks about the great importance of the traditions of revolutionary democrats for the development of advanced Russian social thought, and fights the milestone trends in art and aesthetics. Advocating for the creation of revolutionary, truly democratic art, he sharply condemns the decadents for their separation from the people, from life, and speaks of the reactionary meaning of decadent aesthetic theories.

With Gorky, Mayakovsky and Demyan Bedny, a new stage in the development of Russian revolutionary satire begins. Developing the traditions of Krylov, Nekrasov, Kurochkin, Demyan Bedny innovatively transforms the genre of fable, satirical poetic feuilleton. D. Bedny's fable became a political, journalistic fable, incorporating the features of a feuilleton, pamphlet, and revolutionary proclamation. Traditional fable techniques acquire a new meaning and a new purpose in the fables of the poor man. The fable's didactic ending turns into a revolutionary appeal, a relevant political slogan. Epigraphs borrowed from newspapers, political documents, and chronicles of the labor movement acquired particular significance in his fable. He politically concretized the fable and sharpened it journalistically. Deeply folk in its form, D. Bedny’s fable played a huge role in educating the political consciousness of broad sections of the people.

Bedny’s poems of 1914-1917 reflected the popular protest against the imperialist war and the policies of the Provisional Government (“Barynya”, “Ordered, but the truth is not told” and others). Speaking on the fresh trail of political events, the Bolshevik poet caustically ridicules the Mensheviks, Cadets, and counter-revolutionary conspirators.

The scope of revolutionary events, the variety of tasks of revolutionary art - all this determined the variety of genres of D. Bedny's poetry and the nature of his poetic means. Now the poet writes pamphlets, songs, ditties, and epigrams. He also turns to the large narrative form. In 1917, D. Bedny published a story in verse “About the land, about freedom, about the working share.” The story, being a very significant work of proletarian poetry, seemed to sum up the entire pre-October work of the poet. Against a broad historical background, the events from the beginning of the imperialist war to the day of the October Revolution are consistently depicted. Talking about the fate of the village boy Ivan and his girlfriend, the poet was able to convincingly show how the ideas of Bolshevism penetrate the masses and take possession of them.

The story is a unique, heroic-satirical epic of the revolution. The narrative of the revolutionary events of the era is combined with specific topical satire on enemies, documented by a political pamphlet.

In an effort to make the story as accessible as possible to the people, D. Bedny focuses on the folk poetic tradition and the traditions of Nekrasov. The element of oral folk poetry is felt here in everything - including the songs, ditties, sayings, jokes included in the story, and in the compositional structure of parts of the poem.

The poetry of D. Bedny of these years, combining the pathos of the revolutionary struggle with sharp political satire, was very close in its orientation to the poetry of V. Mayakovsky.

After the Great October Revolution, all the creative plans of D. Bedny are connected with the fate of the revolution. A passionate interest in the victory of new revolutionary forces distinguishes all the poet's speeches.

During the civil war, the poet's work gained enormous popularity among workers, peasants, and Red Army soldiers. His lyrical and pathetic poems (collection “In the Ring of Fire”, 1918) were of current importance. But D. Bedny’s heroic lyrics were again organically combined with satire. Red Army songs (“Seeing Off”) and satire on the White Guards (“Manifesto of Baron von Wrangel”), comic poems (“Tanka-Vanka”), anti-religious poems (“Promised Land”, “New Testament without the flaw of the Evangelist Demyan”), signatures for revolutionary posters and satirical epigrams - this is how the poet’s talent was manifested in such a variety of ways.

D. Bedny's satire of these years is very close to Shchedrin's satire in terms of the principles of constructing a satirical image, the nature of the use of the grotesque, hyperbole, and irony. The satirical power of Bedny’s songs, ditties, and epigrams directed against the “Judenics,” “Denik warriors,” “Wrangel barons,” “Generals Shkuro” and other counter-revolutionary “crows” was enormous. His laughter, enhanced by a comically reducing rudeness, struck the enemy.

The basis of D. Bedny’s satire was high pathos. Poems of “pathos” occupy a particularly large place in the poet’s work of those years.

The most significant work of D. Bedny in the first years of the revolution was his poem “Main Street” (1922), written for the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution. It created a generalized image of the revolutionary people. The poem is filled with the romantic pathos of the victorious struggle of the proletariat: They move, they move, they move, they move, They are lowered into chains with iron links, They walk menacingly with a booming step,

They're coming menacingly
They're coming
They're coming
To the last global redoubt!..

This poem is a hymn in honor of the revolution, in honor of the revolutionary people. In 1923, during the celebration of the fifth anniversary of the Red Army, D. Bedny was one of the first Soviet writers to be awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

In the literary struggle of the 20-30s, D. Bedny defended the principles of partisanship and nationality of art (“The Resentment”, “About the Nightingale”, “I Would Beat with My Forehead”), constantly emphasizing the importance of the traditions of Russian realism for the development of modern art. “Only enemies or idiots,” Bedny said in a conversation with young writers in 1931, “can assure us that the study of classical creative techniques is a departure from modernity.”

During the years of restoration and socialist reconstruction of the national economy, D. Bedny writes about the successes and achievements of the builders of the new world. As during the Civil War, his work during this period combines pathetic heroic lyrics and satire, the affirmation of the new and the denial of the old. He glorifies the connection between city and countryside, the heroic work of ordinary Soviet people (“Labor”, “In Memory of Village Correspondent Grigory Malinovsky”). The poet’s focus is on educating the socialist consciousness of Soviet people. “Diplomatics” - satirical works on topics of international life - also occupy a significant place in his work. The target orientation of these poems is very well conveyed by the title of one of them - “To the aid of Chicherin.” The poet, with his poems, helps the people understand the dark diplomatic game of Western and American politicians who organized anti-Soviet conspiracies (“Dear Friend”, “Satirical Dialogue with Chamberlain” and others).

Socialist construction in all areas of economic and cultural life, the birth of a new creative attitude to work and new truly human relationships - this is what becomes the “focus of the poet’s thoughts.”

During the Great Patriotic War, D. Bedny was again at a combat post, he again, as during the Civil War, “put on his quiver and sword and fastened his armor and armor.” His poems are published in Pravda, Krasnaya Zvezda, in army newspapers and magazines, appear on mass combat posters, in TASS Windows. D. Bedny appears with patriotic lyrics, satirical fables, and songs. He also turns to the heroic story (“Eaglets”). In the most difficult days for the country, when the Nazis were approaching Moscow, he wrote the poem “I Believe in My People,” imbued with unshakable optimism: Let the struggle take a dangerous turn. Let the Germans amuse themselves with the fascist chimera, We will repel the enemies. I believe in my people with an unshakable thousand-year-old faith.

