Who signed the letter against parsnips. Yevgeny Yevtushenko wants to sue the creators of the film “Mysterious Passion”

The story of the novel Doctor Zhivago“Everyone is quite well aware of it; I will not dwell on this in detail. I just want to emphasize that the persecution of the poet, which led to his death, did not begin because of the novel that was in the editorial office "New World""and which they promised to publish, but because of the Nobel Prize. They did not want to create a scandal until the last minute, for fear of spoiling the new image of the USSR in connection with the arrival Khrushchev, and it is very possible that everything would have come to a screeching halt - without the publication of the novel, of course, but also without the wild persecution that unfolded in the fall of 1958 - if the book had enjoyed moderate success in the West or had none at all. But the novel became a bestseller and received the most prestigious of literary awards. And this is what local authorities and literary dignitaries could not forgive him for.

Bullying

Unfortunately, Pasternak’s genius was first appreciated not in his homeland, but abroad (“ big things can be seen from a distance»). « The prophet is not in his own country». October 23, 1958 The Swedish Academy awarded him the Literature Prize " for significant contributions both to modern poetry and to the great traditions of Russian prose writers" In two years (before Pasternak’s death), he received up to thirty thousand letters and congratulatory telegrams from all over the world.

Korney Chukovsky congratulates Boris Pasternak

Zinaida Nikolaevna was already anticipating what dress she would wear for the trip to Stockholm. But the next morning he came to Pasternak Fedin- an old friend, a neighbor in the country, who said that he would speak to him as an official. And he demanded that he immediately renounce the prize, otherwise in tomorrow’s newspapers it would be regarded as a betrayal. The poet said that he would not do this.
Pasternak knew that for searching for the truth at all times a person was declared a heretic. It is no coincidence that in the first version " Faust" he wrote:

Few who penetrated into the essence of things
and revealing the tablets to everyone’s souls,
burned at the stake and crucified,
by the will of the mob from the earliest days.

From that day on, the persecution of the poet by the mob began. Right down to the physical. M. Svetlov, who lived that autumn in Peredelkino, said that hooligans threw stones at the windows of Pasternak’s dacha, there were threats to destroy it, and anti-Semitic cries were heard. Some scoundrels stoned Pasternak’s dog, they were afraid to let her out alone, and Lenya Gubanov came for a walk with her. (I had a verse about this,). The poet was like an animal in a pen. He spoke about this condition of his in a poem "Nobel Prize":

I disappeared like an animal in a pen.
Somewhere there are people, will, light,
And behind me there is the sound of a chase,
I can't go outside.

Dark forest and the shore of a pond,
They ate a fallen log.
The path is cut off from everywhere.
Whatever happens, it doesn't matter.

What kind of dirty trick did I do?
Me, the murderer and the villain?
I made the whole world cry
Over the beauty of my land.

But even so, almost at the grave,
I believe the time will come -
The power of meanness and malice
The spirit of goodness will prevail.

(I drew attention to the voluntary or involuntary roll call with Nabokov:

What a bad thing I did,
and am I a corrupter and a villain,
I, who makes the whole world dream
about my poor girl.)

And in the draft version, Pasternak had the following lines at the end:

The manhunt ring is getting closer and closer,
And I am to blame for someone else:
There is no right hand with me,
My heart friend is not with me!

And with such a noose at the throat
I wanted more bye
To wipe away my tears
My right hand.

The right hand is Olga Ivinskaya. At that moment they were in a quarrel - after another “family scene”, which she often arranged for him, demanding that the relationship be legitimized.

The anti-Pasternak campaign grew stronger. The name of the poet began to be vilified at all meetings, conferences, and activities. The newspapers were full of hysterical headlines for articles that were supposed to express the so-called “anger of the people.” “Ordinary workers” wrote that although they had not read the novel, people like Pasternak had no place in literature and on Soviet soil. For example, the following “pearls” were published:

Your ideal has long been in complete darkness.
How painful it is for us, how ashamed what is between us
parsnips still live and walk
and are waiting for their selling hour.
It’s not your friends who admire you,
and the yellow corrupt scribblers.
You can't forgive and you can't leave
there is parsnip in our literature!

The Writers' Union unanimously excluded the poet from its ranks, which Galich sang in detail and sarcastically in his song “It was shallow all over the earth...” Listen: .

“We will remember everyone by name...”

The transcript of that infamous meeting was published thirty years later in 1988 in " Soviet culture“, where the names of everyone “who raised their hand” were indicated. The abundance of truly talented people on the list of those who hastened to brand Pasternak is striking - Slutsky, Selvinsky, Shklovsky, Soloukhin, Lev Oshanin, Vera Panova, Marietta Shaginyan. Not everyone who spoke out against Pasternak was sincere; many were simply afraid. This was the last relapse of that great fear that was inherited from the Stalin era, that was in the genes. But there were also those who persecuted Pasternak at the behest of their souls. As I wrote Boris Chichibabin:

Fame has different ages.
For now, to the delight of the well-fed flocks
scum poison parsnips -
Stalin did not die.

Boris Polevoy called Pasternak a “literary Vlasovite,” saying: “ The Soviet court shot General Vlasov!"The voice corrected from the spot: " Hung!“Presiding Smirnov, feeling that the campaign was crossing all boundaries, hastened to end the debate and thereby saved the following who signed up from shame. Pasternak wrote about these: “ Well, martyrs of dogma, you too are victims of the century».
After the transcript is published V. Soloukhin began to write in “Soviet Culture” that he did not feel guilty, that the time was like this, it could not have been otherwise. Yes, it could have been different, it could have been! And the time was already vegetarian, the family was no longer threatened with arrest and death.

Someone didn't go to that meeting, like I. Ehrenburg, who answered the phone in response to invitations in his usual voice: “ Ilya Grigorievich has left and will not arrive soon».

Yevtushenko refused to speak, although he was a Komsomol organizer, he was called to the city committee and demanded to speak, but he refused, and during the voting he left the hall.

Bella Akhmadulina did not sign a collective letter from students demanding that Pasternak be expelled abroad - and she was expelled from the Literary Institute.

Many were surprised how she, the daughter of party workers, could stand in the same ranks with those few who spoke out against the persecution of Pasternak. Bella herself later recalled in an interview: " my youth coincided with the time when Pasternak was persecuted, and I saw what then happened in the souls of those people who took part in it. They slowly self-destructed from within."
There were even those who dared to vote against it. It was the sister of Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Anna Redens, who recently returned from camp.

She screamed: " Not unanimously! I'm against it!“But Smirnov pretended not to hear. But such people, of course, were in the minority.
In the newspapers under the heading “Unanimity” there were reports about writers’ meetings held throughout the country, where Pasternak, previously unknown to them, was remembered, where they did not want to “ breathe the same air with him”, “speak the same language”, “get into the same population census with him».
One evening, Pasternak, driven to despair, suggested that Olga Ivinskaya commit suicide together.

