Works of Arkady Gaidar. Literary and historical notes of a young technician

Arkady Gaidar (Golikov) is a popular children's writer, whose books have recently been read by the whole country.

Thanks to him, a new trend arose - the Timurovtsy youth organization.

However, his life was rather tragic. He went through a revolution and was a member of the Great Patriotic War.

Childhood and school years

The future writer of children's books was born in Lgov on January 22, 1904. His parents were intelligent and well-read people.

Father - Peter Golikov worked as a teacher in rural school, and mother Natalia was a midwife.

A few years later, fearing arrest, they left the city of Lgov, moving to Arzamas. There, little Arkady was assigned to the school.

The Golikov family had a large library, and from a very young age the boy was surrounded by fairy tales, poems and stories that sounded in his family.

In 1912, when his father went to war, Arkady was very worried and constantly rushed to the front to fight the enemies.

IN primary school he even tried to go to the front on foot, but the little fugitive was found and returned home.

Arkady Golikov grew up as a very well-read child, and at the school he made a good impression on the teacher of literature - Nikolai Sokolov.

Subsequently, it is their close communication that will play big role in the life of Gaidar.

N. Sokolov and Arkady often spent time talking about literature, writers and history. These conversations became for the future writer "a stronghold of knowledge of Russian literature."

In 1917, the teacher brought 11-year-old Arkady to the Bolshevik club. At the age of 14, he joins the party and publishes his first poems in the Molot newspaper.

Bolshevik life swallowed up the teenager. He participates in rallies, patrols the streets of Arzamas. Soon he moved to Moscow, where he entered the courses of red commanders.

War years

In the capital, he begins to serve as a battalion adjutant. In August 1919, he and some of his comrades were sent to Kyiv to the front.

At that moment, Arkady felt himself the most happy man, because his old dream came true - to get to the front.

In the first battles, Arkady learns that death is not a beautiful duel with the enemy, but that death has a terrible face.

In December of the same year, he received a bullet wound in the leg and concussion from a shell explosion. He is sent to the hospital.

The consequences of this injury would haunt the writer throughout his later life.

After the amendment, the young commander is offered to undergo training at the Higher Shooting School "Shot".

After graduating from it, in 1920, Arkady became chief of staff in Voronezh.

A year later, he heads the regiment to combat banditry and goes to serve in Siberia.

The shell shock and suffering in the war were not in vain for the young man.

At the age of 20, with a diagnosis of "exhaustion of the nervous system," he again ends up in a hospital, moreover, a psychiatric profile.

Subsequently, he would repeatedly undergo treatment in psychiatric clinics, struggling with severe headaches, irritability and mood swings.

Then Gaidar is fired into the reserve. Now it was worth forgetting about the career of a soldier in the Red Army.

The next time he comes into contact with the war in 1941, he will not be able to stand aside, and will apply to the front, but he will be refused.

I had to go to war by deceit. Arkady takes a mandate from the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper and goes to the mouth of the Great Patriotic War as a correspondent.

Soon he begins to participate in battles and reconnaissance operations.

Arkady Gaidar died on 10/26/1941 near the village of Leplyaevo. He commanded a partisan detachment.

Returning from a mission, they were ambushed. Arkady drew attention to himself by giving the others time to leave, and in doing so saved his fellow soldiers' lives.

He himself died from a German bullet that hit right in the heart. He was only 37 years old.

Personal life

The first love overtook the 17-year-old Arkady during the civil war in the hospital.

The nurse Maria Plaksina worked there. Young people fall in love with each other and get married.

Soon they have a son - Eugene. But due to constant moving and life in military units, the boy falls ill and dies. This ended a happy marriage.

A few years later, the young commander marries a second time. This time, the Bolshevik's daughter Leah Lazarevna Solomyanskaya becomes his chosen one. She has also been involved in journalism.

This marriage gave Arkady a long-awaited child - the boy Timur. Subsequently, it is the name of his son that the writer will name the protagonist of his legendary novel.

The second marriage was also short-lived. Arkady and Leah were together for only 5 years, then she left for another man, taking Timur with her.

He is very worried about parting with his son and leaves for the city of Khabarovsk.

And in 1938 he moved to the city of Klin, Moscow Region, rented an apartment in the Chernyshovs' house.

There he met his last wife, Dora Matveevna. She had a daughter from her first marriage.

Arkady, having married her, adopted her daughter as well.

Writing activity

Arkady Gaidar began writing his first book, In the Days of Defeats and Victories, back in Siberia, where he fought against bandits.

In fact, he wrote his autobiography, but he did not want to sign it with his real name.

He took a pseudonym - Gaidar. There are many versions of what it could mean.

According to one, this is what the Turks called Arkady when he passed by. According to another, Gaidar is a rebus in which the writer encrypted his first name, last name and hometown.

After demobilization from the army, in 1924 he came to Leningrad and published a book in a local newspaper. However, she did not bring much success.

Arkady begins to work as a journalist, traveling all over the country, continuing to write stories along the way.

In the late 20s and 30s, he writing activity takes on a childish focus.

There are such stories as "School", "R.V.S.", "On the Count's Ruins".

The last one was filmed in 1957. It is with them that Arkady's popularity as a children's writer begins.

In 1931, Arkady Gaidar moved to Khabarovsk and got a job there in the Pacific Star newspaper.

In 1935, the story “The Fate of a Drummer” was published, a year later “ blue cup».

my own general ledger, which became famous throughout the Soviet Union and survived the author himself - "Timur and his team", as well as the continuation of "Commandant of the Snow Fortress" he wrote in the late 30s in Klin.

Soon this book formed the basis of the film of the same name directed by A.E. Reasonable.

This novel, which tells about the life of a brave and sympathetic pioneer, marked the beginning of the Timurovtsy youth movement, which gained unprecedented momentum in the post-war period.

