Nikolay zadornov read online. Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov

Nikolai Pavlovich was born on December 5, 1909 in Penza. He studied at the Penza school, published in the newspaper "Working Penza". The writer spent his youth in Chita, where his father was sent to work. There he received his education. From 1926 to 1935 Nikolai Zadornov worked as an actor in the theaters of Siberia and the Urals. At the same time, he began to publish - first in Bashkir newspapers, then returned to the Far East and actively participated in the All-Union shock construction of Komsomolsk-on-Amur (for which he was later awarded the badge of the honorary builder of the city). Since then, the Far East has been the main scene in his works.

During the Great Patriotic War, Nikolai Zadornov worked as a traveling correspondent on radio in Khabarovsk and in the Khabarovsk newspaper Pacific Star.

Nikolai Zadornov owns two cycles of historical novels about the development of the Far East by the Russian people in the 19th century, about the exploits of explorers. The first cycle - from 4 novels: "Far Land" (books 1-2, 1946-1949), "First Discovery" (1969, first title - "To the Ocean", 1949), "Captain Nevelskoy" (books 1-2, 1956-58) and The Ocean War (books 1-2, 1960-62). The second cycle (about the development of the Far East by peasant settlers) - the novels "Amur Father" (books 1-2, 1941-46) and "Gold Rush" (1969). In 1971 he published the novel "Tsunami" - about the expedition of Admiral E. V. Putyatin to Japan in 1854-55. He also wrote a novel about modernity "Yellow, green, blue ..." (book 1, 1967), a book of travel essays "The Blue Hour" (1968) and others. His works have been translated into many languages ​​of the world, including French, Japanese, Czech, Romanian, and Bulgarian.

Nikolai Pavlovich was awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1952) for the novels "Amur Father", "Far Land", "To the Ocean". Awarded 3 orders and medals. In the last years of his life, the writer worked on works that he did not have time to finish: the cycles "Great Voyages", "Mistress of the Seas".

From 1946 until his death, Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov lived in Riga, was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the Latvian SSR. His life was cut short during the collapse of the USSR. The writer died on September 18, 1992. In Penza, a memorial plaque was opened on the house where the writer lived (Revolutionary street, 45).

(1948-2017).

Biography

Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov was born on November 22 (December 5), 1909 in Penza in the family of a veterinarian Pavel Ivanovich Zadornov (1875-1933) and Vera Mikhailovna Zadornova (nee Shestakova, 1876-1961) (later P. I. Zadornov was accused of deliberately extermination of livestock and died in prison), grew up in Siberia.

After graduating from high school in 1926-1941, he was an actor and director in theaters in Siberia, the Far East, Ufa, worked in traveling groups. Since 1935, he was a literary employee of the newspapers Beloretsky Rabochiy, Sovetskaya Sibir, Krasnaya Bashkiria. During the Great Patriotic War, he worked in the Khabarovsk Regional Radio Committee and in the Khabarovsk newspaper Pacific Star. During this period, he wrote his first novel, Cupid Father.

N. P. Zadornov owns two cycles of historical novels about the development of the Russian Far East in the 19th century, about the exploits of explorers. The first cycle - from 4 novels: "The Far Land" (books 1-2, 1946-1949), "The First Discovery" (, the first title is "To the Ocean", 1949), "Captain Nevelskoy" (books 1-2, 1956 -1958) and "War for the Ocean" (books 1-2, 1960-1962). The second cycle (about the development of the Far East by the peasant settlers) is thematically connected with the first: the novels "Amur Father" (books 1-2, 1941-1946) and "Gold Rush" (1969).

In 1969 and 1972 he visited Japan.

Nikolai Zadornov died on June 18, 1992. He was buried in Jurmala, at the cemetery in Jaundubulti.

Notes

1. A monument was erected on the grave of Mikhail Zadornov in Jurmala
2. Mikhail Zadornov will be buried next to his father
3. The daughter of Mikhail Zadornov was persuaded to play a bitch
4. The second wife of Mikhail Zadornov was offended by his will
5. Theatrical universities again recruited thieves // Express newspaper
6. https://sbis.ru/contragents/5313005292/531301001
7. Housewarming: Zadornov's library has found a reliable home
8. Vedomosti of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. - M.: Edition of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 1984. - No. 47 (November 21). – 861 – 872 p. - [Articles 831 - 847. ]

Prominent Soviet writer, laureate of the State Prize Nikolai Zadornov is known to readers for his historical novels "Amur Father", "Far Land", "First Discovery", "Captain Nevelskoy", "War for the Ocean", dedicated to the heroic past of Siberia and the Far East.

In the novel "Captain Nevelskoy" a vivid image of a remarkable Russian patriot, an advanced man of his time, a sailor, scientist G. I. Nevelskoy, who made an invaluable contribution to the study and development of the Amur region, is created. The writer gives in the book a broad picture of the life of Russia in the 40s and 50s of the XIX century, tells in detail about the stubborn, intense struggle that Nevelsky had to wage with stupid tsarist dignitaries for the implementation of his progressive ideas, imbued with concern for the flourishing and prosperity of the Motherland.

The high artistic skill of the author, the depth and plasticity in depicting the images of the characters, the rich, juicy language - all this is fully reflected in the novel "Captain Nevelskoy", which will be read with great interest by a wide range of readers.

"Captain Nevelskoy" is the third novel in the cycle dedicated to the development of the Russian Far East. The first two novels - "The Far Land" and "The First Discovery", published for the first time by N. Zadornov in 1949, are dedicated to the life of the Amur region and the first discoveries of G. I. Nevelsky. The last novel in the cycle - "War for the Ocean" - about the last years of G. I. Nevelsky's stay in the Far East - was published in 1960-1962.

The first book of the novel "Captain Nevelskoy" was first published in the journal "Far East", 1956, No. 3-6; the second book is in the same journal, 1958, no. 1-2. In 1958, the novel was published in separate editions in Riga and Moscow, since then it has been repeatedly ...

Russian and Soviet writer - Nikolai Zadornov. All books are listed in order by series. Here are collected all his works that the author wrote in his life. The novels tell about the development of the Far East and the difficult fate of Russians in those parts in the 19th century.

Development of the Far East

Far Land (1949)

This work begins a cycle of four books about the life and deeds of Gennady Nevelsky, the pioneer captain, as well as about the harsh everyday life of the natives of the Amur region. Every civilian must prove to the world, almost with a knife at his throat, that he has the right to freedom and a peaceful life. The Chinese and Manchus are constantly attacking from neighboring sides, and the Jesuits have also appeared, who came with their own orders and laws. Help could be expected only from the Russian Cossacks. Further

Captain Nevelskoy (1958)

Russian explorer Nevelsky sets off for the first time on a long expedition to Kamchatka. It was Captain Nevelsky who became the man who discovered and studied the Far East in detail. How was the settlement of the mouth of the Amur? What did the Russian people have to face during the development of Sakhalin? You will learn how the famous traveler and patriot of Russia walked the hard path of a discoverer. Further

Ocean War (2016)

This time we will follow Captain Nevelsky on the second expedition along the Amur, but now the expedition is led by Chikhachev. You will learn about the Russian-American campaign, the defense of the Kamchatka port in 1854 and further exploration of the harsh region. Further

Admiral Putyatin

Shimoda (1975)

Crimean War. 1855 Russian sailors are real heroes who sailed under the command of Admiral Putyatin. After a colossal ship-related disaster occurred, they were cut off from their own in Japan, but even under such circumstances they did not let foreigners in. Further

Heada (1979)

The novel continues the thread of events about how Russian sailors lived and fought in Japan, about how long and far from easy it was for them to get from a foreign land to their homeland, and about the fact that not all of them made it home, participating in the bloody mess of the Crimean War. Further

Hong Kong (1982)

This novel completes a cycle of works about the historical activities of Admiral Putyatin, who went to Japan in the 19th century to establish diplomatic relations there. Not all and not immediately of the Russian sailors then got to their homeland. Many of the brave warriors were captured by the British and lived in Hong Kong until the end of the Crimean War. Further

Siberiada

Cupid Father (1946)

We will plunge into the history of the past of the Amur region. Here, in the 60s and 70s of the 19th century, settled peasants lived, mastering a wild land with infinitely beautiful nature and friendly local people who helped newcomers survive in an unfamiliar place.