Key words: Demyan Bedny, criticism of the works of Demyan Bedny, criticism of the poems of Demyan Bedny, analysis of the poems of Demyan Bedny, download criticism, download analysis, download for free, Russian literature of the 20th century

Demyan Bedny

Demyan Bedny

(1883-1945;autobiography). - It is unlikely that any of our writers has had to share a life story more terrible and expressive than D.B.’s childhood. In his early years, he was closely connected with people who, in their souls and on their clothes, wore all the smells of criminality and hard labor. And it took enormous inner strength to so easily shake off this dirty scum of life. Horrifying cruelty and rudeness surrounded D.B.’s childhood. His ancestors, by the name of the Pridvorovs, belonged to the military settlers of the Kherson province. Military settlements - the brainchild of the terrible Arakcheev - represented the worst kind of serfdom, the worst slavery that the world has ever known. The military settlers looked at the ordinary serfs with the greatest envy. After the fall of serfdom, the spirit of Arakcheevism hovered over the entire Kherson region for a long time, supporting cruelty, riotousness, and bandit-robber instincts in the local population, which found their echoes later in the Makhnovshchina and Grigorievshchina.

D.B. was born on April 1 (13), 1883 in the village. Gubovka, Alexandria district, Kherson province. This is a large Ukrainian village, cut through by the Ingul River, separating the left - Ukrainian part of the village from the right, which has long been occupied by military settlers. D.B.’s grandfather, Sofron Fedorovich Pridvorov, still remembered the times of settlement well. Mother, Ekaterina Kuzminichna, was a Ukrainian Cossack from the village of Kamenki. An exceptionally beautiful woman, tough, cruel and dissolute, she deeply hated her husband, who lived in the city, and took out all her severe hatred on the son whom she gave birth to when she was only 17 years old. With kicks, beatings and abuse, she instilled in the boy a terrible fear, which gradually turned into an insurmountable disgust for his mother that remained forever in his soul.

“...An unforgettable time, a golden childhood...” the poet later ironically recalls this time of his life.

Efimka was barely 4 years old. It was a holiday and it was terribly stuffy. As usual, beaten and tearful, Efimka, trailing behind his mother, found himself at the shopkeeper Gershka. Huddled in a corner, he became an involuntary witness to the shameless scene that took place right there on the bags, in front of the shocked child’s eyes. The boy cried bitterly, and his mother frantically beat him with a stick all the way. Father, Alexey Safronovich Pridvorov, served in the city, 20 versts from Gubovka. Coming home on leave, he beat his wife to death, and she returned the beating to her son a hundredfold. Returning to his service, his father often took Efimka with him, who, like a holiday, waited for these happy respites. Until the age of 7, Efim lived in the city, where he learned to read and write, and then until the age of 13 in the village with his mother. Opposite the mother's house, right across the road, there was a shinok (tavern) and a village "massacre". For whole days Efimka sat on the rubble and looked village life in the face. Voiceless, silent, enslaved Rus', plucking up courage in a tavern, wildly bawled obscene songs, used disgusting foul language, raged, brawled, and then humbly atoned for its tavern heresies by repenting in a “cold one.” Right there, side by side with the “cold”, where there was a struggle against the individual vices of the drunken Gubs, Guba life unfolded in all its noisy breadth on the field of social struggle: village gatherings were noisy, dejected defaulters were staggering, dissatisfied complainers were shouting and demanding, and, rattling with all the strings village justice, “retribution” instilled in the Guba peasants respect for the foundations of the landowner system. And the boy listened and learned.

More than once among the characters he had to meet his own mother. Ekaterina Kuzminichna was rarely at home and, enthusiastically indulging in drinking and fighting, contributed greatly to deviations from the formal and legal order in Gubovka. Hungry, the boy knocked on the first hut he came across. “So from a young age,” said D.B, smiling, “I got accustomed to public catering: wherever you come, there is your home.” In the evenings, climbing onto the stove, Efimka shared his stock of everyday observations with his grandfather. And on Sundays, the grandfather took his grandson with him to a tavern, where the boy’s worldly education was completed in a drunken haze. At home, when he was tipsy, the grandfather loved to reminisce about the old days, about settlement times, about the lancers and dragoons who stood post throughout the Kherson region. And my grandfather’s imagination, fueled by vodka, eagerly painted idyllic pictures of serfdom.

“As it happened, for the settlement...” - the grandfather began.

It turned out that one could not wish for a better order than the patriarchal antiquity. Any innovation here is an unnecessary insertion. But when he was sober, my grandfather said something different. With hatred, he told his grandson about Arakcheevism, about the favors of the lords: how settlers were punished with sticks, how men were exiled to Siberia, and women, torn from their babies, were turned into dog feeders. And these stories are forever etched in Efimka’s memory.

“My grandfather told me a lot.

They were harsh and uncomplicated

His stories are clear

And they were worried after them

My baby dreams..."

For the lively and impressionable boy, the time had come for difficult reflections. He grabbed his grandfather's stories on the fly and struggled in anxious thoughts. On the one hand, the grandfather seemed to demand justification for the serfdom, on the other, he instilled a sworn hatred of antiquity with the everyday truth of his stories. And imperceptibly in Efimka’s brain a vague idea of ​​two truths was born: one - the unctuous and reconciling, embellished with the dreamy lies of her grandfather, and the other - the harsh, intractable and merciless truth of peasant life. This duality was supported in the boy by his rural upbringing. Having learned to read and write early, under the influence of the village priest, he began to read the psalter, “Cheti-Minea”, “The Path to Salvation”, “The Lives of the Saints” - and this directed the boy’s imagination onto a false and organically alien path. Gradually, a desire to go to a monastery even developed and became established in him, but his grandfather insultingly ridiculed the boy’s religious dreams and in his garrulous conversations he paid a lot of attention to the hypocrisy and tricks of the priests, church deception, and so on.