In 1939, the writer wrote another of his famous story"Chuk and Gek".

Despite the military past, Arkady's writing activity often ran into obstacles. He was accused of treason and espionage.

At that time we crossed the river Gaichura. By itself, this river is not special, so-so, just two boats to part. And this river was famous because it flowed through the Makhnovist Republic, that is, believe me, wherever you go near it, either fires are burning, and under the fires there are boilers with all sorts of goose and pig meat, or some kind of ataman is sitting, or a person is simply hanging on an oak , and what kind of person, for what he was killed - for some kind of fault, whether just for someone else's intimidation - this is unknown.

Our detachment crossed this worthless river ford, that is, the water to someone to the navel, and as I always stood on the left flank of the forty-sixth incomplete, it almost rolled right down my throat.

I raised the rifle and bandolier above my head, I walk carefully, feeling the bottom with my foot. And the bottom of that Gaichura is filthy, slimy. My leg caught on some snag - as I thumped into the water, and with my head.

Serezha Chumakov said:

After all, if you ask like this: “What is the most important thing for you in battle, that is, how do you defeat the enemy and inflict damage on him?” - a person will think and answer: “With a rifle ... Well, or with a machine gun, a gun ... Generally, depending on the type of weapon.”

And I don't quite agree with that. Of course, no one takes away its qualities from a weapon, but still, every weapon is a dead thing. It itself has no effect, and all main force in a person lies how a person sets himself up and how much he can control himself.

And give another fool even a tank, he will throw the tank out of cowardice, and destroy the car, and he himself will disappear for no reason, although he could still fight back with anything.

I’m saying this to the fact that if, for example, you fought off your own, or shot cartridges, or even left without a rifle, this is not yet a reason for you to hang your head, lose heart and decide to surrender to the mercy of the enemy. No! Look around, invent something, get out, just don't lose your head.

The Red Army soldier Vasily Kryukov had a wounded horse, and the White Cossacks overtook him. Of course, he could have shot himself, but he did not want to. He threw away his empty rifle, unfastened his saber, put the revolver in his bosom and, turning his weakened horse, rode towards the Cossacks.

The Cossacks were surprised at such a thing, because it was not the custom of that war for the Reds to throw their weapons to the ground ... Therefore, they did not hack Kryukov on the move, but surrounded and wanted to know what this man needed and what he hoped for. Kryukov took off his gray cap with a red star and said:

The other day I read in the newspaper a notice of the death of Yakov Bersenev. I had lost sight of him long ago, and looking through the newspaper I was surprised not so much by the fact that he had died, but by how else he could live up to now, having at least six wounds - broken ribs and lungs completely beaten off by rifle butts.

Now that he is dead, you can write the whole truth about the death of the 4th company. And not because I didn’t want to do it earlier because of fear or some other considerations, but only because I didn’t want to once again inflict useless pain on the main culprit of the defeat, but at the same time a good guy, who, among many others, severely paid for their self-will and indiscipline.

I was then thirty-two years old. Marusya is twenty-nine, and our daughter Svetlana is six and a half. Only at the end of the summer did I get a vacation, and for the last warm month we rented a dacha near Moscow.

Svetlana and I thought about fishing, swimming, picking mushrooms and nuts in the forest. And I had to immediately sweep the yard, fix the dilapidated fences, stretch the ropes, hammer in crutches and nails.

We got tired of all this very soon, and Marusya, one after another, kept coming up with new and new things for herself and for us.

Only on the third day in the evening, finally, everything was done. And just when the three of us were about to go for a walk, her friend, a polar pilot, came to Marusa.

They sat for a long time in the garden, under the cherry trees. And Svetlana and I went into the yard to the shed and, out of annoyance, began to make a wooden turntable.

There lived a lonely old man in the village. He was weak, wove baskets, hemmed felt boots, guarded the collective farm garden from the boys and thus earned his bread.

He came to the village a long time ago, from afar, but people immediately realized that this man had suffered a lot. He was lame, gray beyond his years. A crooked, ragged scar ran from his cheek through his lips. And so, even when he smiled, his face seemed sad and stern.

My mother studied and worked at a large new factory surrounded by dense forests.

In our yard, in the sixteenth apartment, there lived a girl, her name was Fenya.

Previously, her father was a stoker, but then right there in the courses at the factory, he learned and became a pilot.

Once, when Fenya was standing in the yard and, with her head thrown back, looked at the sky, an unfamiliar boy thief attacked her and snatched a candy out of her hands.

At that time, I was sitting on the roof of a woodshed and looking west, where beyond the Kalva River, as they say, on dry peat bogs, the forest that had flared up the day before yesterday was burning.

Whether sunlight was too bright, or the fire had already died down, but I did not see the fire, but only a faint cloud of whitish smoke, the pungent smell of which reached our village and prevented people from sleeping that night.

Our platoon occupied a small cemetery at the very edge of the village. The Petliurists were firmly seated at the edge of the opposite grove. Behind the stone wall of the lattice fence, we were little vulnerable to enemy machine guns. Until noon we exchanged fire rather hotly, but after lunch the shooting subsided.

Then Levka said:

Guys! Who is with me on melon for kavuns?

The commander cursed:

I'll give you such a melon that you won't recognize your own!

But Levka was cunning and self-willed.

“I,” he thinks, “only for ten minutes, and at the same time I’ll scout out why the Petliurists were silent, only if they are preparing something, and from there you can see it in the palm of your hand.”

In those distant, distant years, when the war had just died down throughout the country, there lived and was Malchish-Kibalchish.