From the speech of Mikhail Zadornov
on the program "On duty in the country":

- I would not like very much that, looking at
me, the people who read my father's books,
recalled the saying: "Nature rests on children"

QUOTE FROM THE GREAT RUSSIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA:

Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov. Outstanding Soviet writer (1909 - 1992). He worked as an actor and director in theaters in Siberia and the Far East.

He wrote several cycles of historical novels. Numerous essays, articles and stories. The novels of Nikolai Zadornov have been translated into many languages ​​of the world.

Laureate of the Stalin Prize (1952) Awarded with orders and medals.

Father of M. Zadornov, Russian writer-humorist.

QUOTE FROM THE AMERICAN LITERARY ENCYCLOPEDIA:

Zadornov raised layers of the history of peoples not yet known to civilization. He colorfully depicted their way of life, with deep knowledge he spoke about customs, habits and family disputes, misfortunes, worldly troubles, about craving for the Russian language, Russian rituals and way of life.

His novel "Amur Father", which has become a classic in his homeland, has been translated into many languages. Despite the fact that there is no party theme in his works, the writer was awarded the highest post-war award of the USSR - the Stalin Prize. This is an unprecedented case in Soviet literature.

QUOTE FROM THE BRITISH LITERARY ENCYCLOPEDIA:

Without historical novels by N. Zadornov, one cannot have a complete picture of the development of the history of Russia and Russian literature.

Orthodox Marxist critics often came out with sharp assessments of novels, considered them apolitical, devoid of a partisan view of literature. Indeed, the writer's work does not fit into the "Procrustean bed" of socialist realism - the fundamental method of literature of the Soviet period.

Hundreds of historical figures are included in the tense action of his books. Next to Nevelsky and Muravyov are the Governor of Kamchatka Zavoyko, the English Admiral Price, Admiral Putyatin, the writer Goncharov, Chancellor Nesselrode, Emperor Nicholas I, the famous navigator Voin Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov, the Japanese diplomat Kawaji and others. History comes to life in his works.

Three books of the writer "Tsunami", "Heda", "Shimoda" were published in Japan, which testifies to the veracity of the life story of Russian sailors told in these books in Japan, which is still closed and dangerous for foreigners.

FROM MIKHAIL ZADORNOV'S PREFACE TO NIKOLAY ZADORNOV'S NOVEL

"Tsunami", "Heda", "Shimoda", "Hong Kong" and "Mistress of the Seas"

For more than two hundred years, Japan has been a closed country. Therefore, she did not have ships. Fishermen were allowed to have small boats and leave the shore only within sight. And any foreigner who set foot on Japanese soil without permission was to be executed.

How did it happen that after a shipwreck, more than eight hundred Russian sailors and officers were allowed by the highest authorities of Japan to live in coastal villages for almost a year during the period of the most stringent samurai laws? What extraordinary, romantic, adventure, espionage, diplomatic stories ensued as a result? The father described this incredible but reliable story in his “Russian Odyssey” so accurately that his novels were published even in Japan.

Most historians in the world today are sure that the canned Japan was first "opened" by American "diplomacy": a military squadron approached the Japanese shores, pointed their guns, threatened ... the Japanese liked their height, beautiful military uniform, Coca-Cola and Marlboro ... The well-known opera-melodrama Madama Butterfly was even written about those events.

I recently had a chance to talk with a high-ranking official from the Russian Foreign Ministry. Even he did not know that the "discovery" of Japan was not due to the will of American cannon diplomacy, but due to the friendliness and culture of Russian sailors and officers. Not without reason in the Japanese village of Heda in our time there is a museum opened by the Japanese in memory of those real events, after which their iron samurai curtain first opened. In this museum, in the central spacious hall, the first Japanese high-speed sailing ship is exhibited, which was built on Japanese soil with the help of Russian officers that year.

I have been to this village. One elderly Japanese woman proudly told me that blue-eyed Japanese children are still sometimes born in their village.

Today, when a peace treaty between Russia and Japan has not yet been signed, and children in Japanese schools, thanks to American films, think that even Russians dropped atomic bombs on their cities, father's novels are more than ever on time!

"Captain Nevelskoy" and "War for the Ocean".

My father believed that many Russian scientists and travelers who made the greatest discoveries in history were unfairly forgotten. And he wanted to draw attention with his novels to those events in Russian history that are now not liked to be mentioned in the West, where historians believe that everything important in the world happened at the European behest.

For example, during the Russian-Turkish war, defeating the Russian army in the Crimea and the Black Sea, the allied troops of the French and British decided to make Kamchatka and Russian Primorye their colonies, taking them away from Russia. Africa and India seemed to them not enough. The allied military squadron approached the shores of the Russian Far East. However, a handful of Russian Cossacks, with the help of migrant peasants, without any decrees from St. Petersburg, defeated the insatiable colonialists so much that European Western historians crossed out this battle forever from their annals. And since the French and Germans worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia under the tsars, there was no mention of these Far Eastern battles in Russia either.

Such a victory became possible not only thanks to the heroism of Russian soldiers and officers, but also to the geographical discoveries that one of the most worthy Russian officers, Captain Nevelskoy, made a few years before the Russian-Turkish war. He practically brought Russia to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, clarified the wrong maps used in the West, proved that Sakhalin is an island, and the Amur is no less full-flowing river than the Amazon!

The father was not a member of the party. He was too romantic to live in an unromantic party present. He lived in dreams of our noble past. In his novels, as on a large-format stage, both tsars, and officers, and sailors, and settlers participate at once ... Cossacks and Decembrists ... Their wives and loved ones ... Despite the obviously adventurous plots of novels with incredible, sometimes even romantic situations, his father always remained historically reliable. If he were a humorist, I would advise his novels to be published under the heading "You Can't Invent It On Purpose."

FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITER, LAUREAT OF THE STATE PRIZE - N. ZADORNOV

(1985)

From an early age, Vladivostok, which I had to visit, made a strong impression on me. For the first time in my life I saw the sea, the train, passing through the tunnels under the city at night, stopped at the last station in Russia. Crowds of Chinese coolies surrounded each car, offering their services. The night was hot, southern. Behind the carriages, on the other side of the station, one could see spacious warehouses, and behind them towered the bulk of ocean-going ships parked somewhere nearby. Then Vladivostok was a transit port and processed a large amount of foreign cargo. The first English sailor, in whom I was ready to see a hero from the books of marine novelists, waved a bottle at me when in a cafe I addressed him with a friendly phrase, touching him on the shoulder. This was my first English lesson. At that time and in that environment, the shoulder was not touched in vain. These were not literary heroes. The city with its noisy life as a port, Russian and Chinese theaters, with picturesque bays, made such an impression on me that my head turned towards the Pacific Ocean for the rest of my life.

When my wife and I moved to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, what was around me turned out to be much more interesting than the made-up actors with glued beards and theatrical scenery. At night I saw a real moon, not a cardboard one.

I walked through the taiga on foot, and on boats, and on boats, on my own and from the editorial office of the city newspaper, for which I wrote essays. He learned to sail in a Nanai boat, to walk on a birch bark. In winter and summer, I visited the Nanai camps. I saw shamanism.

I continued my walks in the taiga. I was not a hunter, but, as a hunter, I made my circles around Komsomolsk wider and wider. We all began the history of Komsomolsk from the first day of landing from the steamers of its builders. What happened before, no one knew. I wanted to talk about it.

FROM INTERVIEW WITH MIKHAIL ZADORNOV

ON TV (1995)

In the restaurant of the Central House of Writers in the late eighties - my father was still alive - a venerable, I would even say, a seasoned Soviet writer approached me and asked if I was a descendant of that Nikolai Zadornov who wrote such interesting historical novels. I replied, “Yes, child. More like a son. After all, a son is a descendant. He was surprised: “How, didn’t Nikolai Zadornov live in the nineteenth century?”

I understand why venerable and hardened Soviet writers thought so about their father. He never took part in the struggle between writers' groups, did not subscribe to any appeals, did not make friends with someone against someone. to light yourself up on the right list. His name was only mentioned once in an obituary, when Alexander Fadeev died. My father said that later his friends called him and congratulated him on his unprecedented success. After all, members of the Central Committee headed the list of those who signed the obituary! But most importantly, my father practically never visited the CDL restaurant! And those who were not seen there were considered to have lived in the last century. Is this not a compliment to the authenticity of his novels!

FROM MIKHAIL ZADORNOV'S PREFACE TO THE NOVEL

"Cupid Father" and "Gold Rush".