Efimka was sent to a rural school. He studied well and willingly. Reading plunged him into a fairy-tale world. He memorized Ershov's The Little Humpbacked Horse and almost never parted with Churkin the Robber. He instantly turned every nickel that fell into his hands into a book. And the boy had nickels. The Pridvorovs' house, due to its strategic position (against the "massacre" and the tavern and not far from the road) was something like a visiting yard. The policeman, the constable, the village authorities, the passing carts, the horse thieves, the sexton, and the peasants summoned for “retribution” came here. In the midst of this motley crowd, the boy’s receptive imagination is replenished with images of future “entertainers”, “administrators”, “streets”, “farmers”, “rebellious hares” and “guardians”. Along with the knowledge of life, Efimka acquired business skills here, and soon he began to work as a village clerk. For a copper nickel, he writes petitions, gives advice, carries out various assignments and fights in every possible way against “retribution.” His literary career began from this fight against “retribution.” And the influx of everyday experience is growing and expanding, and hundreds of new stories are accumulating. For a short time, the literate Efimka becomes necessary for his mother. Whether as a result of constant beatings or other perversion of nature, but, except for Efimka, Ekaterina Kuzminichna had no more children. This has given her a strong reputation as a specialist in progeny insurance. There was no end to this kind of insurance from hunters. Ekaterina Kuzminichna deftly maintained the deception. She gave the women all sorts of drugs and gave them infusions of gunpowder and onions. The Gubov girls swallowed regularly and gave birth regularly by the due date. Then Efimka was involved in the case. As a literate man, he wrote a laconic note: “baptized name Maria, with this ruble in silver,” and “the secret fruit of unhappy love” was forwarded along with the note to the city. The guys knew that Efimka was privy to all of his mother’s secret operations and, catching him in a dark corner, asked: “Did Pryska go to your mat? But Efimka tightly kept the girl’s secrets. In addition, as a literate boy, he earned nickels by reading the psalter for the dead. These nickels were usually also drunk by the mother.

The services provided by the boy to his mother did not make the latter more affectionate towards her son. She still tyrannized the boy, still left him for whole days without food and indulged in shameless revelry. One day a boy, completely hungry, searched every corner of the hut, but did not find a single crumb. In despair, he lay down on the floor and cried. But, lying down, I unexpectedly saw a wondrous sight under the bed: about two dozen nails were driven into the wooden bottom of the bed, and hanging from the nails on strings were: sausage, fish, bagels, sugar, several bottles of vodka, sour cream, milk - in a word, a whole shop. Notified of this, grandfather Sofron grunted: “That’s why she, the bitch, is always so red!” - but the hungry old man and the boy were afraid to touch the supplies. D.B. attributes one of the darkest memories of his childhood to this time. He is 12 years old. He is dying - probably from diphtheria: his throat is clogged to the point of complete muteness. They gave him communion and laid him under the icons. The mother is right there - bare-haired, drunk. She sews a mortal shirt and screams merry tavern songs at the top of her voice. It is painfully difficult for the boy. He wants to say something, but he just moves his lips silently. The mother bursts into drunken laughter. The cemetery watchman Bulakh enters - a drunkard and a cheerful cynic. He joins his mother in singing. Then he comes up to Efimka and good-naturedly reasons: “Well, Efimasha, let’s give a damn... Why do you want it? For a grandma. The mint smells so good there...” Someone let my father know that Efimka was dying.

Meanwhile, the abscess burst. The boy woke up from terrible screams. It was dark. A drunken mother was lying on the floor, screaming in a frantic voice under the blows of her father's boot. The father drove 20 miles from the city, found his mother drunkenly and dragged her home by her braids. From this memorable night, a turning point in Efimka’s life begins. The mother stopped beating him, the boy began to resolutely fight back and began to run to his father more often. In the city, Efimka became friends with two boys - Senka Sokolov, the son of an Elvort worker, and the son of a gendarmerie sergeant - Sashka Levchuk. The latter was preparing for paramedic school. It was prepared by a real teacher, who received 3 rubles a month. Having attended Sashka’s lessons a couple of times, the boy was completely captivated by the desire to follow in the footsteps of his friend. The father did not oppose this. He paid the teacher 3 rubles for Efimka’s right to attend lessons. For about 3 months Efimka went to see the teacher. In the fall of 1896, the boys were taken to Kyiv to take an exam.

And now the victory is won. The boy was accepted into a military paramedic school as a “officially paid” student. In the tall, warm rooms with white walls and polished floors, he immediately felt overwhelmed with sublime joy. Far behind were a fierce mother, beatings, fights, mutilations, obscene conversations, pregnant girls, foundlings, psalters for the dead, the desire to flee to a monastery. He eagerly listened to every word of the teachers, imbued with their faith and convictions. And here for the first time he gave his feelings the forms that were characteristic of his talent: he wrote poetry.

These were patriotic poems dedicated to Tsar Nicholas II on the occasion of his performance as a “peacemaker” with the convening of a conference in The Hague (in 1899):

"Sound my lyre:

I compose songs

Apostle of Peace

Tsar Nicholas!"

Could it have been different? He refuses to enter the monastery, but, of course, considers his luck as the grace of providence. Sharp by nature, but not yet touched by culture and knowledge, the boy’s thought continues to work in the same narrow church-patriotic circle. His whole soul is in the power of unctuous, reconciling truth.

“When I am asked to write about the “horrors” of military education in a military paramedic school,” says D.B., “then I just feel embarrassed. What horrors there were when I first felt free at school. High white walls, parquet floors, hot lunches every day - I never even dreamed of this. I was in tenth heaven.”

D.B. graduated from school in 1900. After that, he served in military service until 1904 in Elisavetgrad, where D.B. managed to prepare for a matriculation certificate. In the spring of 1904, he passed the exam and entered St. Petersburg University. This was a great triumph for D.B., since preparing for the matriculation certificate cost him incredible efforts. However, this triumph was, as usual, poisoned. When D.B. was leaving for St. Petersburg University, he saw a disheveled woman at the station, not entirely sober. Shaking her fist in his direction, she screamed wildly at the entire platform: “Oh, so that we get there and don’t come back...” It was Ekaterina Kuzminichna who sent her maternal blessing to her departing son. Since then, the mother has not made herself known for many years. Only in 1912, while working in the St. Petersburg public library, my son accidentally came across a small article in the Elisavetgrad newspaper: “The case of Ekaterina Pridvorova about the torture of minors.” Soon after this, the mother arrived in St. Petersburg, found her son and, without looking him in the eyes, gloomily said: “He’s gone.” - "Whom?" - "Old Man (father)." And getting confused, she said that at the bazaar in Elisavetgrad, in a latrine, they found her father’s corpse. The corpse was completely decomposed; on the finger there was a silver ring with the inscription: Alexey Pridvorov. From questioning, it turned out that she had a major quarrel with her father over a house in the village. My father was going to leave somewhere and wanted to sell the house. Mother was against it. At that time she was selling at the market, and her locker was located not far from the latrine. Listening to his mother's confused testimony, the son came to the firm conviction that she was involved in the murder. But Ekaterina Kuzminichna knew how to keep her mouth shut.

Already during the years of Soviet power, when her son became known throughout Russia, she found him in the Kremlin, came to him more than once, received money and gifts, but when leaving, she invariably stole, and did not hesitate to shout in Elisavetgrad at the bazaar: “Here is hat D . B., for three karbovanets." But when asked about her murdered father, she answered with vicious abuse. And only on her deathbed did she repent and confess that her husband was killed by her with the assistance of two lovers. On the day of the murder, she invited all three of them to her place for dinner, gave her husband poisoned vodka, and then the two wrapped him in thin string, strangled him and threw him into a latrine.