At that time, the Red Army drove the white troops of the damned bourgeois far away, and it became quiet on those wide margins, in green meadows, where rye grew, where buckwheat blossomed, where among the dense gardens and cherry bushes stood the house in which Malchish lived, nicknamed Kibalchish, and Malchish's father, and Malchish's older brother, but they had no mother.

The father works - he mows hay. My brother works - he carries hay. Yes, and the Malchish himself either helps his father or his brother, or simply jumps and indulges with other boys.

The spy crossed the swamp, put on his Red Army uniform and went out onto the road.

The girl picked cornflowers in the rye. She came up and asked for a knife to trim the stems of the bouquet.

He gave her a knife, asked her what her name was, and, having heard that people on the Soviet side live happily, he began to laugh and sing cheerful songs.

The stories of Arkady Gaidar are a real treasure for the children of all Russia. The reason for this popularity is simple - the main actors in his works are ordinary courtyard children. It is they who do good deeds, help people, perform feats. Therefore, for Soviet children, such heroes as Timur and his team, Chuk and Gek, as well as Malchish-Kibalchish were the main role models! The main qualities possessed by the protagonists of Gaidar's stories were devotion, honesty and courage. And the antagonists, as usual, only did what they betrayed and played dirty tricks.

The reality that surrounded them was hard and harsh: the October Revolution and the civil war forced the parents of the heroes to go to war, and as a result, the children who quickly realized the fullness of responsibility remained in charge of the head of the family. They took on their not at all childish problems and yet successfully defeated the bad guys and their leaders, took patronage over the weak and helped to improve their homeland. And even now, when a child begins to read Gaidar's stories, the brightest feelings wake up in his soul.

About the stories of Arkady Gaidar

It is absolutely not necessary to save the world or perform other feats every day, it is enough to learn from your idol to distinguish between good and evil, to defend the truth, by all means. Nowadays, children are closely following the adventures of foreign cartoon characters, at the behest of fate, endowed with one or another superpower. In the same way, Soviet boys and girls enthusiastically reread stories about the valiant adventures of our domestic heroes. Only their strength was real and consisted in devotion and ardent love for their homeland. The "father" of many such heroes was the children's writer Arkady Gaidar.

The main difference between Gaidar's stories is that his heroes were children. And for Soviet children of the same age, Malchish-Kibalchish and Timur were real superheroes! They were honest, unselfish and faithful. And their enemies, as expected, lied and betrayed. The time that the writer describes was also not easy: the revolution and the war forced many adults to go to the front, and the most conscientious kids remained “for the elders”. So it turned out that the children-heroes had to solve completely non-childish problems and get rid of the villains not only the weak and defenseless in the district, but sometimes save the whole country from traitors!

But who should the author be in order to describe such events, and to describe it in such a way that it is understandable and close to the smallest readers? It turns out that in childhood, Arkady Gaidar (or rather, then just Arkasha Golikov) saw all the hardships of military life with his own eyes. He began to dream of exploits during the First World War, when he tried to run away after his father to the front. Fortunately, the future writer was not allowed to do this, and he had to wait at least until the age of 14 to enlist in the Red Army. The teenage years of the writer, the years of the most powerful impressions, passed at the front, far from home and family. At the age of 15, he became an assistant platoon commander, at 16 - a regiment commander, at 17 - the youngest battalion commander in the army. While serving in distant Khakassia, he received his nickname "Gaidar", which means "a horseman who gallops ahead."

After a combat shell shock, Arkady Gaidar had to abandon military career, and he begins to write the first stories and stories - about the revolution, the civil war, saturated with heroism, the ideals of honor, courage, friendship. A separate category of works is dedicated to the son Timur. "Blue Cup", "Chuk and Gek", and, of course, "Timur and his team" are the most significant works of the writer, containing morality, a parting word to his own children and the children of the entire Soviet Land.