We read Fenimore Cooper, Mine Reed with enthusiasm in our youth... The romance of conquering new lands! But we had it all. With only one difference: our ancestors, exploring new lands, came not with weapons in their hands, but with faith and love. They tried to convert the natives to the Orthodox faith, without exterminating them or driving them to the reservation. My father jokingly called the Nivkhs, Nanais and Udeges - "our Indians." Only less promoted and promoted than the Mohicans or the Iroquois.

When my father and mother got married, they were denounced to the NKVD. Particularly from my mother's ex-husband. And then they did what few were capable of. We left as far as possible from the “demonic”, living by denunciations, center. And where? To Komsomolsk-on-Amur! As if anticipating the anecdote of that era: there is nowhere to exile further than Komsomolsk anyway. My father headed the literary department at the local theater. Was an assistant director. Although he did not have a directing education. It's just that the artistic director of the theater guessed in his father the ability to observe life. And, when one of the actors fell ill, he was instructed to replace them in the episodes. By the way, now his memorial plaque hangs in front of the entrance to this theater.

While working in the theater, my father decided to write a novel about how the first Russian settlers came here long before the construction of Komsomolsk. The novel is romantic. Somewhat adventurous. In the tradition of Mine Reed, Fenimore Cooper and Walter Scott...

From an article by the writer G.V. Guzenko (1999):

- “The novel “Amur Father Nikolai Zadornov wrote in such a pure and at the same time figurative Russian language that it must be included in the secondary school curriculum.”

In my youth, "Amur Father" was my favorite novel. Finishing reading it once again, each time I got the feeling that our future is no less comfortable than the life of the heroes of my father's novel. In general, I love books in which, like visiting friends, where you want to stay longer. But most of all I was inspired by the fact that I was born between the publication of the novel and the award of the Stalin Prize. Maybe that's why I had such a joyful life that my parents "designed" me in the most joyful period of my life!

The book was written in Komsomolsk-on-Amur before the war. When my father brought the manuscript to Moscow, the Soviet editors refused to print it, since only frankly heroic literature was in demand. Somehow the novel got on the table to A. Fadeev. Fadeev read it and realized that the publishing house would not even listen to his advice, although he was the secretary of the Writers' Union of the USSR. In the hope that it would be approved from above, he handed it over to Stalin.

There was a war. Despite this, the "owner" ordered immediately to print "Amur-father". Even the publishers were surprised. In the novel there are no war heroes, secretaries of regional committees, commissars, calls: “For the Motherland! For Stalin!"…

Later, Fadeev secretly told my mother when he was visiting us in Riga, Thu O Stalin told him about “Amur-father”: “Zadornov showed that these lands are primordially ours. That they were mastered by a working person, and were not conquered. Well done! In our future relations with China, his books will be very useful to us. It should be published and noted!”.

Later, when the Stalin Prize was renamed the State Prize, my father continued to proudly call himself the winner of the Stalin Prize. Why? Yes, because State Prizes have already been handed out right and left. Sold by officials for bribes. To receive this award in the 80s or 90s, one had not to write a talented work, but to draw up documents with talent and “correctly” submit them to the award committee.

I remember one of the Soviet monster writers, also visiting us in Riga, boasted of the prize he had just received from the hands of Brezhnev himself. And then his wife, while walking along the beach, complained to my mother: “I lost so much health while we won this award for him. So much money was spent on gifts, grandmother's earrings, and they pawned!

My father did not want to consider himself the winner of a procured - "broken" - prize. And the Stalin Prize could not be "knocked out" from the "owner". His laureate father did not rename for the sake of time. He had no one to be afraid of. He was non-partisan. For this, at that time, "immoral" he could not even be expelled from the party!

One of his precepts, given to me, even when I was studying at the institute: “Do not join the party, no matter how you lure - so that there is no one to expel you from. Enter and become a slave. Stay free. It is above all ranks and titles.”

FROM VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MIKHAIL ZADORNOV,

IN WHICH HIM WAS ASKED ABOUT THE FATHER.

(1993 - 2006)

Despite the laureate awarded to "Samim", my father never, even during the period of the personality cult, idolized Stalin.

I remember the day Stalin died. I sat on the pot in our Riga apartment and looked out the window - large, to the floor. Down the street, outside the window, weeping people were walking: Latvians and Russians, all in mourning. Even Latvians cried in Riga. They ordered to cry, and wept, amicably and internationally. I remember mourning Riga, and how my elder sister cried. She was eleven years old. She didn't understand anything. She was crying because teachers and passers-by were crying... She felt sorry not for Stalin, but for teachers and passers-by. A father came into our room with her and said: “Don’t cry, daughter, he didn’t do so much good.” My sister was so surprised by my father's words that she immediately stopped crying. I thought. Of course, I didn’t understand anything then, but I didn’t want her to cry so much that I began to prove to her in support of my father’s words and give examples why Stalin was not a good uncle. For example, in Riga it has been raining for three months. And they didn't take me to the sandbox. But Stalin could do anything! Why didn’t he think about us children, who, like me, also wanted to go to the sandbox!

It was, by the way, the 53rd year! Well, he couldn’t have foreseen then how quickly times would change ... It’s just that the father believed that one had to be honest with the children.

I still remember the day when it was reported that Beria had been arrested. Mom and dad drank wine that evening so that we children would not have such a terrible youth as theirs.

I was already twelve years old. At school, we were taught that the Soviet Union is the best country in the world, and that not good people live in capitalist countries, but stupid and dishonest ones. My father called me to his office and said: “Keep in mind that at school they often do not speak quite correctly. But that's how it should be. Grow up and you'll understand." I was also very upset then. My father deprived me of faith that I was born in the best country in the world.

Father never imposed his views on us children in an argument. He believed that children themselves should reach everything with their own minds ... They just need to be hooked on with some thought, connected, thrown the necessary thought into the folds of the brain, as into unplowed, unfertilized beds, in the hope that someday the "seed" will sprout!

The main room, where we were not allowed to enter without permission, was his study with a library, looking at which I thought with horror that I would never read so many books in my life. He bought books not only for himself, in order to know history and literature. He saw how my sister and I, out of curiosity, sometimes pulled out some book or album from the shelves, looked at the pictures and tried to read, not always understanding what was written there. He built this library for us! He believed that books can develop interests in a child that will protect him in life from philistine burdens.

Once, when I was ten years old, he called me into his office, showed me which old book he had bought with amazingly beautiful engravings. The book was called mysteriously and romantically: "The frigate "Pallada"". The word "frigate" gave off something real, masculine, military... Naval battles, sails, tanned faces with scars and, of course, other countries with their romantic dangers. Pallas - on the contrary - something elegant, majestic, proud and impregnable. By that time, I already knew some of the myths. I liked Pallas more than the rest of the Greek gods. She felt dignity. She did not take revenge on anyone like Hera, did not intrigue like Aphrodite, and did not eat children like her father Zeus.

From that day on, for a year, my dad and I retired two or three times a week in his library, where he read aloud to me about the round-the-world trip of Russian sailors, and for an hour and a half my father’s office became our frigate: in Singapore we were surrounded by numerous junks of merchants, in Cape Town we admired the Table Mountain, in Nagasaki samurai came to us on board, in the Indian Ocean our sailors managed to shoot the impending column of tornado from the side guns in time ...

Of course, times have changed since then. New biorhythms have mastered the new generation. When recently in one of the Moscow orphanages I advised the children to read "Pallada Frigate", one of the children asked: "Is it written about goblins?"

A poor generation stunned by Hollywood, pop and reality shows. How many less happy moments will it receive in life if, listening to music of seven notes, it hears only three?

If it weren’t for my father… I would have been brought up by my Moscow half-party environment on fashionable literature and would have lived a sad, not joyful, although fashionable, life.

Dad loved to walk along the seashore in Jurmala. He could stop on the beach and watch the sunset motionless. Once, on the bank of the river, he drew my attention to how the birds calm down at sunset and the grasshoppers begin to chirp. He believed that people who do not hear nature have flat pleasures, like three-note music: a restaurant, a party, sex, a casino, a new purchase ... Well, it’s still joyful if the wheels were removed from the neighbor’s car or the tax office rushed into the office of colleagues .

Once one of my fellow writers at five in the morning, after some regular night presentation, I called to the shore of the Baltic Sea in Jurmala to admire the sunrise. He looked at the sun rising above the horizon for about three seconds, then said sadly: "You know, Galkin's popularity is not falling. How can you explain this?" I treat Galkin well, but I didn’t want to think about his popularity at sunrise. I looked at my colleague. Unhappy! He will never be able to distinguish an ear cooked on a fire with a firebrand stewed in it, from a fish soup from a bag.