The arrival of E. Pridvorov in the capital in the early autumn of 1904 is curious: a strong fellow came out of the Nikolaev station in a red coat from his father’s shoulder, with a skinny suitcase, but in a brand new student cap and with a cane in his hand. On Znamenskaya Square. at the Nikolaevsky station there was no monument to Alexander III then, but there was a wooden fence with an expressive inscription: “it is forbidden to stop,” and near an impressive policeman on duty. Timidly and hesitantly, the student approached the policeman and politely addressed him: “Mr. Policeman, can you walk around St. Petersburg with a cane?” The policeman was puzzled: “Why not?” - “But the king lives here...” The campaigner’s mustache moved menacingly. In the strange naivety of the visiting student, he sensed hidden sedition, and something flashed in his rounded eyes that made the frightened student immediately sharpen his skis. “Subsequently,” said D.B., recalling this episode of bad memory, “I atoned for the sin of my youth and justified the policeman’s guess.” This redemption was the inscription D.B., carved on all four sides on the granite pedestal of the monument to Alexander III. With it - this quilting inscription "Scarecrow" - the now revolutionary Leningrad greets everyone leaving the Oktyabrsky (Nikolaevsky) station on the former Znamenskaya Square:

"My son and my father were executed during their lifetime,

And I reaped the fate of posthumous infamy:

I’m hanging here as a cast-iron scarecrow for the country,

Forever throwing off the yoke of autocracy.

The military paramedic drill was ingrained into E. Pridvorova’s soul for a long time and firmly. A stubborn struggle against despotism was boiling all around, Russia was trembling from underground blows. And yesterday’s Efimka’s own fate, and the memories of the ugly Guba “retribution” - everything both around and behind, it would seem, pushed E. Pridvorov into the ranks of revolutionary students. But this could not happen right away for a young man who, from the age of 13 to 21, grew up and was brought up in the requirements of military drill. He tried to study, went to lectures, listened, took notes, not without secret horror, avoiding university unrest and “riots.” This period of D.B.’s life - the period of youthful maturity and personal growth - was marked by a complex process of external and internal breakdown, which found a very accurate and truthful image in the autobiographical poem “Bitter Truth”: here the purely fabulous external transition from the “teenage shepherdess” is striking ", which

"... Rye bread... took a rug with me

And carefully put it in a bag with bread

Your favorite, well-read book"

To the life of the capital in the highest “society”, among the “gentlemen”, among the “brilliance of honors”, and then the “awakening” from the “bitter truth”, “deceptions”, a return to the lower classes of the people as an already experienced and knowledgeable fighter, in concise, strong verses here are not free poetic metaphors, but accurate images that correspond to reality, only artistically veiled - the whole history of the passionate falls and rises of this formative period of D.B.'s life - his period of Sturm und Drang.

Fate is a bizarre game

Then suddenly thrown into a noisy city,

How I was jealous at times

Having overheard an incomprehensibly clever argument among the gentlemen.

They walked - day after day, year after year.

Having mixed “shine” with light, I stubbornly pursued “shine”,

Looking at the gentlemen with peasant timidity,

Kowtow obediently.

Here, every word is a burning, self-flagellating confession, “a confession of a warm heart,” and only by deciphering every word and image of this completely truthful confession can one read the biography of these years of D.B.’s life.

But some kind of “wormhole” was invisibly eating away at the seemingly brilliant well-being of the young man, cut off from the soil on which he was born.

"...But the vague soul was yearning for the light of day,

The eternal chains pressed on my chest more painfully,

And more and more temptingly they opened it before me

Another life, a road to another world,

Sublime books from native writers."

And now “the awakening has come” (as in Pushkin):

From the splendor of honors, from the host of princes,

How I fled from a sinful obsession.

In a different environment, different friends

I found it at the time of awakening."

We repeat, here very sparingly, but very accurately, the complex path of mental storms, internal cataclysms, incredible efforts and work on oneself is outlined, which turned the student Pridvorov into “the harmful man Demyan Bedny.” Somehow it immediately became clear that the country was treading on corpses and the all-Russian Guba “retribution” was wafting from everywhere. The hand reached for the pen.

"Avenging the fruitless waste of youthful strength,

For all the past deceptions,

I inflicted cruel gusto

Evil wounds for the enemies of the people.

This is the beginning of this different - literary and political career of D.B.

The first poems of the future satirist are of a gloomy nature and imbued with the spirit of strict self-examination. They date back to 1901-1908. Over the course of the decade from 1907 to 1917, the fable constituted almost the only form of his literary work, and it was during this period that D.B. deservedly gained the reputation of a fabulist of the proletariat. The political formation of D.B. also dates back to this time. First, he entered into friendship with the populists, there he became close to the famous poet Melshin (Yakubovich), and published his first poems in the magazine “Russian Wealth”. And then he irrevocably goes to the Bolsheviks. Since 1910, he has been a regular contributor to Zvezda and Pravda. From this moment on, D.B. no longer belongs to himself. He is completely at the mercy of the struggle. With a thousand threads it is connected with the buildings of factories, factories and workshops. The moral teachings of his fables are thoroughly saturated with rebellion and filled with dynamite of class hatred. From the first days of the revolution, D.B.’s fable naturally degenerates into a revolutionary poster, a rallying call and a “communist Marseillaise.” Their organizing influence on the working masses is enormous. All paths of the revolution are illuminated by the work of D.B. Monument after monument arises in his writings: February days, Bolshevik October, the Red Army, deserters, bagmen, kulaks, new economic policy, White Guard manifestos, priestly tricks. His satires, songs and fables are an excellent chronicle of our days. D.B. himself in the poem “My Verse”, written by. in response to M. Gorky and Nov. Zhizn, he clearly defined his significance as a political writer of the era, the meaning of the ideas inspiring his poetry-feat:

And my verse... there is no shine in his simple attire..."

The purpose of this poetry is not pure aesthetics, and this voice of the modern “muse of revenge and anger” sounds differently:

"...Deaf, cracked, mocking and angry.

Carrying a cursed load of a heavy legacy,

I am not a minister of muses:

My solid, clear verse is my daily feat.

Native people, labor sufferer,

Only your judgment is important to me,

You are my only direct, unhypocritical judge,

You, whose hopes and thoughts I am a faithful spokesman,

You, whose dark corners I am a watchdog!

And this feat was appreciated: by resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on April 22, 1923, D.B. was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

L. Voitolovsky.

Large biographical encyclopedia. 2009 .

On April 13, 1883, Efim Pridvorov, better known by his literary pseudonym Demyan Bedny, was born. At one time, he managed to please Lenin, thanks to which he gained fame as the main revolutionary poet-agitator. In the end, he failed to catch new trends and ended up in humiliating disgrace. Life recalls the life story of the main revolutionary poet and fabulist.