He had 22 Nembutal tablets. Ivinskaya had difficulty dissuading Pasternak from taking a disastrous step. The decisive role in the fact that he refused the prize was played by Ivinskaya, who was immeasurably frightened by this story: “ They won't do anything to you, but you won't get any bones from me." She began to complain to Pasternak that she was in trouble because of him: she was deprived of the translations that fed her. And Pasternak, after a telephone conversation with her, gives two telegrams: one to Stockholm, the other to the Central Committee: “ Give Ivinskaya a job. I refused the bonus."
This act was very disappointing. Zinaida Nikolaevna— she believed that he needed to leave, and alone: ​​“ I wish you well and want you to spend the next years of your life in peace and honor. Lenya and I will have to renounce you, you understand, of course, that this will only be official.”

Perhaps this was the most reasonable decision in that situation. But Pasternak could not imagine life outside his homeland ( “The soul is leaving the West; there is nothing for it to do there”). « If I get expelled, he insisted, I'll do like Marina».

"Villains of the People"

But his refusal of the prize was not enough for the mob. She demanded public repentance. His friends and family encouraged him to do this. Pasternak snapped back a poem addressed to them:

Friends, family - cute trash,
The time suited you.
Oh, how I will betray you yet,
Someday, liars and cowards.

After all, God's finger is visible in this
And there is no other way for you,
How to receive ministries
Persistently beat the thresholds.

Actually, it was Ivinskaya who ran the rapids.

It was thanks to her that this entire campaign acquired such a hysterical and noisy character. After all, one could bear one’s outcast dignity with dignity, as was the case before with Akhmatova, Zoshchenko. Ivinskaya played the main role in persuading Pasternak to repent. It was she and her entourage who wrote a letter of repentance to Khrushchev, and Pasternak, waving his hand, signed it. (She herself admits this in her notes in the chapter “ My fault"). This act greatly damaged Pasternak in his eyes. Solzhenitsyn, Shalamova, who sharply condemned him for such a manifestation of weakness unworthy of him. Moreover, this did not change Pasternak’s position, it only added shame. The persecution had already gained momentum; it continued due to inertia, despite the refusal of the award and the letters of repentance that B. Livanov called them “cursed.”
Lydia Chukovskaya cites an episode of how she was driving to Akhmatova in a taxi, and suddenly the boy driver suddenly turned to her:
-Have you read it, citizen? One writer, Pasteur, I think his last name, sold himself to foreign enemies and wrote such a book that he hates the Soviet people. Received a million dollars. He eats our bread, but spoils us. Here, they write in the newspaper.
Lydia Chukovskaya remembered the words Herzen: « What kind of villains of the people are you all?». « What villains of the people we are all!- she thought.

« We didn’t read Pasternak to you, boy, we didn’t give you his poems, his Chopin, his articles in time for you to be able to greet this issue of the newspaper the way it deserved. There is a real hunt for the soul of a simple man, this innocent boy who was robbed by us. And through our fault, he is defenseless. But these are the same ones who are now expressing yet another anger, about whom he said:

Overcoming adoration
I watched, idolized.
There were women, Sloboda residents,
students, mechanics».

He idolized without reciprocation. The locksmith wrote: “ Soviet writers did the right thing by expelling the traitor from their ranks" But they actually turned out to be traitors. Pasternak remained in literature, it was they who betrayed it.

"I'm finished, but you're alive"

And then the illness began. Pasternak was ill for several months, but he died, as it later turned out, from “one-year-old lung cancer.” That is, the disease settled in him precisely then, a year ago, when this large-scale persecution began, driving the poet like an animal into a pen.

For Ivinskaya, terrible, painful days began. She went to several times a day Peredelkino, back and forth, to find out something about the health of a loved one, suffering from the unknown, from the inability to help. Oh, how she felt her lack of rights these days! No matter how much Pasternak would tell her about this, both true and deceitful words, that he loves her, that the main thing is in her hands, everything that makes up the essence and meaning of life, that “ Would she really like to change places with an unhappy aging woman, with whom they have not heard each other for a long time?“- everything that he told her so many times in his own defense, calling for courage and patience - after all, she was denied too much. She didn't even have the right to know. She secretly sent a doctor she knew to Pasternak and waited, hiding at the fence of the dacha. Huddled, she sat at the porch, at the closed door, behind which “their own people” were saying goodbye to him.

However, although Ivinskaya said everywhere that Pasternak’s relatives did not allow her to see him, this was not so. He, no matter how monstrous it may be, did not want to see her himself. This is evidenced by many eyewitnesses, not only Zinaida, but also Asmus, and the doctor who was on duty with Pasternak, and Lydia Chukovskaya, who said that their relatives in their presence more than once asked Pasternak if he wanted to see anyone, and even directly asked about Ivinskaya , - he constantly refused.
Yes, he wrote letters to her, but with these letters he tried to keep her at a distance. " Don’t try to see me,” “wait, I’ll call you soon...“He didn’t even want to go to the hospital because she wouldn’t come to see him there.
Whether this was due to his poor health - he didn’t want her to see him like this, or whether it was a feeling of guilt before his wife - now no one will know. Zinaida Nikolaevna thought that he did not want to upset her, she even tried to arrange a meeting with Ivinskaya in her absence, but Pasternak refused here too. “I will already be responsible for a lot before God", he told her. And he also said that he was glad that he was dying, because he could no longer endure human vulgarity and was leaving unreconciled with life.

But it is not true that he did not remember Olga in his last moments. The nurse in whose arms he died later conveyed to her his words with tears: “Who will feel bad about my death, who? Only Lelyusha will feel bad, I didn’t have time to arrange anything, the main thing is that she will feel bad.”

I'm finished, but you're alive.
And the wind, complaining and crying,
Rocks the forest and the dacha.
Not every pine tree separately,
And all the trees
With all the boundless distance,
Like sailboats' bodies
On the surface of the ship's bay.
And this is not out of daring
Or out of aimless rage,
And in order to find words in melancholy
A lullaby for you.

He died May 30, 1960 at 23.20. Olga found out about this at 6 in the morning when she went, as always, to his dacha to meet the nurse coming from night duty. She understood everything from her face. And she ran to the dacha, crying loudly and shouting: “ Now you won't be able to keep me out! Now there is nothing to be afraid of me!”
No one stopped her at the entrance. He lay still warm, and his hands were still soft, and his face seemed alive. And his prophetic voice sounded in my ears: “I’m finished, but you’re alive...”

“Goodbye, wingspan spread...”

Yes, everything came true. All the worst. Everything went according to the milestones of this fatal romance. (Not only poetry, but also prose comes true. Especially if it is the prose of the Poet). This novel really played a tragic role in their lives and absorbed everything.
From Doctor Zhivago»: « And so she began to say goodbye to him with simple, everyday words of a cheerful, unceremonious conversation that breaks the framework of reality and has no meaning, just as choruses and monologues of tragedies, and poetic speech, and music and other conventions, justified only by the convention of excitement, have no meaning...
It seemed as if these words, wet with tears, were sticking together into her tender and quick babble, like the wind rustling silky and damp leaves tangled with warm rain.
“Here we are together again, Yurochka.” How God brought us to meet again. What a horror, think about it! Oh, I can't! Lord, I roar and roar... Here again is something of our kind, from our arsenal. Your departure is my end. Again something big, irrevocable...
Farewell, my great and dear one, farewell my pride, farewell my fast deep river, how I loved your all-day splash, how I loved to throw myself into your cold waves...”
And the answer was: “ Goodbye, Lara, goodbye in the next world, goodbye, my beauty, goodbye, my joy, bottomless, inexhaustible, eternal... I will never see you again, never, never... I will never see you again...»
And then this amazing day came, memorable to the smallest detail - June 2, 1960- the day of Boris Pasternak's funeral.