Father knew the truth: nature is the manifestation of God on Earth. Who does not feel it, there is no Faith!

She and her mother brought up my sister and me, as if on the sly, so that we would not guess that they were raising us.

When I was seventeen years old, during the student holidays, instead of letting me go to Odessa with my girlfriend for the summer, my father sent me to work on a botanical expedition as a laborer to the Kuril Islands for two months. Now I understand that he wanted me to fly across the entire Soviet Union, to understand, when he saw the taiga, islands, seas, oceans, that I still live in the best country in the world.

With short remarks, like homeopathic doses, dad sometimes tried to cool down in me the enthusiasm that I experienced along with the crowd, hypnotized by the press, and “cartoon”, as he said, revolutionaries!

End of perestroika. First Congress of Deputies. Gorbachev, Sakharov ... Shouts in the stands. For the first time, looking at live reports from the Palace of Congresses, we felt the first sighs of glasnost and freedom of speech. We saw those who later began to call themselves the big word "democrats". I was watching TV, my father was standing behind me, then suddenly waved his hand and half said:

- That those were thieves, that these ... Only the new ones will be smarter! And therefore - they will steal more!

- Dad, this is a democracy!

Don't confuse democracy with squabbling.

Quite a bit of time has passed, and I, and all my intelligent friends, now, talking about our politicians, are talking not democrats, but "so-called democrats." Like, I don't want to dirty the word "democracy".

In 1989, after returning from my first tour of America, I enthusiastically talked about my impressions with my family. This is what my father used to do when he returned from his travels. My father listened to my admiration with a restrained smile, without interrupting, and then said only one phrase: “I see, you didn’t understand anything. Although he brought a good sheepskin coat!

I was very offended. For my trip, for the perfection of America, for Western democracy, for freedom, for the future that I envisioned for Russia. We quarreled. My father could not explain to me what he meant. Or I just didn't want to understand it. I was already a star! Thousands of spectators gathered for my performances. True, I remembered his words that he said to end our argument: “Okay, let's not quarrel. You will probably visit the West more than once. But when I'm gone, remember, it's not that easy! Life is not black and white television."

As if he knew then that in five years I would radically change my opinion about America.

Sometimes it seems to me that parents pass away so that the children begin to listen to their advice. How many of my acquaintances and friends now remember the advice of their parents, after their death.

After my father passed away, I became his obedient son!

Now that my father is gone, I increasingly recall our quarrels. I am grateful to him first of all for the fact that he was not a philistine. Neither the communists, nor the "democrats", nor the journalists, nor the politicians, nor the West, nor the writers' party could force him to think in the usual way. He was never a communist, but he did not fall under the influence of dissidents either.

Only we, his closest ones, knew that he believed in God. He had an icon in his hiding place left from his mother. And her cross. Shortly before his death, realizing that he would soon pass away, he baptized me, unbaptized, thus making it clear that someday I also need to be baptized.

And he considered dissidents to be traitors. He assured me that they would soon be all forgotten. It is only worth changing the situation in the world. I defended "dissenters" with all the agility of youth. My father tried to convince me:

- How can you fall for these "figs in your pocket"? All these “revolutionaries”, about whom the West is so ringing today, pose as daredevils, but in fact, they go theatrically, with open chests, into an embrasure in which there has been no machine gun for a long time.

How can you talk like that daddy? Your father died in prison in 1937, and it is not even known where his grave is. Mom's parents suffered from the Soviet regime, because they were of noble origin. Mom couldn't finish her studies. After you have written novels about Japan, you are being followed. The KGB considers you almost a Japanese spy. And these people left the country because of such humiliation!

Father most often did not respond to my ardent attacks, as if he was not sure that I had matured at more than forty years, to his understanding of what was happening. But one day he decided:

- KGB, NKVD ... On the one hand, you, of course, are saying everything correctly. But everything is not so simple. Everywhere there are different people. And, by the way, if it were not for the KGB, you would never have visited the same America. After all, one of them allowed you to leave, signed the papers. In general, I think that we have someone very smart up there, and you were specially released to America so that you would notice something that others cannot notice. And as for dissidents and émigrés... keep in mind that most of them left not from the KGB, but from the Ministry of Internal Affairs! And they are not dissidents, but ... crooks! And mark my word, as soon as it is profitable for them to return, they will all run back. America will still shudder from them. They themselves will not be happy that they persuaded the Soviet government to let these "revolutionaries" go to them. So it's not that simple, son! Someday you will understand this, - the Father again thought for a while and, as it were, did not add, but emphasized what was said, - Most likely, you will understand. And if you don't understand, it's okay. You can also live a decent life as a fool. Especially with such popularity as yours! Well, you'll be a popular fool. Good too. For this, by the way, in any society they pay well!

Naturally, after such a conversation, we quarreled again.

My dad didn't have a technical background. He could not mathematically determine today's fool's formula. He was a writer.

Recently I had a chance to talk with a wise man. Formerly a mathematician. Now he is a philosopher. How fashionable to say now - "advanced". He explained his philosophy to me: most people in the world perceive life as a bipolar dimension. In fact, life is multipolar. The multipolar structure of the world underlies all Eastern teachings and religions. Human life is not a fluctuation of electric current between plus and minus. Pluses and minuses, on which Western Hollywood philosophy relies, eventually lead to a short circuit.

Everything that a modern philosopher explained to me was probably accurate from a mathematical point of view, but tricky for a simple bipolar layman. And most importantly, I knew all this for a long time from my father, who did not use such tricky words as multipolar systems in his speech. He tried very intelligibly to explain to me that "everything is not so simple." Not everything is divided into "plus" and "minus".

How I would like my father to hear today that I still began to listen to his words and more ... so that at least once I would go down to the ground and hear: “How stupid they are!” and applause from the audience!

I regret that he passed away, albeit with the hope that his children would grow wiser, but with uncertainty for this hope!

FROM THE BIOGRAPHY OF NIKOLAY ZADORNOV.

(LITERARY DICTIONARY OF THE USSR):

After the war, the Secretary of the Union of Writers of the USSR A. Fadeev invited the young writer N. Zadornov to go to Latvia to strengthen friendship with Latvian writers. Nikolai Zadornov agreed to move to the west of the country, where, according to him, in the archives he could study history, diplomacy, maritime affairs ... - everything that was necessary to write the planned novels.

FROM INTERVIEW OF MIKHAIL ZADORNOV IN LATVIA. (1993)

Latvian writers respected their father because he did not want to join the party, because he did not become the secretary of the Writers' Union, because he never got involved in political intrigues. In turn, their father took them to the Far East, showed them the taiga, Amur, sincere Siberians ... He believed that in life people are the same as the heroes of his novels, with dignity, and that cultural people cannot have national enmity. He always boasted of his friendship with the Latvians.

I often think why did my father pass away so quickly and unexpectedly? Most likely, he had a complete collapse of all ideals. Especially those that were formed with him in Latvia. As soon as times changed, the Latvian writers turned their backs on him. They also forgot about who translated them into Russian, thanks to which they received good fees, and about what kind of excursions to protected areas their father arranged for them ... At one time he helped the Daugava magazine, and as soon as Latvia became an independent country , the editors of the magazine declared him crazy. In addition, the owner of the house where our apartment was appeared. My father understood that sooner or later we would be evicted. It was too much for his dignity. The body began to give up, not wanting to live in humiliation. For the father, there was no greater humiliation than the inability to defend Russia when she was insulted. He had a premonition of what life would do to his ideals, and he didn't want to see it.

He, too, secretly believed that Russia would one day come to life. But when he realized how it "comes to life" under the control of dissidents, emigrants and, as we now say, "democrats", his body simply did not want to continue to exist in this.

QUOTE FROM THE INTERVIEW OF MIKHAIL ZADORNOV "AiF" 1992

For me, Riga, Jurmala with its beach has always been the land that gave me strength. Now I don't like to visit Latvia, and my mother's dream is to leave Riga. My father just died there. Several serious stresses brought him to the grave. Three owners appeared at once at our apartment, allegedly living there until the fortieth year. It seems that these gentlemen lived in a communal apartment. But most importantly, we somehow suddenly became strangers in this country and strangers to each other.