According to the official version, known from the words of Bedny himself, he was born in April 1883 in the Kherson province into a very poor family. My father worked as a church watchman and often lived in the city. Yefim stayed with his mother, who created at home something like an inn for visitors. The location of the house was convenient, so the inn was popular. According to the writer, his mother led a dissolute lifestyle: heavy drinking, promiscuous sexual relations with strangers. She was a cruel woman and beat him constantly. In turn, her father, who occasionally came to visit them, beat her.

The main idol of little Efim Pridvorov was the head of local horse thieves. Nevertheless, in this atmosphere he learned to read and write. And after some time, his father took him to the city, away from the corrupting influence of his mother. And then they managed to get him into the Kyiv Military Paramedic School. Moreover, for the “government cost”. That is, he not only did not pay for training, but also lived on full state boarding throughout his studies. Later, his father was killed, and Bedny, until the end of his life, believed that the organizer of the murder was his mother, who persuaded two random lovers to kill him.

After graduating from school, he was supposed to serve for several years as a military paramedic in the army, but in some incredible way he managed to end up at St. Petersburg University. It was possible to enter the university only if you had a gymnasium behind you, and not a paramedic school. So this could only be done with very high patronage.

He was supported by the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich himself, who led all military educational institutions in the empire. During one of his inspection trips, he was introduced to a young man who was considered one of the most diligent students. And who wrote loyal poems. And the Grand Duke himself was a great lover of poetry. This is how their acquaintance happened, thanks to which Pridvorov eventually ended up at the university, passing the gymnasium external program.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Demyan Bedny - Russian Soviet poet, Fyodor Dmitrievich Panfilov - delegate from Ukraine (from left to right) during the VIII Congress of the RCP (b). March 18–23, 1919, Moscow. Photo: © RIA Novosti, Wikipedia

Having already become famous, Bedny loved to tell everyone his biography, flaunting the most disgusting moments. “My mother, comrades, was *** ***,” he told his stunned listeners.

However, not everyone believed these stories. Inventing a hard, beggarly life for yourself, full of hardships since childhood, was the most popular trend of writers in the first decades of the 20th century. This immediately increased interest in the author’s personality many times over. He even took a pseudonym for himself in accordance with prevailing trends. At the beginning of the century, literature was literally filled with Gorky, Pribludny, Hungry and others. Meanwhile, the editor-in-chief of the Soviet Izvestia, Gronsky, who knew Bedny well even before the revolution, argued that the Grand Duke helped the young Pridvorov for a reason.

As if he was even his illegitimate father: “Much in the biography and behavior of Bedny is not completely clear. I advise you to go to Vera Rufovna Pridvorova. Take an interest, especially in the origins of Bedny. You probably know that Bedny was the son of Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov? No be surprised. After all, it was no secret that Bedny had a portrait of Konstantin Konstantinovich on his desk. When I met him before the revolution, he was then a white-lining student at the university. Then, when Bedny joined the revolutionary movement, he came to him. the commandant of the imperial court and asked to return everything that Demyan had from K.R. Bedny returned... All this was told to me by Demyan himself when he had to decide the issue of his family.”

However, there is no convincing evidence for this version, except for Gronsky’s words. Only once in his poem “Bitter Truth” did Bedny make a vague hint:

"From the splendor of honors, from the host of princes,

I fled as if from a sinful obsession."

However, this passage can be interpreted in two ways. For example, like the fact that the splendor of honors never interested him (although here, of course, he was disingenuous). One way or another, on the topic of connections with the “host of princes” in Soviet times, he preferred to prudently remain silent.

Pridvorov remained a student for several years, but never completed his studies. And then the war began and, as a military paramedic, he was mobilized to the front. But already in 1915, he was inexplicably recalled to the reserve without any apparent reason. In all likelihood, again it was not without mysterious patronage. But by this time Efim Pridvorov was no longer there. Demyan Bedny appeared.

Harmful man

Demyan Poor Soviet poet, Georgi Dimitrov leader of the Bulgarian and international communist movement and Henri Barbusse French writer, journalist and public figure at the First Congress of Soviet Writers. 1934 Photo: © RIA Novosti, Wikipedia

While still a student at the Kyiv school of paramedics, Pridvorov wrote loyal poems. However, his talent was clearly insufficient to be noticed in literary circles. There were patriotic poets who were much more talented. As, indeed, the opposition. Therefore, Bedny’s literary rise always went hand in hand with politics.

In the early 10s, he joined the Bolsheviks. Their semi-legal newspapers became a platform for his first poems and fables. Even then, Bedny’s special style stood out and became distinct. This was not poetry in the form in which readers and listeners were accustomed to perceive it, but poetic propaganda. Poor wrote on request and always on the topic of the day, ridiculing the current regime, the Mensheviks, the Cadets and everyone else whom the Bolsheviks ordered to “literally kill.”

Bedny's poems were demonstratively artless and popular-primitive, but easy to remember. It cannot be said that behind them stood a genius or even an outstanding literary talent. But this was not necessary, because Lenin himself liked Bedny.

Lenin himself was not at all interested in art and understood nothing about it. Even during the heyday of the Soviet personality cult of Lenin, when he was officially considered a brilliant specialist on any issue, it was regrettably admitted that Ilyich “had no time for art at all.” Music “upset” him; he tried to wipe the Bolshoi Theater off the face of the earth, despite the objections of his comrades; he considered opera and ballet to be reactionary and landowner art.

He was slightly interested in art solely as a propaganda tool. That's why he paid attention to Bedny. Lenin was not a proletarian by birth and upbringing, and practically did not interact with living workers, but he was sure that it was Bedny’s crudely artless and often pseudo-folklore style that was ideal for workers. This is exactly what they will understand and accept. So Bedny turned out to be a full-time party writer, or a “Bolshevik poet,” as he liked to call himself. It is no coincidence that in 1923 Trotsky awarded him the Order of the Red Banner with the wording: “A sharp shooter at the enemies of the working people, a valiant cavalryman of the word.”

After the Bolsheviks came to power, Bedny found himself no longer a spokesman for a run-of-the-mill revolutionary party, but for the government of a huge country. He moves to a Kremlin apartment. Lenin, who believed in his talent, ordered that Bedny be given a special carriage with all the amenities that were not inferior to the general’s, in which he traveled around the fronts. He spoke to the Red Army soldiers with his propaganda, sometimes obscene and greasy, sometimes pretentious and populist.

In the early years of the 20s, Bedny was considered a leading literary propagandist. His ditties, songs, poems, fables and poems were published in millions of copies. Lunacharsky compared him to Gorky himself. Which the latter clearly did not like, although at one time he advised the Bolsheviks to pay attention to him, he did not consider Poor to be his equal. However, Bedny also had critics, but not from among the “old regime” figures, but from the Proletcultists. Writers who claimed to be proletarian writers accused Bedny of being a false proletarian and only imitating imaginary workers whom he had never known.