Several thousand people - all generations of the Moscow intelligentsia - gathered in Peredelkino in the morning. No one came here out of outward decency, out of formal duty. For each of those present, this day was a huge event. The absence was striking Fedina, Leonova, friend of youth Aseeva. Lydia Chukovskaya spotted in the crowd Maria Petrov, Lyubimov, Ranevskaya, Kaverin, Paustovsky...
There was no depression or sorrow in the general mood; there was even some kind of elation and solemnity. Someone from the crowd began to quietly and ineptly read “ August", a poem written by Pasternak in 1953, striking in its prophetic power. He described in it his farewell to life, as if he had foreseen this bright June day...

As promised, without deceiving,
The sun came through early in the morning
An oblique strip of saffron
From curtain to sofa.

It covered with hot ocher
The neighboring forest, the houses of the village,
My bed, wet pillow,
And the edge of the wall behind the bookshelf.

I remembered why
The pillow is slightly moistened.
I dreamed that someone was coming to see me off
You walked through the forest one after another.

You walked in a crowd, separately and in pairs...
Suddenly someone remembered that today
The sixth of August in the old days,
Transfiguration.

Usually light without flame
Coming from Tabor on this day,
And autumn, clear as a sign,
Eyes are drawn to yourself.

And you went through the petty, beggarly,
Naked, trembling alder
Into the ginger-red forest of the cemetery,
Burnt like a printed gingerbread.

With its hushed peaks
The neighboring sky is important
And the voices of roosters
The distance echoed long-drawnly.

In the forest by a government land surveyor
There was death in the midst of the graveyard,
Looking into my dead face,
To dig a hole according to my height.

Was physically felt by everyone
A calm voice from someone nearby.
That is my old prophetic voice
Sounded untouched by the collapse:

"Farewell, Preobrazhensky blue"
And the gold of the second Savior.
Soften with the last feminine caress
I feel the bitterness of the fateful hour.

Goodbye, timeless years,
Say goodbye to the abyss of humiliation
A challenging woman!
I am your battlefield.

Goodbye, wingspan spread,
Flight free perseverance,
And the image of the world, revealed in words,
And creativity and miracles.”

It was a very bright funeral. The coffin was carried on the shoulders, and there was something very festive in the blossoming apple trees, the cloudless blue sky and the clean, calm profile of the poet floating above the people above the sea of ​​flowers.

And all the flowers that there are in the world,
blossomed towards this death.
And immediately the planet became quiet,
bearing the name of the humble land. -

will write later Akhmatova. She said: " It was a real Russian funeral. These need to be earned».

Gravestone of Pasternak sculptor Sarah Lebedeva at the cemetery in Peredelkino belongs to the best examples of Russian memorial sculpture.

It is a stele of strict forms with a romantic profile of the poet using the technique of in-depth relief. The profile image seems to float in space, as if in the endless expanse of eternity... On the 40th anniversary of Pasternak’s death, the monument by Lebedeva, which by that time was in need of restoration, was replaced by an exact copy of the sculptor’s work Dmitry Shakhovsky.

And 6 years later, in 2006, Pasternak’s grave in the cemetery in Peredelkino was desecrated by unknown vandals. Cemetery wreaths were burned on the tombstone, leaving it covered in melted plastic and smoked.

The prosecutor's office opened a criminal case, but the scum were never found.

Afterword

A few words about the future fate of Pasternak’s loved ones. Zinaida Nikolaevna outlived her husband by 6 years.

These were very difficult years for her. After his death, as always, active, even in grief, she began to put the archive in order and take care of the erection of the monument. A year later she had a heart attack. The financial situation became more and more difficult. By 1962 there was no more money, but it was necessary to preserve the dacha that Pasternak loved so much, and in which, as she firmly believed, there would someday be a museum.

In 1963, the poet’s wife decided to sell the originals of Pasternak’s letters to her, having previously retyped all 75 on a typewriter, for the paltry sum of 500 rubles to the writer Sofya Prokofieva, and she in 1969, for the same amount, transferred them for storage to TsGALI.

Zinaida Nikolaevna lived in poverty for a long time, tried to get a pension, which she was never given, and died from the same disease as Pasternak (lung cancer) in 1966.

A year earlier, in 1965, Pasternak’s first wife died. Evgenia.

She took his death very hard, became nervously ill and died suddenly at the age of 66.

Evgenia Vladimirovna Pasternak with her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren

About the fate of Pasternak's children. Youngest son from Zinaida Nikolaevna Leonid died in 1976 from a heart attack at the age of 39 while driving.

His daughter Elena now with his mother Natalia Anisimovna, widow of Leonid Pasternak, is in charge of the Peredelkino Museum.
Son from his first wife Evgeniy Borisovich now 89 years old.

He is a physicist (however, after accompanying Natalya Solzhenitsyn to the airport in 1974, he lost his job and was kicked out of the Moscow Energy Institute. Then he went to the Institute of World Literature, began preparing his father’s publications, and sorting through archives).

Evgeny Borisovich and Elena Vladimirovna Pasternak analyzing the poet’s archive. 1969

In 1989, E. Pasternak released a large work (700 pages) - “ Boris Pasternak. Materials for biography» with illustrations Peter Pasternak- grandson of the poet. Peter is the only one of the four grandchildren of the brilliant writer born during his lifetime. He is very similar to his grandfather, all of whose poems he knows by heart.

Pyotr Pasternak is now 54 years old. He graduated from the Moscow Art Theater School, worked as a theater designer at Sovremennik, at the Nikitsky Gate Theater of Mark Rozovsky, and made dolls for bohemian clubs.

He became famous for creating iconic clubs in Moscow: “Gogol”, “Propaganda”, “White Cockroach”, “Chinese pilot Zhao Da"and others. Considered the founder of the club movement in Russia. He has two children. (He is married to his niece's daughter Fadeeva).
In total, Pasternak has 11 great-grandchildren.

And here’s how the fate of the real Lara, Olga Ivinskaya, turned out.

Two months after Pasternak's death in August 1960, she was arrested again. She was accused of smuggling: through her, fees came from abroad for “ Doctor Zhivago" Currency was prohibited in our country at that time. Together with her mother, her 16-year-old daughter Irina was arrested “for failure to inform.”

Olga was given 8 years in the camps, Irina - three years.

Ivinskaya poured out her despair in poetry:

All. This is where the film breaks.
We are flying somewhere into the darkness...
You are in the grave, and the happiness of the child
I'm crying for a crazy dream!

Faces blur in the semi-darkness,
Nobody can help us.
It is mothers who know what is in prison,
Somewhere nearby, behind the wall, is a daughter.

So what! No need for excuses
But, in the “anxiety of worldly vanity”,
I am not allowed to cry at the fence,
Behind which you are hiding.