On one of the last days of his life, I strolled my father through his study, where we had once read Pallas the Frigate. He no longer had the strength to go outside. He and walking in the room held on to me with both hands. I opened the windows wide. Opposite, the park, in which he liked to walk, had already turned green. Spring filled with fullness breathed through the window! The father asked me to take him to the shelf with his books. He looked at them for a long time, then he said to me: “I loved these people!” I understood that he was talking about the heroes of his novels. He said goodbye to them. Those were practically the last words I heard from him.

Apparently, he did not want to remember about the real people who surrounded him in life ...

FROM THE ARTICLE OF THE WRITER G.V. GUZENKO (1999):

“For such books that Nikolai Zadornov wrote, the writer needs to erect a monument on the banks of the Amur!”

FROM AMUR TO DAUGAVA

From an article about the writer N.P. Zadornov, published in one of the magazines in the Far East:

On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov (1909 - 1992), a monument to the writer was erected in Khabarovsk over Amur-father.

In memory of the writer, who did a lot for the Far East, the authorities of the city of Khabarovsk allocated a beautiful place for a monument on the banks of the Amur, where Nikolai Zadornov liked to visit. His son Mikhail, a well-known satirist, said that it was in this place in the 66th year that he and his father first went to the banks of the Amur and bathed in it. Now this place will be a monument to Zadornov Sr. The author of the project, sculptor Vladimir Baburov, admitted that at first the monument did not work out for him, because he tried to sculpt Zadornov Sr., having only his photographs in his hands. But then, having met Mikhail Zadornov, I realized that the son was very similar to his father, and he fashioned some details of his father from his son.

The monument to Nikolai Zadornov stands not far from the monument to Muravyov-Amursky. We are indebted to the Great Siberian Governor for the signing of the border treaty with China. Under him, the dream of the great Russian thinker came true, and "Russia grew into Siberia." Interestingly, in the early 80s, money for the monument to Muravyov-Amursky was transferred not only by Zadornov the father, but at his request by his son, by that time a popular satirist.

MOTHER

FROM MIKHAIL ZADORNOV'S ESSAY "MOMS AND WAR" 2000 When I come to Riga, my mother and I often watch TV together. Mom is over ninety. She was never a member of any party, she was not a member of a trade union, the Komsomol, she did not sing patriotic songs in chorus. She did not keep pace with anyone, did not change her views depending on the change of portraits on the walls, did not burn party cards and clearly did not regret her devotion to previous portraits. Therefore, despite his age, he still argues more soberly than many of our politicians. Having once watched a report from Sevastopol, she said: “Now the Turks can demand Crimea from Ukraine. After all, under an agreement with Russia, they did not have the right to it while it was Russian.” But what worries her most about the news is Chechnya. My grandfather, her father, a tsarist officer, served at the beginning of the century in the Caucasus. Mom was born in Maykop, then lived in Krasnodar. “Nothing good will happen in Chechnya,” she insistently repeats, listening to even the most optimistic forecasts and assurances from people trusted by the government. “They don’t know Caucasians, they don’t know history. Mom naively believes that politicians and generals, just like her, are worried about the Motherland, but they are always mistaken because they received a non-aristocratic education. Sometimes, very gently, I try to prove to my mother what her main mistake is. She evaluates our leaders by placing them in her frame of reference. They exist in a completely different dimension. Stupid as it may seem, I start telling her about the oligarchs, about the price of oil, about the war as a super-profitable business. Even more stupidly, such conversations often turn me on, forgetting about my mask of a cynic, and fantasize passionately on various historical topics. As a rule, from my fantasies, my mother, sitting in a chair, begins to doze, while continuing to nod her head, as if in agreement with me. In fact, it is her brain, unspoiled by excessive politicization, that is resourcefully fenced off by slumber from the rubbish that fills the heads of average Russians today. And mine included.

FROM A NEWSPAPER PUBLICATION IN RIGA. (1998)

PAGES OF THE BYPASSED CENTURY IN THE EYES OF STOLBOVA

NOBLEWOMAN, DAUGHTER OF A ROYAL OFFICER, WIFE

FAMOUS RUSSIAN WRITER AND MOTHER

POPULAR SATIRIST

ELENA MELHIOROVNA ZADORNOVA

Helena, daughter of Melchior

Such meetings do not happen often, they are usually called a gift of fate, which means they are lucky. Not in novels and not in movies - in an ordinary Riga apartment, I was plunged headlong into the events of the revolution of the 17th and the First World War, the Stalinist Five-Year Plans and the Great Patriotic War. Their witness and direct participant, in her nearly 90 years old, remembered the smallest details of the past century. She kept at home the White Swan family coat of arms and a whole portfolio of documents of an ancient family, rooted in the era of the Polish King Stefan Batory. And this was the most valuable asset of Elena Melchiorovna, a born noblewoman of the old Pokorno-Matusevich family, in marriage - Zadornova.

... At the age of nine she was taken to be shot. Together with mom and dad. It was a crazy 18th year. August. Heat. They walked on dry grass. She thought: “The grass will grow, but I won’t be ...” The whole fault of the girl was that she happened to be born in the family of the tsarist officer Melchior Iustinovich Pokorno-Matusevich ... Both before and after that day, fate threw up many turbulent events. However, first things first…

1914th. Childhood

Little Lily was brought up, as was customary in noble families: dressed up, pampered; until the age of three, nannies worked with her, from the age of six they began to teach the girl music. Her abilities for piano and vocals were remarkable. If life had turned out differently, she could have become a singer ... But when she was five years old, the First World War began.

— It was a hot day. The ice cream men, as always, drove their carts through the streets and shouted loudly: "Ice cream! Ice cream!" Mom used to give me money, I ran up and bought these "lickers", as we called them then ...

On this day, her mother was sent a parcel with a particularly fashionable light coat - she ordered clothes from Warsaw. There was also a beautiful coat for little Lily. At five in the evening, as usual, we went for a walk, and since it was cooler, we put on new coats. But she especially remembered the day because soon the ice cream workers disappeared from the streets. This was the beginning of the First World War - through the eyes of a five-year-old girl.

Batum

Father, who graduated from the military school in Dinaburg and since 1903 was a tsarist officer, was mobilized and sent to Batum, to the Turkish front, as commandant of one of the fortresses. Lilya and her mother went to see him.

— The windows of the room we rented in Batum overlooked the street along which the new commander-in-chief of the Russian army, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich, uncle of Nicholas II, was passing from the station ... Then, sitting in a phaeton, my mother and I watched the parade arranged in his honor.

And after the parade, there was a gala dinner on the boulevard, and Lily got a lot from her mother for dipping bread into a plate with borscht ...

The first thing the commander-in-chief ordered was to evict the families of officers a hundred miles from the city. More than a hundred noble girls came to Batum - sisters of mercy, the officers were dizzy, there were quarrels, duels ... Father rented Tchaikovsky's dacha near Batum with a large beautiful fountain. Once Lilin's favorite kitten drowned in the fountain. She wept bitterly until her father brought her a letter from a drowned kitten. In his message, the fluffy sufferer explained to the girl the reason for his death: he behaved badly, chasing birds, for which he was punished. So unobtrusively, the father reassured his daughter, and at the same time taught a lesson: you can’t do evil ...

In winter, Lily went to kindergarten, which was run by the baroness sisters. One day they spoke French, the other German, they read and drew a lot.

"Discard!"

... There were battles on the Turkish front. When the father, along with the troops, went to take Trebizond, mother and daughter went back to Maykop ... In the 17th, Lilya went to the first grade of the gymnasium. On the day when the king abdicated the throne, the girl, brought up in the strict traditions of noble etiquette, after listening to high school students, returned home with the words: "That's it. No more remarks for me: there is no king, I do what I want."

The 18th arrived. The fronts were falling apart. Soon the father returned home. It's a terrible time. Maykop passed from hand to hand… On the eve of the city, the Bolsheviks scattered leaflets. Pogroms were expected. At 8 am everyone was awakened by the first volleys. Lily's mother, looking out the window, saw crowds of people running. Grabbing her little daughter and not even throwing on her blouse, she rushed out into the street. Father rushed after her, grabbing a shawl as he went to cover her shoulders.

Some on the rulers and chaises, some on foot - people fled to the bridge, along which the retreating White Guards were already moving. Civilians were not allowed through. To hide from the bullets whistling around, they went down to the very shore. But they managed to reach only the mill - officers ran towards them shouting: "Don't go any further, there are red ones!" - and rushed to swim.