And indeed, his lifestyle was extremely far from ascetic. He lived in the Kremlin, had a servant, traveled to resorts, had a personal Ford car, despite the fact that at that time the number of personal cars throughout the country could be counted on one hand. When in 1925 they tried to take away his personal railway carriage from Bedny, he went all the way to Stalin himself and made sure that the carriage was left for him without harming his pride.

Demyan Zhalky

At the end of the 20s, Bedny's importance for propaganda began to fade. Times have changed, Stalin proclaimed writers the engineers of human souls. They were supposed to help create a new Soviet man. The poor man was not suitable for this role, he always followed the lead of the crowd, its instincts, he appealed to them. But he could not transform it in the way the authorities needed.

Although Bedny always unerringly chose political patrons, first Lenin, then Stalin, and although he still carried out propaganda party orders on the topic of the day, he was needed less and less.

In addition, Bedny constantly pressed Stalin with requests of a material nature. At the same time, when he asked for something, he simultaneously staged a mocking comedy. They say, I need this and that, but not at all for myself, I myself am an ascetic and unmercenary, I need this only for revolutionary creativity.

In the end, clouds gradually began to gather over Poor. In 1930, the Central Committee directly criticized Bedny's two new feuilletons, published in Pravda. The poor man, out of habit, complained to Stalin in his signature style, but unexpectedly received a detailed and angry rebuke: “When the Central Committee was forced to criticize your mistakes, you suddenly snorted and began shouting about a “noose.” On what grounds? Maybe the Central Committee has no right criticize your mistakes? Maybe the decision of the Central Committee is not necessary for you? Maybe your poems are above any criticism? Don’t you think that you have become infected with some unpleasant disease called arrogance? More modesty, Comrade Demyan... What is the essence of your mistakes? It consists in the fact that criticism of the shortcomings of life and everyday life of the USSR, an obligatory and necessary criticism, developed by you at first quite accurately and skillfully, captivated you beyond measure and, having captivated you, began to develop in your works into slander of the USSR, its past, his present."

The poor man was confused and nervous. The poet decided that the best thing was to switch to praising the leader and began to write emphatically loyal poems glorifying Stalin. But that didn't help him. In 1932, Stalin ordered his eviction from the Kremlin apartment, and Bedny threw a natural tantrum due to the fact that he was moved to a “rat barn with plywood partitions.” The poor man, as usual, claimed that he was an ascetic and could live anywhere, but he couldn’t create in this “ass”.

In 1933, on the occasion of his 50th anniversary, Bedny was awarded the Order of Lenin. He took this as a sign of the end of his disgrace and after some time began to beg Stalin for a dacha: “The following circumstance had a hard impact on my health: from the autumn of 1931 to this day, I have had neither winter nor summer healthy rest, languishing in the city without a break. I would like? Essentially, there is little: for me to do something that I do not have the opportunity to do myself, at best, the economic department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee could get rid of my awkward log house and build for me a more decent wooden dacha with 4 rooms. –5 with the necessary residential buildings<… >Dear Joseph Vissarionovich, I would be dejected if you thought for a second that my letter was dictated by even the shadow of “personal” interest. I have nothing personal here. This, if you like, is a purely professional need for the poet."

Following the “purely professional need of a poet,” Bedny had a new need. In his unsurpassed style, he began to beg Stalin for a new car: “Comrade Yezhov, to my sighs that the dacha is a “dream” from which pincers cannot tear me away, but its 40-kilometer reach for my broken (and now gone into capital) repair) the Ford is quite weak, he told me categorically: May and June have passed, and July is coming - for reasons known to him, not to me, - he is hiding from me like the devil from incense.”

Apparently, Bedny, no longer poor for a long time, simply tired of Stalin with his endless “poetic needs” and the maximum favored nation regime was turned off for him. The following year, 1936, his comic opera “Bogatyrs” was completely destroyed for “spitting on the past.”

After harsh criticism, Bedny was seriously frightened and tried to justify himself to the secretary of the Writers' Union, Stavsky, who reported to the top: “Demyan Bedny, admitting that he made a huge mistake, explains it with his misunderstanding of the material and his stupidity<…>Demyan indicated that he was having an attack of sugar sickness. He said that he did not want to die with the stigma of being an enemy of the party<…>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 said that he would burn his library."

Photo: © RIA Novosti/Petrov, Wikipedia

After Bedny’s devastating criticism, all Soviet bohemia rejoiced. The poor man was the type of person who boasts and mocks the defeated, feeling himself to be on the winning side. Both by order and from the heart, he mocked, mocked and mocked the bourgeoisie, monarchists, priests, believers, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, White Guards, Trotskyists, Zinovievites, disgraced poets and writers, kulaks, intellectuals and everyone else who at least once fell under the party roller. But as soon as Comrade Stalin raised his eyebrow in bewilderment, Bedny began to clutch his heart, faint, shake his diabetes certificate, and conjure that he was just a fool and not guilty of anything. Of course, other writers who did not like Bedny for his arrogance did not miss the opportunity to rejoice at his humiliating fall. State Security reported on bohemian conversations in connection with the defeat of Bedny:

"Satirist Romanov: It was good that they slammed. Demyan takes advantage of his order, connections and rudeness. This time it didn’t work out."

Writer Olesha: “Demyan got fed up, Demyan got punched in the face.”

Poet Lebedev-Kumach: “We need to remove the swearing from the stage and from the poetry that Demyan spreads and makes this swearing the official language of Soviet poetry.”

Actor Paul: “I’m very glad that they hit Demyan: he was so arrogant that he gave two fingers.”

Writer Bulgakov: “It’s a rare case when Demyan, given his character, will not gloat - this time he himself fell victim - and not giggle at others. Now let him feel it himself.”

Director Eisenstein: “I haven’t seen the play, but I’m extremely pleased at least that they gave Demyan a great time. Serves him right, he’s too arrogant.”

In general, the rejoicing was universal; Bedny’s personality was too odious in creative circles. Of course, if he had great talent, Poor would certainly be forgiven for his disgusting habits. But the fact of the matter is that no one saw much talent in him. Many considered him an upstart who accidentally caught the eye of Lenin, who had no understanding of art, at the right time, with his propaganda ditties.

Poor responded by writing the poem “Fight or Die,” in which he compared himself to the new Dante, who descended into fascist hell. However, some moments of the work, if desired, made it possible to draw certain parallels with the Soviet Union and even hinted at the recent history of the defeat of Bedny. He brought his poem to Mehlis to read, who gave it to Stalin himself for review.