Gaidar, Arkady Petrovich(1904-1941), real name Golikov, Russian Soviet writer. Born on January 9 (22), 1904 in Lgov, Kursk province. The son of a peasant teacher and a noblewoman mother who participated in revolutionary events 1905. Fearing arrest, in 1909 the Golikovs left Lgov, from 1912 they lived in Arzamas. He worked in the local newspaper "Hammer", where he first published his poems, joined the RCP (b).
From 1918 - in the Red Army (as a volunteer, hiding his age), in 1919 he studied at command courses in Moscow and Kyiv, then at the Moscow Higher Rifle School. In 1921 - commander of the Nizhny Novgorod regiment. He fought on the Caucasian front, on the Don, near Sochi, participated in the suppression of the Antonov rebellion, in Khakassia - against the "emperor of the taiga" I.N. a nervous illness that did not leave him later throughout his life. The naive-romantic, recklessly joyful perception of the revolution in anticipation of the coming "bright kingdom of socialism", reflected in many of Gaidar's autobiographical works, addressed mainly to youth (RVS stories, 1925, Seryozhka Chubatov, Levka Demchenko, The End of Levka Demchenko, Bandit's Nest, all 1926-1927, Smoke in the Forest, 1935, novels School, originally titled An Ordinary Biography, 1930, Distant Countries, 1932, Military Secret, 1935, including a textbook in Soviet time The Tale of the Military Secret, of Malchish-Kibalchish and his firm word, 1935, Bumbarash, unfinished, 1937), in mature years is replaced by serious doubts in the diary entries ("People killed in childhood were dreaming").
With a pseudonym (the Turkic word is "a rider galloping in front") he first signed the short story Corner House, created in 1925 in Perm, where he settled in the same year and where, according to archival materials, he began work on a story about the struggle of local workers against the autocracy - Life into nothing (another name is Lbovshchina, 1926). In the Perm newspaper "Zvezda" and other publications, he publishes feuilletons, poems, notes about a trip to Central Asia, fantasy story The Secret of the Mountain, an excerpt from the story Knights impregnable mountains(other names. Riders of impregnable mountains, 1927), poem Machine-gun blizzard. From 1927 he lived in Sverdlovsk, where in the newspaper "Ural worker" he published the story Forest Brothers (other names. Davydovshchina - a continuation of the story Life for Nothing).
In the summer of 1927, already a fairly well-known writer, he moved to Moscow, where, among many journalistic works and poetry, released a detective-adventure story On the Count's Ruins (1928, filmed in 1958, directed by V.N. children's prose of the 20th century. (including the stories The Blue Cup, 1936, Chuk and Gek, the story The Fate of the Drummer, both 1938, the story for the radio The Fourth Dugout; the second, unfinished part of the story School, both 1930).
The fascination of the plot, the rapid ease of narration, the transparent clarity of the language, while fearlessly introducing significant, and sometimes tragic events(The fate of the drummer, which tells about spy mania and repressions of the 1930s, etc.), poetic "aura", confidence and seriousness of tone, the indisputability of the code of "chivalrous" honor of camaraderie and mutual assistance - all this ensured the sincere and long-term love of young readers for Gaidar - the official classic of children's literature. The peak of the writer's lifetime popularity came in 1940 - the time of the creation of the story and the screenplay of the same name (film directed by A.E. Razumny) Timur and his team, telling about a brave and sympathetic pioneer boy (who bears the name of Gaidar's son), who, together with his friends, surrounded by mystery care of the family of veterans. The noble initiative of the hero Gaidar served as an incentive for the creation of a broad "Timurov" movement throughout the country, especially relevant in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1940, Gaidar wrote a sequel to Timur - Commandant of the Snow Fortress, in early 1941 - a screenplay for the sequel and the screenplay for the film Timur's Oath (staged in 1942, directed by L.V. Kuleshov).
In July 1941, the writer went to the front as a correspondent for the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, where he published essays on the Bridge, At the Crossing, and others. In August-September 1941, Murzilka magazine published philosophical tale Gaidar for children Hot stone - about originality, inevitable difficulties and mistakes on the way to comprehending the truth.
The spectrum of Gaidar's "children's" heroes, diverse in age, character and type (among which there are many "negative" persons: Malchish-Plokhish, Mishka Kvakin from Timur, etc.) is supplemented by the characters of miniature stories for preschoolers (Vasily Kryukov, , 1939-1940). Author of the screenplay Passer-by (1939), dedicated to the Civil War. Many of Gaidar's works were staged and screened (films Chuk and Gek, 1953, directed by I.V. Lukinsky; School of Courage, 1954, directed by V.P. Basov and M.V. Korchagin; The Fate of a Drummer, 1956, directed by V. V. Eisymont, and others).
Gaidar died in battle near vil. Leplyava, Kanevsky district, Cherkasy region, October 26, 1941.

Even during his lifetime, Arkady Petrovich Gaidar became a legend Soviet era: joined the Communist Party at the age of fourteen and went to the front civil war; at the age of seventeen he commanded a regiment, cracking down on bandits; then he became a writer, whose books were read by more than one generation of Soviet pioneers.

Countless streets, squares, lanes in central and not very central cities are named after Gaidar. Pioneer Houses, children's libraries, detachments and squads bore his name. Soviet schools. Biography of the writer as fascinating piece of art, read out at "Lenin" lessons and pioneer gatherings. A portrait of young Gaidar in the famous Kubanka, with a saber on his belt hung in almost every "classy corner". It seemed: there is no person more bright and heroic than the author of "Timur" and "The Fate of a Drummer". Gaidar passed the ice rink Stalinist repressions, persecution and oblivion. He died in battle with the fascist invaders, being at the peak of his literary glory. Such a hero could not be suspected or accused of anything.

However, during the period of the so-called “perestroika”, a stream of negative assessments of the recent past, accusations and sensational revelations literally rained down on the heads of our fellow citizens. Arkady Gaidar did not escape this fate either. By that time in the mind Soviet people the image of a children's writer and hero was so idealized that some facts from his real life, deliberately and unprovenly inflated by false historians and zealous scribblers, made not just an unfavorable, but rather a disgusting impression. It turned out that the seventeen-year-old regiment commander proved to be a merciless punisher in the suppression of anti-Soviet uprisings in the Tambov region and Khakassia in 1921-1922. At the same time, he fought not at all with whites or bandits armed to the teeth, but with civilians who tried to defend themselves from the arbitrariness and violence of local authorities. The famous children's writer taught the younger generation about kindness, justice, loyalty to the motherland, but he abused alcohol, did not have his own home, a normal family, and was generally a mentally ill, deeply unhappy, half-mad man.

As it turned out, more than half of these accusations turned out to be deliberate lies.

Gaidar is a man of his heroic-romantic, but also tragic time. Today it is hard to believe that it was creativity that saved famous writer from complete internal discord, illness, fear of the reality in which he, a dreamer and romance, had to survive. In his imagination, Gaidar created a happy country of the pioneer Timur, Alka, Chuk and Gek, little drummer Seryozha. Gaidar himself firmly believed in this country, believed in the reality of the great future of his heroes. His faith inspired thousands, even millions of Soviet boys and girls to live according to the fictitious, but the most beautiful and fair laws of the "country of Gaidar." As V. Pelevin wrote in his famous book“The life of insects”, even the image of a child killer created by a children's writer, free from the Christian commandment “do not kill” and throwing student Raskolnikov, has the right to exist. This image does not look so disgusting if only because Gaidar was truly sincere when he drew it from himself, a non-fictional hero and victim of a cruel revolutionary era. In fact, he was his own among the bookish, ideal heroes, from whom they took an example and whom entire generations sought to imitate. This is the whole truth about Gaidar. Looking for some other truth - it makes no sense ...