Your book of memories (“ Years with Boris Pasternak") she ends with these words: " My love! So I am finishing the work bequeathed by you. Forgive me for writing like that, I couldn’t and would never be able to write at the level that you deserve... You were right: we don’t learn anyone’s lessons, and we keep reaching for the illusory and disastrous vanity. And through all the mistakes, all the troubles, all the futility and vanity of my lonely existence, I stretch out my hands to you and say:

And now, already freezing,
I stand at my graves,
and I knock on the gates of heaven,
since you still loved me».

In 2000, the Moscow publishing house “Blue Apple” published a book of poems by Olga Ivinskaya, published by her daughter Irina Emelyanova and Dmitry Vinogradov, entitled “ Earth open window».

During her lifetime, Ivinskaya never published her poems; she made money through journalism and translations; this publication is posthumous.

In 1988, Olga Ivinskaya was rehabilitated for lack of evidence of a crime and in 1991 she appealed to the central government. Archive of Literature and Art (TSGALI) with a request to return the manuscript of Pasternak’s novel, his poems, articles, and letters that were seized from her during a search.

But they refused to return them to her, citing the fact that she was not the legal heir of the poet (not a wife, not a relative, there was no will or deed of gift). The legal heirs claimed their rights to this archive - the widow of Leonid’s youngest son Natalya Anisimovna and her daughter, the poet’s granddaughter Elena. The property was declared controversial, and the archive was seized. The trial was quite loud, many journalists and cultural figures joined in. Some argued that Ivinskaya should return what was illegally taken from her, that she was robbed by the authorities, others believed that the poet’s legacy should belong to the people, Russia, that is, TsGALI.
In 1995, at the age of 83, Olga Ivinskaya died.

Here is one of her last photos.

Now her daughter has begun to lay claim to this archive Irina Emelyanova and her husband Vadim Kozovoy(poet, scientist, human rights activist) living in Paris.

Irina Emelyanova

They managed to sue some things and now some of Pasternak’s letters and poems have migrated abroad. And in 1996, the London auction house Christie's put up for sale Boris Pasternak's autographs and his letters to Olga Ivinskaya for 20 and 30 thousand pounds sterling each. For 58 lots, Ivinskaya’s gambling relatives set a scrap price of 1 million 303 thousand US dollars. The love of the poet and Lara was auctioned off. This is such a sad and cynical end to this tragic, immortal love story. Quite in the spirit of our times. And it all started so beautifully...

Chalk, chalk all over the earth,
to all limits...

Transition to LiveJournal:

Whether Slutsky was right when he wrote: “Sins are forgiven for poetry. Great sins are forgiven for great poetry,” I don’t know, but his plea addressed to his descendant: “Strike, but don’t forget. Kill, but don’t forget,” pierces with his dying courage of self-condemnation."

Galina Medvedeva: “... it was difficult to understand Slutsky’s fatal mistake, which had so blurred and broken the brilliant beginning of the path. The ambitious desire to become in the first ranks of a little freer literature, quite legitimate, but if without human sacrifices... For the fact that Slutsky executed himself, he forgiven. Even the incorruptible L.K. Chukovskaya spoke of his repentance sympathetically and softly. But how humanly sorry for this sorrowful torment, this torture of conscience...”

Despite refusing the prize, Pasternak, who was assessed differently in society and literary circles, behaved courageously and surprisingly calmly. According to the testimony of relatives, Boris Leonidovich, in the most painful and gloomy days of October 1958, worked at his desk, translating “Mary Stuart”. But the “epic” could not but affect his health. Less than two years after being persecuted and forced to refuse the prize, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak died on May 30, 1960. He was seventy years old. He left this life as courageously as he lived. Pasternak's funeral turned out to be the first public demonstration of the growing strength of democratic literature.

Slutsky, in the years following 1958, thought about the Moscow writers' meeting and about his performance, wrote poems that become more understandable once they are perceived against the backdrop of Pasternak's history.

They beat themselves with short swords,
showing submission to fate,
they don’t forgive us for being timid,
to no one. Even to myself.

Somewhere I got cold feet. And this case
whatever you call him,
the most evil, prickly salt
settles in my blood.

Salts my thoughts and actions,
together, eating and drinking next to each other,
and shakes and taps,
and gives me no peace.

Life, although tinged with dark memories, continued. “He freed himself, he burned out within himself the slave of preconceived truths, armchair schemes, soulless theories. In his work of the late 60s and 70s, we were shown a good and strict example of returning from a purely ideological person to a natural person, an example of tearing off old clothes, an example of restoring trust in living life with its true, and not phantom, foundations. “Political chatter does not reach me,” one of the most political Russian poets now wrote. He was moving away from the nervous machine-gun crackle of politics to the calm and pure voice of truth - and she. responded in him with lines of beautiful poetry" (Yu. Boldyrev).

Chapter Seven
JEWISH THEME

The Jewish theme for the Russian poet Boris Slutsky remained a constant pain and a subject of deep thought. “To be a Jew and to be a Russian poet - this burden was painful for his soul.”

This topic has always been painful, delicate, and difficult for poetic embodiment in Russia (and not only in Russia). To some extent, Mikhail Svetlov, Joseph Utkin, Eduard Bagritsky, Alexander Galich, Naum Korzhavin managed to embody it.

“Pasternak touched on it in the poems of the early thirties,” writes Solomon Apt in his memoirs about Boris Slutsky, “touched it in passing, with a hint, as if for a second, illuminating it with a beam, but without lingering, without delving into the depths of the question of the dependence of wide recognition on its rootedness in the soil..." Back in 1912, at the time of his passion for philosophy, Pasternak wrote to his father: "... neither you nor I are Jews; although we not only voluntarily and without any shadow of martyrdom bear everything that this happiness obliges us to do ( For example, I not only bear the impossibility of earning money on the basis of the faculty that is dear to me, but I will bear it and consider getting rid of this to be base; but this does not make me any closer to being Jewish.” (A Jew in Russia could not be left at the university, and for a philosopher this was the only opportunity for professional work.) This question worried Boris Pasternak in the last years of his life. Two chapters (11 and 12) of Doctor Zhivago are dedicated to him. Pasternak, through the mouth of Zhivago, says that “the very hatred towards them is contradictory<евреям>, its basis. What irritates is precisely what should be touched and disposed. Their poverty and overcrowding, their weakness and inability to repel blows. Not clear. There is something fatal here." Another character in the novel, Gordon, is looking for an answer to the question: "Whose benefits is this voluntary martyrdom, who needs so many innocent old people, women, children, so subtle and capable of good, to be ridiculed and bleeding for centuries and heartfelt communication?" The poet himself saw a way out in assimilation.

This topic also worried Slutsky’s close friend David Samoilov. True, he has no poems dedicated to the Jewish question, but in 1988, shortly before his death, remembering the Holocaust, the “doctors’ plot” and the anti-Semitism of the post-war era, Samoilov wrote in his diary: “If I, a Russian poet and a Russian person, are driven into a gas station camera, I will repeat: “Shema Yisroel, adenoi eleheinu, edenoi echod” is the only thing I remember from my Jewishness. He could also add what was passed on to him from his beloved father - a sense of dual belonging to Russia and Jewry.