We spent the night in a barn on the hay. Big rats were running around. The night was moonlit. In the morning, the Red Army soldiers came to inspect the mill, one of the residents of the neighboring houses pointed out to them where the officer's family was hiding ... At that moment Pokorno-Matusevichi stood on the alley. Seeing them, the Reds with swords unsheathed rushed at their father. Without a moment's hesitation, Lilin's mother hugged him and covered him with herself. This stopped the soldiers.

Then all three were taken to the regiment. To be shot. Intoxicated with victory and alcohol, the Red Army soldiers shouted: "Bring them out!" But no one undertook to execute the sentence: everyone was drunk. They took me to another regiment. And then fate intervened. The regiment commander turned out to be a man who at one time, together with Melchior Iustinovich, fought on the Turkish front. He respected Lily's father for the fact that, unlike other officers, he never beat soldiers, considering this a humiliation of his dignity. Considering Pokorno-Matusevich an exceptionally noble person, the commander ordered the family to be released ... Elena Melchiorovna was afraid of the crowds until the end of her life.

They returned to the city along the looted streets. Around the rich mansions, cards were scattered everywhere: on the eve of the pogrom, the intelligentsia had fun with preference and solitaire ... In the house of the manufacturer Terziev, where they rented an apartment, a search was underway. But no one was touched, the daughters of the owner managed to change into maids and thus escaped ...

The family of the nobleman Savateev, a Marxist by conviction, lived in the same house with them. Under the Bolsheviks, he held a high post - chairman of the city executive committee. Under the Whites, Savateev was in prison. When the Reds came, he was released. Savateev returned home. The next day, the Whites again recaptured the city. Already at five in the evening, Savateev came to arrest. That very night he was hanged in the square.

"Remember Your Last Name"

On March 20, Denikin retreated, and the Bolsheviks again came to Maykop. On May 20, former tsarist officers were summoned to register at the Kavkazskaya station (now the city of Kropotkin). Saying goodbye, the father hugged his daughter with the words: "Little one, remember your real name - Pokorno-Matusevich." All the officers who left with him were shot. The father was miraculously saved. Having given money to the guard, he asked to buy bread, and when the latter left, he took his documents from the table and ate them mixed with black bread. Instead of being shot, he was sent to labor colonies like the Gulag for three years.

“We lived with friends,” Elena Melchiorovna recalled. - They carried themselves terribly, my mother walked in my father's shoes. She took any job. For two years I did not attend gymnasiums, because in winter there was nothing to put on. The family shoemaker Zyuzyukin offered my mother to earn some money: from tea towels of coarse linen, she cut out blanks for fashionable white shoes. Somehow made ends meet.

twist of fate

- In the 23rd year, a completely sick father returned from the camps. Every month he went to check in at the GPU, and his mother was waiting for him at the corner. At the age of 60, my father fell under the purge of the Soviet apparatus, was left without work and went to study at accounting courses.

After school in the 28th year, Elena was accepted into the Krasnodar Music College - immediately into the second year. But there were no opportunities to study - you had to pay for your studies. So she didn't become a pianist. A month later, she married a young man who had long been in love with her. In the 30th a son was born, they named him Lolly. Elena dreamed that he would become a violinist or a diplomat ...

The husband was listed in Moscow - in the Mintyazhprom, and worked at various construction sites: near Kashira, in Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Izhevsk, Krasnodar, Ufa ... His family traveled around the country with him. In Izhevsk and Krasnodar, Elena worked as a proofreader in publishing houses. And when they moved to Ufa, to build a large plant, she was taken to the factory newspaper. And one day…

Once a journalist from the city newspaper appeared in the editorial office - Nikolai Zadornov. Elena criticized his essay to smithereens. This is where love began.

“His father was arrested, charged with sabotage, and died in prison. This stain remained on Nikolai Pavlovich all his life. As for me - a noble origin. The common destinies made us very close.

When her husband went to a sanatorium for a month, Elena left home. Soon a terrible scandal arose: how could it be - a journalist took his wife away from an engineer! The husband sent a threatening letter. With this letter, she went to the registry office, and there they issued a divorce without any trial. And the secretary of the regional committee, a Bashkir, having met Zadornov, patted him on the shoulder: "Well done!" Nevertheless, they decided to leave for Moscow - away from trouble.

In Moscow, Nikolai Pavlovich, who from his youth was fond of the theater, met an acquaintance director Voznesensky at the acting labor exchange, who went through the Stalinist camps in the 30s. He persuaded him to go to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where the actors who were serving time built a theater with their own hands. So Elena came to the end of the world.

"I'll give you a sign..."

The war came to the Far East on Monday - after all, seven hours difference from Moscow. Mobilization has begun. On July 9, they decided to register the marriage. They stood in line at the registry office from morning to five in the evening. She left her husband in tears. And at night the knock on the window returned. The commission turned away due to severe myopia.

Throughout the war, Nikolai Pavlovich worked on the Khabarovsk radio, was a special correspondent and the Japanese front. In August 1942, daughter Mila was born. A month later, in German-occupied Krasnodar, Elena's father died. Then she did not yet know about the death of her father: there was no connection with Krasnodar. But the little daughter cried so much that day that she wrote down the date. Once Melchior Iustinovich, who was fond of astrology and the occult sciences, told her: "If I die without you, I will give you a sign." And so it happened. The spiritual bond between father and daughter was very strong.

To this day, the place where the father is buried is unknown: the Germans did not keep records. Maybe that's why it seems like he didn't leave. But it’s really nearby: in the yellowed sheets of the pedigree, in letters, in photographs - and in memory ...

FROM A NEWSPAPER PUBLICATION IN RIGA. (2005)

Until the last days, Elena Melchiorovna Zadornova retained a clear mind, good memory and kindness of a truly intelligent person who knows a lot about life. In 2003, Elena Melchiorovna died. “Only from that moment,” Mikhail Zadornov admitted, “I realized that my childhood was over.”

LITHUANIAN RELATIONS

On the mother's side, Mikhail Zadornov had noble roots, on the father's side, there were priests, teachers, doctors and peasants in the family.

Journalist: - You, along with your sister Lyudmila, are persistently trying to restore the family tree. And it seems that they even discovered family ties in Lithuania?

— My maternal grandfather was a tsarist officer, his brothers lived in Lithuania. When Lithuania seceded after the revolution (I don’t understand why the Baltic countries don’t like Lenin, because thanks to him they gained independence for the first time in 200 years), grandfather lost all ties with his brothers. Already today, my sister was engaged in the study of family roots, sent requests everywhere. And one day our genealogical tree was sent to us from Lithuania. It was so interesting - to read, to consider.

And then I went to Lithuania for concerts. And on the local radio they half-jokingly asked me: “Why do you come to us so often?” I answered: “Because I belong here, my ancestors lived here.” And he gave the name Matushevich from Zarasai. Apparently, our relatives came to Zarasai from Poland when the Warsaw-Petersburg road was being built.

Suddenly, an editor flies into the room and says that Matushevich is calling from Zarasai and asking why his name is mentioned on the air? The next day I went to visit him, and I saw a nice person ... with the profile of my mother. Turns out it was my cousin!

He showed me a family album, which he kept in the garden during the Soviet era and only recently dug up. “I found almost all the relatives, except for two branches,” he said. “Maybe you recognize someone?” I look - and there is a wedding photograph of my grandparents - the same as that of my mother.

A Lithuanian second cousin showed me a monument to the Matushevich family at the Zarasai cemetery. So I found relatives on my mother's side and even our family cemetery.

As I looked at him, my second cousin boasted:

“We take care of this cemetery!”

- Well done! Impressive!

- Like?

Yes, but it's too early for me! Besides, I am a Russian citizen. Your authorities won't let me in here.

DAUGHTER

... She loved all the animals indiscriminately since childhood. As if coming to us from outer space, she also knew that animals are kinder than people. When her daughter was ten years old, she begged the janitor at the children's camp to give her a kitten, which he was carrying to drown. Kitten, however, then threw me. From a cowardly disheveled lump, he turned into a smug, overweight garden cat. He still lives in my yard. On the gate I wrote "Beware of the angry cat." In fact, the rescued man turned out to be such a kind man that he is afraid of butterflies flying past him, the sight of a raven turns pale and hides under the bushes from dragonflies ...