Parents and childhood

Arkady Petrovich Golikov was born in the small town of Lgov, Kursk region. His father, a school teacher, Pyotr Isidorovich Golikov, was a peasant. Mother - Natalya Arkadyevna, nee Salkova, a noblewoman of a not very noble family (she was the sixth cousin of M.Yu. Lermontov's great-granddaughter), worked first as a teacher, later as a paramedic. After the birth of Arkady, three more children appeared in the family - his younger sisters. The parents of the future writer were not alien revolutionary ideas and even participated in the revolutionary events of 1905. Fearing arrest, in 1908 the Golikovs left Lgov, and from 1912 they lived in Arzamas. It is this city future writer Arkady Gaidar considered his "small" homeland: here he studied at a real school, from here at the age of 14 he got to the front of the Civil War.

Pyotr Isidorovich Golikov was drafted into the army in 1914, after February Revolution soldiers of the 11th Siberian regiment elected him commissar, then the former ensign Golikov led the regiment. After October 1917, he became commissar of the division headquarters. Pyotr Isidorovich spent the entire Civil War on the fronts. He never returned to his family.

Natalya Arkadyevna, Gaidar's mother, until 1920 worked as a paramedic in Arzamas, then headed the county health department in the city of Przhevalsk, was a member of the county-city revolutionary committee. She died of tuberculosis in 1924.

Obviously, a boy from an intelligent family, which was Arkady at the beginning of the Civil War, could perceive the unfolding events as a kind of game. He could not care on whose side to realize his desire to accomplish a feat. However, the "revolutionary past" and the beliefs of the parents had an effect: in August 1918, Arkady Golikov applied to join the Arzamas organization of the RCP. By the decision of the Arzamas Committee of the RCP (b) on August 29, 1918, Golikov was admitted to the party "with the right of an advisory vote in his youth and until the completion of party education."

In his autobiography, Gaidar writes:

According to the information of the most authoritative "Gaidar expert" B. Kamov, Arkady was brought to the headquarters of the communist battalion by his mother. She alone was unable to feed four children, and Natalya Arkadyevna asked to take her son to the service. Battalion commander E.O. Efimov ordered that a literate and tall, precocious teenager be enlisted as an adjutant in the headquarters. Arkady was given a uniform, put on allowance. The family began to receive rations. A month later, Efimov was suddenly appointed commander of the security forces. railways Republic. An intelligent boy, who was excellent in documents and was efficient, the commander took with him to Moscow. Arkady was not yet 15 years old then.

The Red Army soldier Golikov successfully served first as an adjutant, then as the head of the communications team, but constantly "bombed" his superiors with reports of transfer to the front. In March 1919, after another report, he was sent to command courses, which were soon transferred from Moscow to Kyiv.

The situation in Kyiv did not allow the cadets to study in peace: they were constantly created combat detachments, thrown to liquidate gangs, used on the internal fronts. At the end of August 1919, early graduation took place at the courses, but the new painters were not distributed in parts. Of these, the Shock Brigade was formed here, which immediately came out to defend Kyiv from the Whites. On August 27, in the battle near Boyarka, platoon commander Arkady Golikov replaced the killed half-company Yakov Oksyuz with himself.

The years 1919-1920 pass for the newly minted commander in battles and battles: the Polish Front, Kuban, North Caucasus, Tavria.

"... I live like a wolf, I command a company, we fight with might and main with bandits"- Arkady Golikov reported in Arzamas to his comrade Alexander Plesko in the summer of 1920.

He is not yet seventeen, but not a boy: combat experience, three fronts, a wound, two shell shocks. The latter - in the attack, when the battalion occupied the Tubinsky Pass. life path selected - career commander of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army.

From the autobiography of A. Gaidar:

Adopted for the junior squad of company commanders, Arkady Golikov graduated from the "Shot" in the senior, tactical, squad. During his studies, he undergoes a short internship as a battalion commander and regiment commander, in March 1921 he took command of the 23rd reserve rifle regiment of the 2nd reserve rifle brigade of the Oryol military district, then was appointed commander of a battalion that acted against two rebel "armies" Antonov in the Tambov province. At the end of June 1921, the commander of the troops in the Tambov province M.N. Tukhachevsky signed an order appointing Arkady Golikov, who at that time was not yet 18 years old, commander of the 58th separate regiment for combating banditry.

Regiment commander

With the command of the regiment began new stage life of Arkady Gaidar, perhaps the most controversial. According to some biographers, during this period Golikov proved himself to be a decisive, talented commander who defended the conquests Soviet power. Others will say: cruel executioner and murderer.

It should not be forgotten that there are no right or wrong in the civil struggle. A very young man, in the past an intelligent boy Arkady Golikov, like many of his peers, scorched by the Civil War, was hardly psychologically ready for the activities that he had to lead when he headed the combat section in the fight against banditry. The newly minted commander of the Red Army, as best he could, tried to match the role imposed on him, but in reality he turned out to be not an executioner, but only a victim of the bloody military era and his own delusions.

After the defeat of the "Antonovshchina" in the fall of 1921, the commander Arkady Golikov received Tukhachevsky's personal praise for the work done. They wanted to send him to Moscow, giving a recommendation for admission to the Academy of the General Staff. However, the “experienced” commander had to lead one of the battalions of special forces (CHON) and go to Bashkiria, where it became necessary to fight against kulak and nationalist gangs. In Bashkiria, the Chonovites failed to make war: the battalion participated in only a few minor skirmishes, but already at the end of September 1921, Gaidar was transferred to Khakassia. Here, large gangs of the Cossack Solovyov intensified their activities.