Slutsky was not afraid that entry into this “cursed” area was strictly prohibited. It was not the first time for him to write “on the table.” The Jewish-themed poems were inspired by enduring pain. And he wrote about this not at all because anti-Semitism affected him personally or because the Holocaust claimed the lives of his loved ones: he hated any manifestations of xenophobia. True to the best traditions of Russian literature, Slutsky was always on the side of the persecuted and oppressed.

Poems and prose related directly to the Jewish theme are organically woven into the poet’s work, in which a hymn to the courage of the Russian soldier, compassion for his military fate and joy for his successes coexist with poems full of pity for the captive Italian (“Italian”), mortally wounded.” Fritz" ("Hospital"), an elderly German woman ("German") and Polish officers of Anders' army returning from Soviet camps ("Thirty").

The poet defended the need for Jews to absorb the culture of those peoples among whom fate placed them, and to fit Jewish experience into the cultural context of these peoples.

I can't trust the translation
Your poems cruel freedom,
And therefore I will go into fire and water,
But I will become known to the Russian people.

I am a foreigner; I'm not a gentile.
Not an old-timer? Well, I'm a new settler.
It’s like I’m moving from faith to heresy,
Desperately moved to Russia...

In the poem “Birch Tree in Auschwitz,” it is no coincidence that Slutsky writes: “I will not take the plane tree and the oak as witnesses of death. // And the laurel is of no use to me. // The birch tree is enough for me.” He thereby emphasizes both his Jewishness (for Auschwitz was built to exterminate Jews specifically) and his loyalty to Russia (for the birch tree is a symbol of Russia). For Slutsky, his Jewishness, Russian patriotism and internationalism are inseparable. Without these three components, it is impossible to imagine the ideology of Boris Slutsky, to which he remained faithful until the end of his days.

To believe that Pasternak was a writer disliked by the Soviet authorities all his life is not entirely correct. Until the mid-1930s, a large volume of his poems was actively published, and Pasternak himself participated in the activities of the USSR Writers' Union, while trying not to bow to those in power. Thus, in 1934, at the first congress of Soviet writers, Boris Leonidovich said that the loss of one’s face threatens to turn into a “socialist dignitary.” At the same congress, Nikolai Bukharin (who had already lost his former power, but still had weight in the party) called Pasternak the best poet of the Soviet Union. But two years later, at the beginning of 1936, the situation began to change: the USSR government was dissatisfied with the too personal and tragic tone of the poet’s works. The Soviet Union does not need decadents, but activist writers. But then Pasternak does not fall into complete disgrace.

When talking about the writer’s relationship with the Soviet regime, two episodes associated with Joseph Stalin are usually remembered. The first (and most famous) occurred on June 13, 1934. Boris Leonidovich Pasternak will remember the events of that day all his life, especially in the midst of the ongoing persecution. At about half past four in the afternoon the bell rang in the writer’s apartment. A young male voice told Pasternak that Stalin would now speak to him, which the poet did not believe, but he still dialed the dictated number. The General Secretary of the Party actually answered the phone. Witness accounts vary about how this conversation actually went. It is known for sure that Stalin and Pasternak spoke about Osip Mandelstam, who was sent into exile because of a mocking epigram directed against the Stalinist regime and Joseph Vissarionovich himself. The “Father of Nations” asked whether Mandelstam was a friend of Pasternak, whether he was a good poet... What exactly Pasternak answered is unknown, but, apparently, the writer tried to avoid uncomfortable questions by launching into lengthy philosophical discussions. Stalin said that this is not how they protect comrades and hung up. An annoyed Pasternak tried to call the Secretary General again, to persuade him to let Mandelstam go, but no one answered the phone. Pasternak believed that he had acted unworthily, which is why he could not work for a long time.

A year later, in the fall of 1935, the poet had the chance to stand up for other writers. He sent Stalin a personal message, where he simply and sincerely asked to release Anna Akhmatova’s husband and son, Nikolai Punin and Lev Gumilyov. Both were released exactly two days later. Pasternak would remember these episodes at the beginning of 1959, when, driven to despair by persecution and lack of income, he was forced to write a letter to Dmitry Polikarpov, one of the main culprits of his troubles: “The truly terrible and cruel Stalin considered it not beneath his dignity to fulfill my requests for prisoners and on your own initiative call me to the telephone about this.”

• Boris Pasternak with his wife Zinaida at the dacha, 1958

Poems are raw prose

The main reason for the persecution was the writer’s only novel, Doctor Zhivago. Pasternak, who worked with poetry before the publication of this work, considered prose a more perfect form of conveying the writer’s thoughts and feelings. “Poems are raw, unrealized prose,” he said. The time after the Great Patriotic War was marked for Pasternak by the expectation of change: “If God wills it, and I’m not mistaken, there will soon be a vibrant life in Russia, exciting the new century and even earlier, before the onset of this prosperity in private life and everyday life - an amazingly huge how under Tolstoy and Gogol, art." For such a country, he began to write Doctor Zhivago - a symbolic novel imbued with Christian motives and telling about the root causes of the revolution. And its heroes are symbols: Zhivago is Russian Christianity, and the main female character Lara is Russia itself. Behind every character, behind every event in the novel there is something much larger, more comprehensive. But the first readers could not (or did not want) to understand this: they praised the poems that were included in the book under the guise of the work of Yuri Zhivago, talked about the charm of the landscapes, but did not appreciate the main idea. Oddly enough, the meaning of the work was grasped in the West. Writers' letters about Doctor Zhivago often say that this novel allows Westerners to better understand Russia. But these words of support almost did not reach Pasternak due to extensive persecution from the authorities and even the literary community. He had difficulty receiving news from other countries and was forced to worry primarily about how to feed his family.

An official and full-scale campaign against Boris Leonidovich Pasternak began after he received the Nobel Prize in 1958. The party leadership insisted that the award was given to Pasternak for the novel Doctor Zhivago, which discredits the Soviet system and allegedly has no artistic value. But it should be remembered that it was not the first time that Pasternak had been nominated for the prize: the Nobel Committee had been considering his candidacy since 1946, and the novel did not yet exist even in drafts. And the justification for the award first talks about Pasternak’s achievements as a poet, and then about his successes in prose: “For significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel.”

But it is also incorrect to say that Doctor Zhivago had no influence on the decision of the Nobel Committee. The novel, published in Italy in 1957, was a significant success. It was read in Holland, Great Britain and the USA. “So what if you are alone in Peredelkino accomplishing your invisible feat - somewhere typesetters in aprons get paid and feed their families for typing your name in all the languages ​​of the world. You are helping to eliminate unemployment in Belgium and Paris,” wrote Pasternak’s cousin Olga Freidenberg. The CIA, which shared the Soviet government's view that the novel was anti-revolutionary, arranged for free distribution of Doctor Zhivago to Russian tourists in Belgium and planned to deliver the "propaganda" book to the countries of the socialist bloc.

All this, even before the award of the prize, ensured Boris Leonidovich Pasternak’s disgrace. Initially, the writer gave the manuscript not to foreigners, but to the Russian magazine “New World”. Pasternak did not receive a response from the editors for a long time, so he finally decided to transfer the rights to publish the novel to the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. By the end of 1956, a copy of the novel was already in the editorial offices of the largest Western European countries. The Soviet Union, which refused to publish it, forced Pasternak to withdraw the book, but it was no longer possible to stop the process.