He was brief and categorical: “I reply with a letter addressed to Demyan, which you can read to him. To the newly-minted Dante, i.e. Conrad, that is... Demyan the Poor. The fable or poem “Fight or Die”, in my opinion, is artistically mediocre thing. As a criticism of fascism, it is pale and unoriginal. As a criticism of the Soviet system (don’t joke!), it is stupid, although transparent. Since we already have a lot of literary rubbish, it is hardly worth adding to 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."

Ultimately, in 1938, Bedny was expelled from the party and from the Writers' Union under the pretext of his moral decay. Literary activity was virtually closed to him. But he got off easy, at that time many were losing their lives, but Stalin still took pity on Bedny, whom he had been making fun of lately.

Recent years

After being expelled from the party, he came under the supervision of the NKVD. The security officers reported on the embitterment of the former court poet: “D. Bedny’s embitterment is characterized by the following statements of his among people close to him: “I became a stranger, went into print. The era of Demyan Bedny is over"<….>After the decision to expel him from the party, D. Bedny is in an even more embittered state. He mocks the CCP ruling: “First they cheapened me - they declared that I was morally corrupt, and then they declared that I was a Turkish spy.” Several times D. Bedny spoke about his intention to commit suicide.”

However, it still didn’t come to that. Deprived of the opportunity to publish, Poor lived by selling his rich library, which he was proud of, and antique furniture. With the outbreak of the war, he began to be published again in leading newspapers, in some cases under the new pseudonym Boevoy. This time he wrote patriotic poems and fables. But Demyan was no longer the same, and the time was not the same. His new image did not receive a significant response; he never managed to become one of the main front-line poets.

Two weeks after the end of the war, on May 25, 1945, Demyan Bedny died at the age of 62. Despite his disgrace, he was given appropriate posthumous honors: an obituary in central newspapers on behalf of the government and leading Soviet writers, a farewell ceremony in the hall of the Writers' Union. However, he was buried not in the Kremlin wall, but at the Novodevichy cemetery.

(real name and surname - Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov)

(1883-1945) Soviet poet

Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov, the future proletarian poet Demyan Bedny, was born in the Kherson region, in the village of Gubovka, into a peasant family. His childhood was full of adversity and deprivation. The boy spent the first years of his life in the city of Elizavet-grad, where his father served as a church watchman.

Bedny later recalled in his biography: “The two of us lived in a basement closet on our father’s ten-ruble salary. Mother lived with us for rare times, and the less often these times happened, the more pleasant it was for me, because my mother’s treatment of me was extremely brutal. From the age of seven until I was thirteen, I had to endure a hard life together with my mother in the village with my grandfather Sofron, an amazingly sincere old man who loved and pitied me very much.”

After some time, the future poet finds himself in the barracks environment of the Kyiv military paramedic school, graduates from it and serves in his specialty for some time. But the very early awakened passion for books and interest in literature do not leave Efim. He is engaged in self-education a lot and persistently, and already at the age of twenty, having passed an external exam for a gymnasium course, he becomes a student at the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University.

This was in 1904, on the eve of the first Russian revolution. During the years of university study, in an environment when gatherings, manifestations, and demonstrations were in full swing within the walls of the “temple of science” on Vasilyevsky Island, a complex process of formation and development of the personality of the future poet took place. In the same autobiography, Bedny wrote: “After four years of a new life, new meetings and new impressions, after the stunning reaction of subsequent years for me, I lost everything on which my philistine, well-intentioned mood was based.”

In 1909, a new literary name appeared in the magazine “Russian Wealth” - E. Pridvorov. Then, for the first time, poems signed with this name were published. But these poems and friendship with the veteran populist poetry P.F. Yakubovich-Melshin were only a short episode from the life and creative path of the poet. The name of the character in one of Pridvorov’s first poems, “About Demyan Poor, a Harmful Man” (1911), becomes his literary pseudonym, popular among millions of readers. Under this pseudonym, from 1912 to 1945, his works appeared on the pages of newspapers and magazines.

Demyan Bedny in his work, at first glance, is traditional, committed to the form, rhythm, and intonation of the verse that has been tried by many. But this is only a superficial and deceptive impression. Just like his predecessor and teacher Nekrasov, Demyan Bedny is a brave and ever-searching innovator. He fills traditional forms with new, ebullient and sharp content of the era. And this new content inevitably updates the old form, allowing poetry to fulfill hitherto unknown tasks of great importance - to be close and accessible to the hearts of contemporaries.

Striving for the main thing - to make the work understandable, intelligible for any reader, Demyan Bedny, in addition to his favorite fable, also used such easily accessible genres as a ditty, folk song, fairy tale, legend (all these genres are masterfully combined, for example, in the story “About the land, about freedom, about the working share”). He also wrote poems based on the comic effect of mixing different styles, such as “The Manifesto of Baron von Wrangel.” Here is an example from the “Manifesto...”:

Ihi fate an. I'm sewing.

Es ist for all Soviet places.

For Russian people from edge to edge

Baronial Unzer Manifesto.

You all know my last name:

Ihy bin von Wrangel, Herr Baron.

I am the best, the sixth

There is a candidate for the royal throne.

Listen, red Soldaten:

Why are you attacking me?

My government is all democratic,

And not some kind of calling...

Extreme clarity and simplicity of form, political relevance and acuteness of the topic made D. Bedny’s poems beloved by the widest audience. Over more than three decades of his creative activity, the poet captured the entire kaleidoscope of events in the country’s socio-political life.

The poetic heritage of Demyan Bedny personifies the continuity of his poetry in relation to his great predecessors. His work bears expressive signs of the fruitful influence of N.A. Nekrasov and T.G. Shevchenko. From them he learned, among other things, the unsurpassed skill of using the richest sources of oral folk art. There is, perhaps, no type and genre in Russian poetry to which, based on the characteristics of the theme and material, Demyan Bedny would not resort.

Of course, his main and favorite genre was the fable. She helped in the pre-revolutionary ode to hide seditious thoughts from censorship. But, besides Demyan Bedny, the fabulist, we know Demyan Bedny, the author of poetic stories, legends, epic and lyrical-journalistic poems, such as, for example, “Main Street” with its amazing laconicism, precise rhythm, patriotic intensity of every image, every words:

Main Street in a frantic panic:

Pale, shaking, as if mad.

Suddenly stung by mortal fear.

He rushes about - a starched club businessman,

A rogue usurer and a swindling banker,

Manufacturer and fashion tailor,

Ace-furrier, patented jeweler,

- Everyone rushes about, anxiously excited

Rumble and screams, audible from afar,

Among the bonds of the money changer...