The social base of the insurgent movement in Khakassia was the dissatisfaction of the local population with the policy of the communist regime (surplus appropriations, mobilization, labor duties, the seizure of pastures necessary for the Khakass cattle breeders). The new government, disregarding the real interests and objective possibilities of the "wild" population, tried to suppress by force the centers of spontaneous resistance, destroying the way of life that had developed over the centuries.

Under these conditions, the “criminal gang” of Solovyov, pursued by punitive detachments, acquired the status of a defender of the Khakass population. Gang size in different time ranged from two squadrons to twenty people.

Having found himself with small forces in the area where, in his opinion, half of the population supported the "bandits", Golikov informed the commander of the provincial CHON about the need, according to the experience of the Tambov region, to introduce harsh sanctions against the "half-savage foreigners", up to the complete destruction of the "bandit" uluses. Indeed, there were many people among the Khakasses who sympathized with the bandits, therefore, such methods of struggle as the capture and execution of hostages (women and children), the forcible expropriation of property, and the execution (flogging) of everyone suspected of having links with the rebels quickly entered the practice of the Chonovites.

No real documents confirming the direct participation of Arkady Golikov and his subordinates in the atrocities listed have been preserved.

It is only known that the representative of the military authorities failed to establish relations with the local Soviets and with the representatives of the Gubernia Department of the GPU. In his opinion, the "Gepeushniks" more closely followed the behavior of the Chon commanders and scribbled denunciations on them, but did not engage in their direct duties - the creation of a local intelligence network. Golikov had to personally recruit scouts for himself. He acted as any commander of the Red Army would have done in his place: he arrested those whom he suspected of having links with the gang, and then forced him to work as his scouts. The young commander had no experience, and he was guided only by the combat situation and the laws of wartime, because he did not know other laws. Naturally, numerous reports and complaints to higher authorities rained down on Golikov.

On June 3, 1922, a special department of the provincial department of the GPU initiated case No. 274 on charges of A.P. Golikov in abuse of official position. A special commission headed by battalion commander J. A. Wittenberg went to the place, which, having collected complaints from the population and local authorities, concluded its report by demanding the execution of the former head of the combat unit.

However, on June 7, the resolution of the commander V.N. was transferred from the headquarters of the provincial CHON to a special department. Kakoulina: "Arrest under no circumstances, replace and withdraw."

On June 14 and 18, Golikov was interrogated at the OGPU of the city of Krasnoyarsk. By that time, four departments had opened criminal cases against him at once: the CHON, the GPU, the prosecutor's office of the 5th army and the control commission under the Yenisei provincial party committee. Each department conducted its own investigation. During interrogations, the accused claimed that he shot without trial only bandits who themselves confessed to their crimes. However, no one carried out “legal formalities”, such as keeping an interrogation protocol or drawing up a death sentence, in his unit. Gaidar explained this by the fact that there was no competent clerk at the headquarters, and he himself was too busy to bother with unnecessary papers. In the course of the investigation, it was nevertheless found out that most of the crimes attributed to Golikov were the work of other persons or simply inventions of the scammers themselves.

On June 30, the gubernatorial department of the GPU transferred Golikov's case to the control commission of the Yenisei Gubernia Committee for consideration by the party line. Other cases were also transferred there. On August 18, the party organ considered this case at a joint meeting of the presidium of the provincial committee and the RKP(b) Committee. Almost all charges, except for illegal expropriations and the execution of three bandit accomplices, were dropped from Golikov. According to the decree of September 1, 1922, he was not expelled from the party (as some “researchers” now claim), but only transferred to the category of probationers for two years, with the deprivation of the opportunity to hold responsible positions.

As a result of the unrest, old injuries began to show. Three years earlier, the fifteen-year-old company commander had been wounded and at the same time severely shell-shocked by a nearby exploding shell. The shock wave damaged the brain. In addition, the young man unsuccessfully fell from a horse, hit his head and back. In peacetime, this injury might not have had such severe consequences, but during the war Gaidar quickly developed a traumatic neurosis. Some eyewitnesses of his actions in the Tambov region and Khakassia claimed that the commander Golikov, despite his youth, actively abused alcohol. People who knew Gaidar intimately already in the 1930s recalled that he could often look and act like he was drunk, although he did not actually drink. This is how the writer's attacks of neurosis began. After the trial in Krasnoyarsk, Gaidar was immediately ordered a psychiatric examination.

From a letter from Arkady to his sister Natasha:

Such a diagnosis was made to a nineteen-year-old boy! The young "veteran" was treated for a long time in Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, Moscow. Attacks of traumatic neurosis rolled less often, were not so acute. But the conclusion of the doctors crossed out the dream of an academy. In fact, paint Arkady Golikov was deprived of the opportunity to continue his service in the Red Army. The only way out for a disabled person - a victim of the Civil War - was writing.

Writer

Konstantin Fedin recalled:

There used to be a regimental commander - of course. Decided to become a writer - also understandable. But who was he then when he appeared in the editorial office of the almanac in a tunic and an army cap, on the burnt band of which there was a dark trace of a recently removed red star?

The answer to this question is the registration sheet No. 12371 of the Moscow City Military Commissariat, compiled by A.P. Golikov. in 1925. In the column "Is he in the service and where?" Answer: unemployed.

It is known that from the end of 1923 until his appearance in Leningrad in 1925, the former regimental commander Arkady Golikov wandered around the country, doing odd jobs, led the life of a half-traveler, half-tramp.

The work presented to the editors did not at all draw on a novel. It was the story "In the days of defeats and victories", which was published in the almanac, but it passed almost unnoticed by the reader. Critics spoke unflatteringly about the story, considering it a weak and mediocre work. But failures do not stop Gaidar. In April 1925, his story "RVS" was published. He also did not bring the author wide fame, but young readers liked it.