Pasternak was well aware of the problems that receiving the Nobel Prize could cause for him, and yet on October 23, 1958, the day of his triumph, he sent words of sincere gratitude to the Swedish Academy. The Soviet leadership was furious: the USSR insisted that Sholokhov receive the award, but the Nobel Committee did not heed their requests. The campaign against Pasternak began immediately: colleagues came to him, essentially demanding that he give up the prize, but the writer was adamant. And on October 25, the persecution began in the media. Moscow Radio reported that “awarding the Nobel Prize for a single work of average quality, which is Doctor Zhivago, is a political act directed against the Soviet state.” On the same day, Literaturnaya Gazeta published an article in which it called Pasternak “bait on the hook of anti-Soviet propaganda.” Two days later, on October 27, at a special meeting of the USSR Writers' Union, it was decided to expel Pasternak from the organization and ask Khrushchev to expel the offending poet from the country. Critical, if not offensive, publications appeared in the press with enviable regularity. The main problem with all these attacks was that almost none of those accusing them had read the novel. At best, they were familiar with a few pieces taken out of context. Pasternak tried to draw attention to this in those rare letters that he sent to his accusers, but it was all in vain: the order to “harass” the Nobel laureate and force him to refuse the award came from above. Khrushchev himself, without hesitation, called Pasternak a pig, which was readily picked up by other persecutors.

But it was not these attacks that forced Pasternak to refuse the prize: the writer stopped reading the press to maintain his health. The last straw in the cup of patience of an already deeply unhappy man were the words of his muse, Olga Ivinskaya. She, fearing for her freedom, accused the writer of selfishness: “You won’t get anything, but you won’t get any bones from me.” After this, Pasternak sent a telegram to Sweden stating that he would not be able to accept the honorary award.

• globallookpress.com
• Russian Look

“The exclusion of Pasternak is a disgrace for the civilized world”

But the calculations of the Soviet government did not come true: Pasternak’s refusal of the prize went almost unnoticed, but the persecution of the writer received a wide public response throughout the Western world. Major writers of the time, including Aldous Huxley, Albert Camus, Andre Maurois, Ernest Hemingway, spoke out in support of the Soviet writer and sent letters to the USSR government with an urgent request to stop the persecution of Pasternak.

“Pasternak’s exception is something incredible, making the hairs on your head stand on end. Firstly, because the awarding of the prize by the Swedish Academy is usually considered an honor, secondly, because Pasternak cannot be held responsible for the fact that the choice fell on him, and finally, because the arbitrariness that Soviet writers allowed only widens the gap between Western culture and Russian literature. There was a time when great writers like Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky were quite rightly proud of the prestige they had in the West.”

Andre Maurois

“The only thing Russia needs to understand is that the Nobel Prize rewarded a great Russian writer who lives and works in Soviet society. Moreover, Pasternak’s genius, his personal nobility and kindness are far from insulting Russia. On the contrary, they illuminate her and make her love her more than any propaganda. Russia will suffer from this in the eyes of the whole world only from the moment a person who now evokes universal admiration and special love is convicted.”

Albert Camus

“The exclusion of Pasternak is a disgrace for the civilized world. This means he is in danger. He must be protected."

London News Chronicle

The campaign to protect Boris Pasternak has acquired unprecedented proportions. Foreign colleagues and readers wrote him many letters offering help. Even the Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, supported the writer, who personally called Khrushchev. After this, the First Secretary of the USSR realized that things were very serious, and sent letters to the embassies of several countries, officially assuring that Pasternak’s life, freedom and property were not in danger.

A terrible scandal broke out in Sweden: here Lenin Prize laureate Arthur Lundqvist announced his refusal of the award in support of Pasternak. The media all over the world talked about the Soviet writer, which sometimes led to quite curious cases. For example, one farmer complained that the Pasternak story could ruin him because the radio stations discussing the Nobel Prize in Literature stopped broadcasting information about grain prices and weather forecasts.

But this did not change Pasternak’s life for the better. At first he feared one thing—expulsion. The writer could not imagine life without Russia, so sometimes he made concessions to the authorities in order to stay in his homeland. Then the Nobel winner faced another problem - he stopped receiving royalties. He, no longer young at all and also a family man, was deprived of his means of livelihood. At the same time, the royalties for Doctor Zhivago were waiting for their owner abroad. The writer had no way to get them.

But even in such an atmosphere, Pasternak did not stop creating: work helped preserve the remnants of moral strength. The writer conceived a play about a serf actor who develops his talent despite a humiliating slave position. Gradually the plan became more and more ambitious, turning into a play about all of Russia. It was called “The Sleeping Beauty,” but it was never finished: Pasternak, who conceived the new work in the summer of 1959, passed away on May 30, 1960.

27 years after Pasternak's death, on February 19, 1987, the USSR Writers' Union finally canceled its decree on the expulsion of Boris Leonidovich. All these years, the country has been undergoing a slow process of rehabilitation of the writer. At first, his existence was no longer completely hushed up, then they began to talk about him in a neutral way. The period of silence and distortion ended in the late 1980s: first the Writers' Union repented, then the terminally ill Viktor Nekrasov came out with a poignant article in memory of Pasternak (though in a New York newspaper) and finally in 1988, 30 years late, New World magazine published the full text of Doctor Zhivago. The following year, Pasternak's relatives received the Nobel Prize for him. On December 10, 1989, in Stockholm, in honor of the great Russian writer, who had lost his legal right to be a triumphant, a charmingly tragic melody from Bach’s Suite in D minor for solo cello was played.

Non-ceremonial portraits - Evgeny Yevtushenko

This interview was recorded in two passes. The first time we spoke with the poet, who now lives and works in the USA (Evgeniy Aleksandrovich teaches film history at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma), was when he watched the first two episodes of the film. He really liked the beginning...

"AT FIRST THIS PICTURE MOVED ME TO TEARS"

Evgeniy Aleksandrovich, Channel One is showing a series based on the novel of the same name by Vasily Aksenov “Mysterious Passion”. Many heroes of the Thaw era are depicted there under fictitious but recognizable names, including you under the name of Yan Tushinsky.

Hello! The film is quite nice, although, to be honest, I didn’t like the book in general. Vasya Aksenov is a very good lyrical writer. But this is not his best thing. There is too much grotesque, humorousness and too much fiction in it.

Directors Konstantin Ernst and Denis Evstigneev did the right thing by freeing themselves from the pressure of the book. They left everything that was best there, but they looked up not so much to this work as to their idea of ​​time. Because in Aksenov’s text there is a lot of this... how can I tell you... there is an element of the author’s resentment at the fact that he was forced to leave the country. There is such a taste. Eat.

(Evgeny Aleksandrovich is not entirely accurate. The director of this film is Vlad Furman, and Denis Evstigneev is the producer. The producers are also Konstantin Ernst and Marina Gundorina (Spanish), the screenwriter is Elena Raiskaya. - Auth.)

By the way, I want to say - no one knows - one interesting thing. I was then very close to the young Sovremennik Theater. And Galya Volchek, at that time the leading actress of the theater, was present when I first read the poem “Babi Yar” in Moscow, which became a scandalous event at that time. Galya was pregnant, in her last month of pregnancy. And she gave birth to a son. Her son became director Denis Evstigneev. And he made this picture! How did it all connect, huh? This is amazing!