When my daughter grew up and the cartoons could no longer remain a lifeline from the disappointments that had piled on her, we, so that she would not be completely disappointed in life, looking at people, took her on a trip to Africa to look at the animals ...

Journalist: When you were a child, did you read to your daughter, how did your father read aloud some books?

- Yes. I also managed to collect a good library for Lena. When she was only eight years old, I read to her in this library with an expression ... no, I didn’t read it - I played Gogol’s “Inspector General”. He himself ran around the room for everyone, waving his arms! After that, we had a good mood with her for a month.

By the way, thanks to my daughter, I suddenly realized that sometimes giving up some interest of adults for the sake of a child brightens the mood. One day I really needed to watch the evening News. Chaos began again in Chechnya. My daughter came up with a rubber ball and asked me to play basketball with her. In the sports room, I made a gymnastic wall for her - kids love to climb up and look down on their parents - and attached a children's basketball hoop to the ceiling.

We always played fair: she is in full growth, and I am on my knees. My awkward clumsy movements amused her more than clown spanking about the arena in the circus.

My daughter's eyes were at the moment when I had just manly sat down at the TV, so begging that I could not refuse her. Of course, when we started playing with her, I was upset that I would not watch the News. And when they finished, I didn’t even remember them. So my daughter taught me to give up in time what we sometimes consider necessary, but in fact this necessary is simply the result of the generally accepted “this is how it should be”. Well, I would look at the "News"? I would be upset for the whole coming night! We have

if you want to drink for peace - see the latest news!

To this day, when I feel sad, I remember that our match, in which, of course, she won! No, in which we both won!

After the incident when I went with my daughter to play basketball, refusing the "News", I understood why dad never refused my request to play traffic jams in the evening!

Journalist: What other books have you read to your daughter?

- Sherlock Holmes, Pushkin's fairy tales, Yesenin's poems ... I understood that the poems of Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak and other fashionable now, but for me personally, cold poets will be forced to read it at school. In the school curriculum, in my opinion, they incorrectly pay excessive attention to the poems of some poets just because they were considered anti-Soviet in our time. Against the past! But what about children? In Soviet times, there were many more interesting writers than anti-Soviet ones. It seemed to me necessary to connect my daughter from childhood to warm poetry. Not to that poetry which is "anti", but which is "for"!

Interestingly, Lena fell in love with Pushkin's poems and fairy tales so much that when, during one of my conversations with friends, she heard that the soul of a person is reborn, she told me that in a past life she was Pushkin!

True, she was then five years old.

Journalist: Did you read Dumas to her? Like The Three Musketeers?

- Started. But something didn't work.

Journalist: Why? Is this really action for kids?

- Apparently the novel, as you say "action" was for the children of our generation. After Hollywood "actions" he already looks like Prishvin compared to "The Adventures of Major Pronin." She even expressed an interesting idea to me, which I thought about, and we stopped reading The Three Musketeers: “D'Artagnan is disgusting. Bonacieux took him in, and he seduced his wife and mocked him. And his friends are killers. So many people were killed because of the pendants of the unfaithful queen. I don't like this book."

Journalist: Did she express her opinion about anyone else that you remember?

- About Mayakovsky. But it was already later, when they passed it at school. I remember asking such a question that I was dumbfounded: “Dad, did Mayakovsky make fun in poetry?” "Why?" “Well, how could he seriously write:“ I take out a duplicate of a priceless load from wide trousers” - this is an obvious joke! What are you? He is a great poet! Remember: "He turned a thousand provinces in his skull." Basically a scarecrow!"

I thought for the first time after her words. What if she's right? Maybe Mayakovsky, being a verbal tightrope walker, really walked on a razor's edge, mocking in many verses the kondov sovietness? But the Council of Deputies, behind his vivid images and juicy metaphors, did not recognize the soul of the mocking-poet? Maybe this was the main disappointment of the poet, that his pamphlets were mistaken for panegyrics?

Sometimes children express very fresh ideas! Children have a lot to learn from today's parents. Their impressions of life and the knowledge that they brought with them from the Cosmos have not yet been stained by our “it is necessary” and “it is necessary”.

Journalist: Does she study well with you? An excellent pupil?

Thank God no! My mother once asked teachers to be strict and picky with me. So we asked at school not to put our daughter inflated marks in any case. Moreover, I told her: “I don’t care about your grades, I care about your knowledge and also your vital interests.” I understand that this is probably non-pedagogical, but I have always been afraid to deal with excellent students in life. In short, I would not go into reconnaissance with an excellent student. He will immediately sell everything for the "five". A five can be an estimate in childhood, five thousand dollars in adolescence, and five million dollars in old age. Most of today's Russian democrats who are in power were excellent students in schools! And how many excellent students I have seen - the children of rich parents. Many of them bought fives in order to show off their children. Here he is, they say, we have an excellent student! And then their kids, after graduating from school, got hooked on drugs. Because neither the grades nor the money of the parents of children protect them from drugs. Only interests! If my daughter continues to be interested in questions like “Why was Mayakovsky such a cool poet that he wrote “I take out my purple little book from wide trousers”, she will no longer have time for drugs. After all, such questions for her life will be more than enough and with a ponytail.

When we were with her in Crete, in the Palace of Knossos she asked the guide: “Could Theseus have deceived everyone?” "In what sense?" the guide asked. “Well, for example, go into the labyrinth, stand in it and exit without fighting the monster, and then tell everyone that he killed him. They believed him, they didn’t give the Minotaur any more, the monster died!”

Journalist: And what about a guide?

The guide was very surprised. I thought about this question and did not find anything better than to answer: “Actually, of course I could!” and thought even harder.

In addition to our joint readings, it was important for me to travel around the world with her. Now there is such an opportunity. It was in our childhood that I had to travel through books, sitting in my father's library. Of course, we completed with her a program that is obligatory for modern children of wealthy parents: Vienna, Paris, Israel ... Yes, I almost forgot, the United Arab Emirates! These routes are for our "cool" now, as for the skaters a mandatory program. But in the free program, we also visited Russian cities that the children of the rich don’t even know about: Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Novosibirsk ... We celebrated the New Year in Akademgorodok, where I dreamed of working. After I realized that for health reasons I would not become an astronaut, I decided to become an academician - my health will always be enough for an academician. We visited the Urals at the excavations of the ancient city of Arkaim, which is more than 2000 years old ... We drove a car along the Ussuri Territory ... We traveled around Africa, celebrated the New Year on Kilimanjaro, were in Koktebel and Kara-Dag, walked the Botkin trail along the slopes of Ai Petri … I tried to unobtrusively take her somewhere so that she could feel the energy of Russia and so that she would “strike through” her love for nature! So that she sees what no one except her father would even advise her to see.

In Magnitogorsk, I asked to show us the world's largest Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, where one rolling mill is one and a half kilometers long, and in Chelyabinsk, one of the most modern pipe-rolling shops. She was with a friend and, oddly enough, they were interested, because they grew up in the Baltics. There already, as in the West, children have no impressions, except for quarrels with parents who do not want to let them go to the disco. And then the eyes of both gleamed, the pupils, unwilling to Western education, stirred. No joke, they saw molten metal for the first time! And how the steelworkers stir it with a big "ladle". And after visiting Arkaim, where the scientist Zdanovich told and showed that every house in the ancient Russian city had its own bronze smelting furnace, the daughter climbed into the encyclopedia, double-checked the scientist whether bronze really appeared in Europe five hundred years later than in our country. Ural?

It would seem, why all this girl? Yes, to hear in life not two notes, but seven! So that someday, even when I am no longer there, a world of multipolar sensations, and not bipolar pleasures, opens up before her!

Journalist: And which city did she like best?

— Vladivostok!

Journalist: Why? Architecture, nature, river, embankment?

- She did not expect that at the end of the world there could be such a beautiful city, around the taiga, and inside the bay with the cool name "Golden Horn".

Journalist: Well, were you also interested in visiting places where stars of your rank do not go?

- And how! Moreover, by showing her all this, I myself drew important conclusions. At the same Ural factories, for example, workers receive no more than 300-400 dollars a month, and the owners of the factories - local oligarchs - have guns with diamond sights. They are super millionaires! The foreman who took me to one of these factories, he, by the way, turned out to have two higher educations, complained about the complete disrespect of the owners for the working staff. True, he warned me not to mention this from the stage, otherwise he would be fired.