Arkady Golikov again spends the summer of 1925 wandering, and in the fall he ends up in Moscow, where he meets his Arzamas friend Alexander Plesko, who at that time was “well settled”: he worked in Perm as deputy editor-in-chief of the newspaper of the district committee of the Zvezda party. Alexander Plesko advised Arkady to go to Perm. The newspaper is good, the staff is young, friendly, in addition, Nikolai Kondratiev collaborates in Zvezda, their mutual friend by Arzamas. Friends willingly accepted Arkady into their circle. Already on the eve of the 8th anniversary October revolution his material appeared in the festive issue of Zvezda. Here, for the first time, the pseudonym "Gaidar" appears. They Arkady Golikov signed the story about the civil war "Corner House".

Nickname

The writer A. Rozanov in 1979, in his essay “Read and Think,” recalls the story of A.P. Gaidar about the origin of the pseudonym:

Then Arkady Petrovich continued - “... In the twenty-first year, our unit drove the bandits out of a village in Khakassia. I'm driving slowly down the street, suddenly runs up old woman strokes the horse and says to me in his own language: “Gaidar! Gaidar! It seems to mean "daring, dashing horseman." And this coincidence struck me so much that later I signed one of the first feuilletons printed - Gaidar ... ".

The son of the writer Timur Gaidar also began to adhere to this version.

Subsequently, one of the biographers interpreted the translation of this word from Mongolian as follows: "Gaidar is a rider galloping ahead."

Sounds nice. But worth doing simple thing- look through the dictionaries to make sure: neither in Mongolian, nor in two dozen other oriental languages, such a meaning of the word "gaidar" or "haidar" simply does not exist.

In the Khakass language, “haidar” means: “where, in which direction?” Perhaps, when the Khakass saw that the head of the combat area for combating banditry was going somewhere at the head of the detachment, they asked each other: “Khaidar Golikov? Where is Golikov going? In which direction? - to warn others of impending danger.

Permian period

In Perm, Gaidar worked for a long time in local archives, studying the events of the period of the first Russian revolution in Motovilikha and the fate of Alexander Lbov from the Urals. He was helped in everything by a dark-haired, mischievous, mobile, like mercury, girl Rakhil (Liya) Solomyanskaya - an active member of the Komsomol, the organizer of the first printed pioneer newspaper in Perm "Ant-wonder". She was seventeen, Gaidar - 21. In December 1925 they got married. For Arkady Petrovich, this was the second marriage. In 1921 he was married to Maria Plaksina. Their son Eugene died in infancy. In December 1926, Rachel also gave birth to a boy. It happened in Arkhangelsk, where Rakhil temporarily went to her mother. From Perm, Gaidar sent a telegram to his wife: "Name your son Timur."

With son Timur

While living in Perm, Gaidar worked on the story "Lbovshchina" ("Life in Nothing"), which was published with a continuation in the regional newspaper "Zvezda", and then published as a separate book. A good salary was received. Arkady Petrovich decided to spend it on traveling around the country without vouchers and business trips. He was accompanied by his peer, also a journalist, Nikolai Kondratiev. First Central Asia: Tashkent, Kara-Kum. Then crossing the Caspian to the city of Baku.

Before arriving in the capital of Azerbaijan, they did not count money, but here, in the eastern bazaar, it turned out that travelers had nothing to pay even for a watermelon. Friends quarreled. Both had to "hares" to get to Rostov-on-Don. The clothes were worn out, the holes had to be sewn to the underwear. In this form, you will not enter either the editorial office of the Rostov Molot, or the book publishing house, where children's writer could help with money. The travelers went to the freight railway station and worked for several days in a row loading watermelons. Here nobody cared about their clothes, because the others were no better dressed. And no one, of course, guessed that the writer, the former regiment commander, was loading the watermelons. The journey, full of romantic adventures, ended with the creation of the story “Riders of the Unapproachable Mountains” (published in Moscow in 1927).

Gaidar soon had to leave Perm. Because of the topical feuilleton published in Zvezda under his signature, the big scandal. The writer was brought to trial for libel and personal insult. The charges of slander were dropped from him, but for the insult that took place on the pages of the newspaper, the author of the feuilleton was sentenced to a week's arrest. The arrest was replaced by a public censure, only the edition of the printed organ had to be responsible for the insult. Gaidar's feuilletons were never published in Zvezda. The scandalous journalist moved to Sverdlovsk, where he worked for a short time in the Ural Worker newspaper, and in 1927 he left for Moscow.

The first works that brought fame to Arkady Gaidar were the fascinating stories for young people On the Count's Ruins (1928) and An Ordinary Biography (published in the Roman Newspaper for Children in 1929).

Khabarovsk

In 1931, Gaidar's wife Leah Lazarevna left for another and took her son with her. Arkady was left alone, he yearned, could not work, he left for Khabarovsk as a correspondent for the Pacific Star newspaper.

In the fifth issue of the almanac "The Past", published in Paris in 1988, the memoirs of journalist Boris Zaks about Arkady Gaidar (B. Zaks. Notes of an eyewitness. P. 378-390), with whom they worked together and lived in Khabarovsk, were published.

According to B. Zaks, after the divorce from his wife, Gaidar's illness became especially aggravated. At times, his behavior resembled violent insanity: he rushed at people with death threats, broke windows, defiantly cut himself with a razor.

The events described in the memoirs allow the doctor to qualify Gaidar's actions as "replacement therapy": the physical pain from cuts made it possible to distract himself from the terrible mental state that his illness caused. People around could perceive this as a suicide attempt, and therefore in Khabarovsk the writer again ends up in a psychiatric hospital, where he spends more than a year.

From the diary of Arkady Gaidar:

Children's writer Arkady Gaidar

Gaidar returns to Moscow in the autumn of 1932. Here the writer has neither permanent housing, nor relatives, nor money. Here is how Gaidar describes his first impressions of his stay in Moscow:

But his works for youth are published in the central magazines. Books are published and republished by metropolitan publishing houses. Gradually come fame, high fees, fame, success ...