"THE AGE RESTORED IN GENIUS"

- What do you think of the images of the poets in the film - your friends? Did you like it?

Thank God that they left Okudzhava performed by Okudzhava. Yes, it was done very correctly. I liked Sergei Bezrukov, who embodied the image of Vladimir Vysotsky. And I'm proud of him. The actor reincarnated as Vysotsky, although physically, perhaps, they are not exactly similar, but psychologically, yes, and he read Hamlet’s monologue with brilliant simplicity. The era has been restored. By the way, few people know that I was the first person to cast this actor in a movie, in my film “Stalin’s Funeral”. (This was in 1990, 17-year-old Bezrukov played the role of a street child in the episode. - Author.)

- Is the era shown correctly or not?

Yes, yes, the time was restored absolutely correctly. It’s no coincidence that they start with my poem “Tanks are moving through Prague.” Our generation - what did we fight for? We were not enemies of Soviet power. They wanted to make us enemies of their country, but it didn’t work out. We were romantics of socialism, you know? And what happened in Prague touched us very much - because, as we understood, they were fighting for socialism with a human face, which we also wanted.

And when they told me that my position was an unpatriotic act, it didn’t bother me at all. I knew that I was doing this for the sake of the reputation of my own Motherland. Someone should have said that it was a mistake what our government did. I then said that I was afraid that after these tanks it would be difficult to restore socialism in Eastern Europe. Well, who was right?

- What do you think of the image of Yevtushenko, that is, Yan Tushinsky?

This is the most difficult thing - to evaluate your own image. I recognized Bella right away. And it’s hard to recognize yourself, but I liked it. Philip Yankovsky called when he was offered this role. We were good friends with Oleg Yankovsky, his father. And Philip was brought up on my poems. And right away, when he was given this role, he called me many times and talked about how worried he was. And I told him what I don’t like about this image in the book is that very grotesque thing, you know? Philip played his role wonderfully. He did everything to remove this grotesque, humorous touch from the image of Yevtushenko - Yan Tushinsky.

- Did you really shoot with Voznesensky? On pistols?

This has never happened before! It happened that we quarreled, but, firstly, none of us carried revolvers. Nobody had them. This is fantasy. And second. We never had fights among ourselves. Never! Do you understand? If you quarreled, well, that always happens, but not to the point of punching each other in the face, so to speak. We had the most tender relationship. If we fell in love, then we fell in love very tenderly. We were not any Don Juans, believe me.

"EVERYONE WAS IN LOVE WITH AKHMADULINA"

- We don’t believe, we don’t believe that you weren’t a Don Juan...

Well, I say that they weren’t, they weren’t! This was not the main thing in our lives... What is important is that the authors of the film separated, as they say, the weeds from the real flowers of our generation. It may have been naive, but it was tender. We were gentle with each other. Vasya Aksenov was in love with Bella. And Voznesensky... Everyone was in love with Bella, do you understand or not?

- We think we understand!

She was so charming! By the way, one of my fears was whether any actress would be able to restore Bella’s charm? Here I am, after all, she was my wife, my beloved woman, I dedicated my best poems to her, so. And I quarreled with her, but she never quarreled with me. Never!

- That is, her image...

And just imagine, listen, listen... And then Chulpan Khamatova - I was shocked! I suddenly saw Bella as if resurrected, you know? The actress showed it brilliantly! This is Bella's typical, slightly stilted way of speaking when she spoke. It’s wonderful when she talks to the policemen, saving us from the police (which, by the way, didn’t happen in reality either! - but that doesn’t matter). It could be. Chulpan is wonderful, she, Bella, had a special look... she raised her chin high, her eyes were always directed somewhere above the clouds, you know, always! I’ll be honest – in some places I just cried. (Yevtushenko falls silent).

Yes, that's right. I cried while watching this picture. She really touched me.

"AND THEN THEY SPIT AT MY LOVE"

Evgeniy Aleksandrovich was completely sincerely delighted with the film. But then the connection was interrupted. And when a few hours later we got through to America again, Evgeniy Alexandrovich’s tone was completely different...

I watched the third part... I am shocked by one episode that casts a shadow on me. Of course, we can say that it is not Yevtushenko who acts in the film, but Yan Tushinsky, but, forgive me, firstly, all these names have been deciphered, and secondly, this hero reads my poems - “A poet in Russia is more than a poet” and other opuses mean that people are projecting this hero onto me.

- What are you talking about, Evgeniy Alexandrovich?

Suddenly an episode appears where it is stated that I am among those who spoke out against Pasternak.

- But this is not so!

Of course not! There was a letter from students of the Literary Institute demanding that Pasternak be thrown out as an unworthy citizen of our country and deprived of his Soviet citizenship. Both Bella and I refused to sign it from the very beginning. And it was very difficult for me, because I was then the secretary of the Komsomol organization. I wrote in my memoirs, and others, everyone who examined my works, they know that the secretary of the party committee dragged me...

Poem "Dream"

- And what?

No one could force me to speak out against Pasternak. When I came to the secretary of the city committee of the Komsomol Mosin, he said to me - why don’t you want to join? I asked him - have you read the novel "Doctor Zhivago"? He said - where will I get it from? It was impossible to get the novel. And I say - he gave it to me himself, and I read it. There is not a single line against a country permeated with hatred, which Pasternak was accused of... And now - in the film - I am accused of something in which I did not participate! Everyone knows this. And Pasternak gave me a book when I visited him during his disgrace. I had a lot of trouble after that...

What are you doing? I appeal to the authors of the film... I am the only one alive from this entire galaxy, none of them can stand up for me, but they all knew it, everyone knows it, and you can ask anyone about it. Even my enemies never attributed this to me.

- In the film, Bella accuses Ian of cowardice...

Well, how could they? Well, how could she, an actress, this woman, with a tender head, fulfill, so to speak, this accusation and call me a coward? It's just terrible what they did! They spat on my love! In the film it turns out that Bella wants to protect Pasternak and invites me to go to the institute and defend him, but I cowardly refuse. But this never happened! Even in Isabella Akhatovna’s most recent interview in Arguments and Facts, she said that she was forever happy that her teachers were such poets in whose era she lived: like Okudzhava, Voznesensky and Yevtushenko. You understand, we never quarreled with her at all, although we separated. And Masha (wife of Evgeny Yevtushenko - Author) was friends with her. Forgive me, but I demand that these shots be thrown out, dismantled from the film, because this is a terrible insult. The worst thing! If the authors do not throw out this piece and apologize, then I will sue television in an international court.

WHAT ELSE DID THE POET SAY

“Khrushchev called me: “Come with your wife, we’ll celebrate the New Year together.” And we’ll sing “Do the Russians want war”...

There is still one mistake in the film.

- Which one, Evgeniy Alexandrovich?

When listing the events during Khrushchev's time for which he was responsible, the authors made one very big historical mistake. They didn't even mention the 20th Party Congress, when Khrushchev condemned Stalin's crimes against his own people. Khrushchev was not one-color, he was a complex ruler. Because when Nikita Sergeevich attacked us all, he simultaneously gave Ernst Neizvestny, for example, an order in Zelenograd. That is, he supported him.