Then I had an argument with one of these Russian capitalists with a big human face. He tried to prove that they do a lot of charitable work for the same workers. For example, a ski resort was built near Magnitogorsk. I laughed: “Which workers are these for? Do not make me laugh, I have a cold on my lip popped out, dumb laugh! The ski resort near Magnitogorsk is needed in order to lure the president and after he beautifully slides down the mountain in front of photojournalists and TV cameras, to beg something from him. “But we also built a water park with a hotel!” - the oligarch continued to insist on his charity. “And this is generally the most direct income!”

We finally quarreled with him, arguing about the Soviet past. He argued that only now a truly noble moral time had come for Russia. And that this is the merit of today's Democrats. I reminded him that the same Magnitogorsk plant, from which he has his grandmother, by the way, was built by the Soviet government, by order of Stalin. And it was built in such a way that it still makes a profit. It's not for me to explain to him what! The objection was common, they say, Stalin built all this on blood, killing thousands of people. Here I could not stand it: “But he didn’t have diamond flies on his own gun, he didn’t save himself in offshore banks for accounts of stolen money. Yes, these factories are built on blood. But you, today's "democrats", have your money from this blood. You are even scarier than Stalin!”

Back in Moscow, I spoke with one of the local bankers. I asked him, is it really impossible to introduce such a law in the state that the owners of enterprises have the right to take only a certain percentage of the profits? 10 or 20 percent. And the state should make sure that they comply with this law. The banker answered me, almost without thinking: “Of course, everything is possible. True, they still steal. But if the state properly establishes control over financial flows, then no more than 10 percent will be stolen.” It will be like in civilized countries, which means within the European standard of theft.

So, thanks to my daughter, with whom we visited these giant plants, I practically understood for myself the main starting point for the national idea of ​​reviving the Russian economy.

Today we are ruled by merchants. And in power, and in politics, and in the economy! And people should rule not trading, but creating. The Creator created us in His own image. That is, the creators! The word "worker" consists of the syllables "ra" and "bo", which means "light" and "god". This is a divine word. Since the slave owners began to rule the world, they reduced it to “slave” and tried to make people change their attitude to this word over thousands of years as something plebeian. I'm not saying there shouldn't be merchants. They are also needed. Only they should play according to the laws of the working man, and not we according to their laws. If merchants help creators, they become creators too. Otherwise, they are creatures!

See what thoughts sometimes come to mind if you are seriously engaged in raising children!

However, I would not want to give the wrong impression that my daughter and I are in such an angelic relationship. Unfortunately, like everyone else, we quarrel, and quite harshly. It's both hard and sad. Now she is at her most difficult age. For some reason, in Russia, children in the years of maturation began to be called the nasty word “teenager”. While there is a good Russian word "teenager". Even one of the children wrote in a school essay that Dostoevsky was the author of the novel The Teenager.

However, I try to restrain myself, not to yell at her. When she was twelve years old, we had a big fight one day. To the point that I wanted to punish her with a belt. She had a tantrum, she cried so much that I gave her my word that I would never yell at her again in my life. It's hard, but you have to keep your word. Once or twice he only told her: “I remember what I promised you, but you brought me down, so now I’ll scream and won’t do it again.”

I'm not sure if I'm right. In any case, valocordin had to be taken more than once in recent years.

When I think about the eternal problem of “fathers and children”, about how angry parents, including myself, instead of a sedative pill, I sometimes recall the couplet of the young poet A. Alyakin:

For night suffering, for mental anguish,

Our children will be avenged for us by our grandchildren!

I am sure that she will grow up and understand me, as I belatedly understood my parents. Of course, I would like her to do this earlier, while she still has me.

All doctors unanimously affirm: all the best is laid in a child under 12 years old. Then, those feelings that are invested in it are simply formatted by society. They are structured, brought into a certain system, often narrowing the child's creative potential. I don't want to do this. Yes, she did not conduct a large symphony orchestra at the age of five. And wonderful! But we played basketball with her. They read books. She, like me, is a well-behaved child. Therefore, for a long time he will be a person without certain occupations. Let it go! But, I am sure that our reading in the library with her, playing basketball and traveling will help her out more than once in her life!

By the way, according to numerous psychics, my brain generally dozed off until the age of twenty-seven. Woke up only after I first recovered from drunkenness. I don't want this for my daughter. Therefore, I honestly tell her about how bad her father was in her youth. Why am I doing this? Yes, because children always do not want to be like their parents! And they especially don't like it when their parents lie.

I am going to bequeath to her, like my father to me, a sense of humor, intransigence of betrayal, devotion to friends and inquisitiveness of the brain. This is what I understand - a real legacy! Not like a house with a lake in Switzerland, which any child can drink or smoke ...

Journalist: By the way, about the sense of humor. Do you think it was passed down to her?

- Hope. True, when she was four years old, she first came backstage at my concert in St. Petersburg. Four thousand room. In such a hall, the audience laughs especially, as if turning on each other with their own critical mass. Satisfied with my success, I left the stage, and she looks at me and cries:

“What,” I ask, “happened?”

"Dad, why is everyone laughing at you?"

But years have passed ... She has been behind the scenes more than once since then, and, I'm sure, she can no longer imagine life without an ironic attitude towards her. Recently, for example, I watched our mother's friends say goodbye when they leave us:

“Daddy, did you notice? This is exactly for you. They kiss and at the same time say "kiss". That is, as if the one who was kissed is completely stupid and does not understand that he was kissed. Insert in "Only our man!"

I like that she is in love with KVN. Moreover, in KVN as a whole and in all its participants by name. In general, I think it's very cool that KVN has revived in our country, and even so powerfully. And we play everywhere: in institutes, schools, kindergartens, nurseries and ... even in zones! Is this not the saving deposit of All Rus'. There is no such youth game in any country in the world. KVN united all quick-thinking young people. Practically replaced the Komsomol in the best sense of the word. She, by the way, has many friends among KVNshchikov. She introduced me to many KVN players. Most of them are very capable. They only lack professionalism a little, but they know how to "ignite". Our generation needs to learn from them. And they also have a lot to learn from us! This is how, in fact, the problem of “fathers and children” is easily solved.

Journalist: In what other ways did your daughter try to be like you?

- She especially began to respect me at the age of five or six, when she saw that, despite my age, I can walk on my hands. Soon, too, I learned to do a stand upside down. Tumbling all day long, everywhere: on the beach, on the lawns, at home, at a party. Apparently she, like me, likes to see the world not upside down, as we are used to, but as it should be. Then, having seen how I sat on the stage on the twine, I learned this too. But unlike me, she doesn't get hurt.

Journalist: It must not be easy for her to be Zadornov's daughter among her friends? Everyone knows you. She should be given more attention.

- On the one hand, my surname gives her some pride. On the other hand, she is, of course, a burden to her. Too often in adolescence, children are cruel, trying to say some nasty things about mom or dad, especially if they are famous people.

But, in my opinion, she very worthily endures this "trouble." By the way, she herself asks me not to show her anywhere, not to involve her in any actions or TV shows, as famous parents often do with their children. In that sense, I think she's right. I never, sorry for the hackneyed word, did not PR! Now, for the first time, in a conversation with you, I talk about it in such detail. And that's because she's already grown up. So, let's continue to strive for independence. He is trying to become a person, without taking into account his father's surname. I once told her: “Daughter, there are those who are defeated in battle, and there are those who surrender without a fight.” I don't think she's going to give up. I recently asked her:

Maybe you want to change your last name?

We must give her credit, she thought at first, then answered quite confidently:

- No I do not want to!

It is dear to me that she still first thought. So, my surname sometimes really depresses her. Obliges. As they say now, it loads.

Journalist: Have you ever had a drink with guests at the table for her? Were there any toasts in her honor? If yes, which one do you remember the most?

- On the last meeting of the New Year, I told her literally the following: “Solving your problems, I have grown wiser! The ancients are probably right when they say that children come to their parents in order to perfect them. Thanks to you, daughter, dealing with your problems, I definitely changed for the better. In short, you have already completed your task. She raised me and my mother. Now she must help us fulfill our task - to educate you! And, therefore, at least sometimes you need to obey.

Journalist: Her name is Lena. Was she named after your mother?

Yes, and my mother's name was Elena, and my daughter's name was Lena, and my daughter's mother was also Lena. Therefore, you can simply call me - Lenin! Such a pseudonym would suit me more than some! But, unfortunately, it has already been used in history.

As my friends say, my daughter looks like me, but cute.

Until I managed to raise my daughter as a full-fledged Asian. Europe is pulling it!