Many people who knew the writer Arkady Gaidar in life considered him a cheerful, even reckless, but in his own way a very strong and whole person. In any case, outwardly he made just such an impression. In what he wrote, he himself believed and could make others believe. A real, noisy success came to Arkady Petrovich after the publication of the autobiographical story "School" (1930). This was followed by the stories "Far Countries" (1932), "Military Secret" (1935), which included the famous tale of Malchish-Kibalchish. In 1936, the magazine "Children's Literature" published the story "The Blue Cup", remarkable in its lyricism, which caused a lot of discussion. In the end, the story was banned for further printing by the People's Commissar of Education N.K. Krupskaya personally. During the life of the author, The Blue Cup was no longer published, but, in our opinion, this is the most talented and deeply psychological work of Arkady Petrovich. One of the first in children's literature, Gaidar presented the child not just as a unifying and reconciling factor in the family. Having made the child a full-fledged participant in “adult” relationships, the author provides his parents with the opportunity to look at the situation with different eyes, reconsider their actions, and evaluate them differently.

According to the memoirs of his son Timur, his father was always very sorry that he had to leave the army service. Remaining faithful to the era of the Civil War that had raised him, Gaidar always wore semi-military clothes, never wore suits and ties, and opened the window in any weather if some military unit was marching down the street singing a song. Once he bought a huge portrait of Budyonny, which did not fit in the room, and Arkady Petrovich had to give his wardrobe to the janitor in order to place the image of his beloved military leader on the wall.

In addition to writing, Gaidar did not find any other occupation in peacetime. He devoted himself entirely to literature, without a trace, clutching at war memories as the most important and dear in life. Creativity, obviously, helped the writer to fill the inner void, to realize his unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. It is no coincidence that in his works almost all adult characters (male fathers) are military men, officers of the Red Army, participants in the Civil War.

In 1938, Arkady Gaidar for some reason left Moscow for Klin. Why exactly in Klin - for all his biographers - " a military secret". It is difficult to trace the logic of a sick person, but it was in this town that Arkady Petrovich decided to “take root”. In Klin, he rented a room and almost immediately married the daughter of his landlord - Chernyshova Dora Matveevna, adopted her daughter Zhenya.

Zhenya recalled how one day dad took her and two girlfriends for a walk around Klin. And he told them to take empty buckets with them. He brought the girls to the center of the city, blindfolded them with ribbons and put them in buckets ... topped them with ice cream!

Arkady Petrovich wrote his famous story "Timur and his team" in Klin in 1940. True, at first it was a script for a movie. In issues with a continuation, she printed it " Pioneer Truth". Each issue of the newspaper was discussed at the debate - with the participation of writers, professional journalists and, of course, pioneers.

In Klin, the writer worked as if he was trying to save himself from bouts of mental illness by creative effort. Literally “on a binge”, “The Fate of the Drummer”, “Chuk and Gek”, “Smoke in the Forest”, “Commandant of the Snow Fortress”, “In the Winter of 1941” and “Timur's Oath” were written in a few years.

Reading the memoirs of people close to Gaidar and his works full of optimism and faith in a brighter future Soviet country, it is hard to believe that for almost the entire period of 1939-41, Gaidar was haunted by a serious illness. He spent a lot of time in psychiatric clinics, often suffered and did not believe in himself.

From a letter to the writer R. Fraerman (1941):

In this letter, in our opinion, Gaidar's attitude to the reality surrounding him is clearly manifested. He could not but understand that everyone around him was lying, that he himself was descending to previously impossible lies: he did not believe himself, he was prevaricating, inventing unrealistic circumstances in the life of his heroes. Perhaps, in everyday life, he goes against his convictions and principles, tries to arrange his personal life, knowing that his first wife was repressed, creates the illusion of a family with Chernyshova that did not work out, again plunges headlong into saving creativity.

By 1941, Gaidar's talent and fame had reached their peak. It was in the early 40s that his most famous works were published. Perhaps Gaidar would have written more than one wonderful book, but the Great Patriotic War began.

Doom

In June 1941, Arkady Petrovich Gaidar turned only 37 years old. In his blond light hair, gray hair was not even guessed, he looked quite healthy, young, full of strength, but the medical commission refuses the writer, as an invalid, to be called up for active military service.

A.P. Gaidar, 1941

Then Gaidar went to the editorial office of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper and offered his services as a war correspondent. On July 18, 1941, he received a pass from the General Staff of the Red Army to the active army and left for the Southwestern Front. IN military uniform, but with plastic buttons on the tunic. Civilian and unarmed.

After the encirclement in September 1941 of the units of the South-Western Front in the Uman-Kyiv region, Arkady Petrovich Gaidar ended up in Gorelov's partisan detachment. In the detachment he was a machine gunner. He died on October 26, 1941, near the village of Leplyavo, Kanevsky district, Cherkasy region. The real circumstances of his death have not yet been clarified. According to the official version, a group of partisans stumbled upon a German ambush near the railway embankment near the village of Leplyavo. Gaidar was the first to see the Germans and managed to shout: “Guys, Germans!”, after which he was killed by a machine-gun burst. This saved the lives of his comrades - they managed to leave. The fact that it was Arkady Gaidar who was killed was revealed only after the war, thanks to the testimony of two surviving witnesses (S. Abramov and V. Skrypnik). But there are other testimonies of local residents who claim that in the winter of 1941-1942 they hid in their house a man very similar to the writer Arkady Gaidar. In the spring of 1942, this man, who introduced himself as Arkady Ivanov, left them, intending to cross the front line. His further fate is unknown to anyone.