Demyan Bedny is known as a master of the poetic feuilleton, catchy, striking epigrams, and poems of small form but significant capacity. The poet-tribune, poet-accuser was always ready to go to the farthest corner of the country to meet with his readers. Demyan Bedny once had an interesting conversation with the organizers of his trip to the Far East. He was not interested in the material side. “Is there sun? - he asked. - Eat. - Is there Soviet power? - Eat. “Then I’ll go.”

The years that have passed since the death of the poet are quite a significant period for what he created to be tested by time. Of course, of the huge number of works by Demyan Bedny, not all retain their former significance. Those poems on particular themes of revolutionary reality, in which the poet failed to rise to the heights of broad artistic generalization, remained simply an interesting evidence of the time, valuable material for the history of the era.

But the best works of Demyan Bedny, where his talent was fully revealed, where a strong patriotic thought and a passionate feeling of a contemporary of important events in the history of the country were expressed in artistic form - these works still retain their strength and effectiveness.

Characterizing the features of Russian literature, A.M. Gorky wrote: “In Russia, each writer was truly and sharply individual, but everyone was united by one persistent desire - to understand, feel, guess about the future of the country, about the fate of its people, about its role on earth.” . These words are the best fit for assessing the life and work of Demyan Bedny.

Demyan Bedny photography

POOR Demyan (Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov) (1883-1945). Soviet poet and writer. Born in the village. Gubovka, Kherson region. He studied at the Kyiv Military Paramedic School and St. Petersburg University (1904-1908). Member of the First World War. Member of the RCP(b) since 1912. Published in the Bolshevik newspapers “Zvezda”1) and “Pravda”. Author of satirical poems, feuilletons, fables, songs, captions for TASS windows. The most famous epic poems of D. Bedny are “About the land, about freedom, about the working share” (1917), “Main Street” (1922). In the 20s, the work of D. Bedny was popular. “Today, it would not occur to writers to carry out the “demonization of literature,” but at that time the issue of reducing the entire diversity of literature to one example was seriously discussed: the poetry of Demyan Bedny” (Historians argue. M., 1989. P. 430). In 1925 the city of Spassk (now in the Penza region) was renamed Bednodemyanovsk.

According to the memoirs of V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, V.I. Lenin “remarkably sensitively, closely and lovingly... treated the mighty muse of Demyan Bedny. He characterized his works as very witty, beautifully written, accurate, and hitting the target.”

Demyan Bedny, having arrived in 1918 together with the Soviet government from Petrograd to Moscow, received an apartment in the Grand Kremlin Palace, where he moved his wife, children, mother-in-law, nanny for the children... The writer had a very good library, from which he borrowed with the permission of the owner books Stalin. They developed excellent, almost friendly relations, but later the leader unexpectedly not only evicted Demyan Bedny from the Kremlin, but also established surveillance on him.

“After the founding congress of the Union of Writers of the USSR,” recalled I. Gronsky, “the question arose about awarding Demyan Bedny the Order of Lenin, but Stalin suddenly opposed it. This was surprising to me, because the Secretary General always supported Demyan. During a face-to-face conversation, he explained what was going on. He took out a notebook from the safe. It contained rather unflattering remarks about the inhabitants of the Kremlin. I noticed that the handwriting was not Demyan's. Stalin replied that the statements of a tipsy poet were recorded by a certain journalist...” (Gronsky I.M. From the past. M., 1991. P. 155). The matter reached the Party Control Committee, where the poet was reprimanded.

M. Canivez writes: “At one time, Stalin brought Demyan Bedny closer to him, and he immediately became highly honored everywhere. At the same time, a certain person, a red professor named Present, wormed his way into Demyan’s circle of close friends. This person was assigned to spy on Demyan. Present kept a diary, where he wrote down all his conversations with Bedny, mercilessly misinterpreting them... Once returning from the Kremlin, Demyan told about what wonderful strawberries Stalin served for dessert. The presentation recorded: “Demyan Bedny was indignant that Stalin was eating strawberries when the whole country was starving.” The diary was delivered “where it should be,” and with this Demyan’s disgrace began” (Kanivez M.V. My life with Raskolnikov // The Past. M. , 1992. P. 95).

Stalin repeatedly studied and criticized the writer. In particular, in a letter to him he wrote: “What is the essence of your mistakes? It consists in the fact that criticism of the shortcomings of life and everyday life of the USSR, an obligatory and necessary criticism, developed by you at first quite accurately and skillfully, captivated you beyond measure and, captivating you, began to develop in your works into slander of the USSR, its past, his present. These are your “Get Off the Stove” and “No Mercy.” This is your “Pererva”, which I read today on the advice of Comrade Molotov.

You say that Comrade Molotov praised the feuilleton “Get Off the Stove.” It may very well be. I praised this feuilleton, perhaps no less than Comrade Molotov, since there (as in other feuilletons) there are a number of magnificent passages, hitting right on target. But there is still a fly in the ointment that spoils the whole picture and turns it into a complete “Pererva”. That is the question and that is what makes the music in these feuilletons.

Best of the day

Judge for yourself.

The whole world now recognizes that the center of the revolutionary movement has moved from Western Europe to Russia. Revolutionaries of all countries look with hope at the USSR as the center of the liberation struggle of the working people of the whole world, recognizing in it their only fatherland. 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, conducting

mu 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 working class of Russia, its past, the past of Russia, knowing that in addition to reactionary Russia there was also revolutionary Russia, the Russia of the Radishchevs and Chernyshevskys, the Zhelyabovs and Ulyanovs, the Khalturins and Alekseevs. All this instills (cannot help but instill!) in the hearts of the Russian workers a feeling of revolutionary national pride, capable of moving mountains, capable of working 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, but slander against our people, the debunking of the USSR, the debunking of the proletariat of the USSR, the debunking of the Russian proletariat.

And after this you want the Central Committee to remain silent! Who do you take our Central Committee to be?

And you want me to remain silent because you, it turns out, have “biographical tenderness” for me! How naive you are and how little you know the Bolsheviks..." (Stalin I.V. Collected works. T. 13. pp. 23-26).

“Demyan Bedny died of fear,” writes V. Gordeeva. - He had a permanent place on the presidium, where he habitually went. And suddenly in 1945 something changed. As soon as the poet headed to his usual place during the next celebration, Molotov, flashing his pince-nez glass unkindly, asked him in an icy voice: “Where?” Demyan backed away for a long time, like a geisha. Then he trudged home and died. His own sister told about this” (Gordeeva V. Execution by hanging. A non-fictional novel in four stories about love, betrayal, death, written “thanks to” the KGB. M., 1995. P. 165).

The writer's library has been preserved. “When in 1938 Bedny was forced to sell his wonderful library, I immediately bought it for the State Literary Museum, and it has been almost entirely preserved to this day, except for those books that he kept with him” (Bonch-Bruevich V .D. Memoirs. M., 1968. P. 184).