And then they didn’t want to let me into Germany, where I was invited. And Khrushchev personally called me and told me that my wife and I should come (to the government banquet - Author) to celebrate the New Year. He says, I’ll come up to you and hug you so everyone can see. Otherwise, he says, they will think that if we argued, it means I’m against youth...

- Did Khrushchev call you personally?

Yes, he said it himself - come. He says, I’ll come up to you at night, after the banquet, we’ll sing your song - “Do the Russians want war?”

- And that’s how it all happened?

Yes, he sang my song, then he came up to me, specially stopped near my table, hugged me... This was after I spoke out against him - when he attacked Ernst Neizvestny. And, by the way, later, when Khrushchev was overthrown, he once called me and invited me to his birthday. Yes. I went to see him. And we talked with him for a long time. And he told me: “I ask you to convey to all the writers my deep apologies for the rudeness that I said. Then they began to attack me for allowing young writers to rock the ship." Here. “And to a good ship,” he said then, “this only gives strength.”

- Evgeniy Aleksandrovich, we need to finish filming everything. You can tell Denis Evstigneev...

You don't need to take anything off. So I’m telling you - print it in Komsomolskaya Pravda. Nikita Sergeevich told me: “Let’s be honest. Still, I did not allow even a hair to fall from your head." It was true.

When I carry it with honor
Misfortune is a burden,
It will appear like light in the forest,
Another time.
Boris Pasternak

On November 23, 1957, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago” was published in Milan by the publishing house G. Feltrinelli. A year after the publication of the novel, on October 23, 1958, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel.” However, many years passed before Russian readers became acquainted with this book, banned in the USSR.

The vicissitudes of the history of the publication of the novel and the campaign of persecution of its author, which unfolded after the decision of the members of the Swedish Academy, are themselves worthy of the pen of a novelist. These events were covered in memoirs, literary works, and in the publication of documents from personal archives. For many years, official documents of the “crusade” against the poet lay hidden. Without knowing the contents of these documents, one could only guess about much of what was happening behind the scenes of power. Decisions about Pasternak’s fate were made in the CPSU Central Committee, here political and ideological actions were developed against him. Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Suslov, Furtseva and other rulers personally became acquainted with the poet’s past, his relationships with people, based on intercepted fragments of statements, excerpts from letters and works, they made decisions and passed sentences that were not subject to appeal. The most active, and in a certain sense, decisive role in this whole story was played by the Soviet special services.

The era that Ilya Ehrenburg called the “thaw” turned into a “freeze.” It turned out that not much was needed for, at the height of it, the full power of the state to fall upon a person who published a work of art abroad and thereby violated an unwritten “ideological taboo.” This is evidenced by documents of the Presidium (Politburo) and the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee, the apparatus of the CPSU Central Committee and documents sent to Staraya Square from the KGB, the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Glavlit, and from the Union of Writers of the USSR. These documents were read, the country's top leaders left their resolutions and comments on them.

In June 1945, Pasternak wrote: “I felt that I was no longer able to put up with the administrative list of the convicted person and that, in addition to submission (albeit on a ridiculously small scale), I had to do something expensive and my own, and in a more risky way, than ever, try to go out to the public.” Later, on July 1, 1956, looking back, he wrote to Vyach. Sun. Ivanov, that even during the war he felt the need to decide on something that “dramatically and massively abolished all the acquired skills and began something new, chilling and irrevocable, so that it was an invasion of the will into fate... it was the desire to begin to finish everything to the end and evaluate life in the spirit of its former unconditionality, on its broad foundations.”

The writer convinced himself and his loved ones that “one cannot postpone the free expression of one’s real thoughts indefinitely.” In the novel, he wanted to give “a historical image of Russia over the last forty-five years,” to express his view of art, “of the Gospel, of human life in history, and much more.” The writer wanted to realize the first idea of ​​the work “about our entire life from Blok to the current war” in a short time, within a few months. The task is all the more formidable because until now the writer had little prose experience - the autobiographical “Safety Certificate” and the story “Childhood Grommets” that he wrote before the war.

However, external events did not allow this plan to be realized. Pasternak also found a place in the post-war ideological campaigns. People started talking about “separation from the people”, “lack of ideas and apoliticality” of his poetry immediately after the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad”. The first secretary of the Writers' Union, Alexander Fadeev, set an example in his speeches. The resolution of the presidium of the Writers' Union declared Pasternak “an author far from Soviet reality” who does not recognize “our ideology.” Devastating articles appeared in the newspapers. In the spring of 1947, Alexei Surkov, in the official publication “Culture and Life,” “sealed” the poet with words about “the scarcity of spiritual resources,” “the reactionary nature of a backward worldview,” and the conclusion that “Soviet literature cannot tolerate his poetry.”

Pasternak's nomination for the Nobel Prize only added fuel to the fire. The campaign against “cosmopolitanism” in 1948 also affected Pasternak. As a result, the publication of his works was stopped. The circulation of “Selected”, prepared by the publishing house “Soviet Writer” in 1948, was put under the knife, and editorial preparation of “Selected Translations” was stopped. One of the hidden reasons for the post-war persecution may have been information about a new novel. The first four chapters were given to friends and acquaintances to read. One copy was conveniently sent to the sisters in England.

After Stalin's death, the Znamya magazine published a selection of Pasternak's poems from the novel, the Writers' Union arranged a discussion of the translation of Goethe's Faust, Nikolai Okhlopkov and Grigory Kozintsev offered to prepare an edition of the translation for production. The publication of the poems in the magazine was preceded by the author’s announcement of the novel, which “will presumably be completed in the summer,” and its chronological framework was also indicated – “from 1903 to 1929, with an epilogue relating to the Great Patriotic War,” and the hero was named - the thinking doctor Yuri Andreevich Zhivago.

The new year of 1956 promised many changes. Khrushchev’s report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU condemning Stalin’s “cult of personality” seemed to turn the page of history. With the liberalization of social and cultural life, proposals appeared to publish the novel in magazines, as a separate publication in the State Publishing House, where the manuscripts were transferred. Information about the novel began to leak abroad. The author gave the manuscript of the novel for publication in Warsaw and to the author of the radio program, member of the Italian Communist Party Sergio d'Angelo for the Milanese communist publisher G. Feltrinelli. In response to the publisher's letter about the desire to translate and publish the novel, Pasternak agreed to publication, warning that “If the publication of the novel promised by many magazines here is delayed and you get ahead of it, my situation will be tragically difficult. But thoughts are born not to be hidden or suppressed, but to be said.”

While there was talk about publication, a cold snap began again. Its first signs were an “explanation” in the press of how the decisions of the 20th Congress should be correctly understood, and the bringing to light of “individual rotten elements” who “under the guise of condemning the cult of personality are trying to cast doubt on the correct policy of the party.” Soon, a resolution of the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee on the magazine “New World” appeared, condemning Tvardovsky’s poem “Terkin in the Next World” and “the wrong line of the magazine in matters of literature.”

In September, the New World magazine refused to publish the novel. The letter of review, signed by Lavrenev, Simonov, Fedin and other members of the editorial board, stated that the publication of the work was “out of the question.” The main obstacle was not aesthetic differences with the author, but “the spirit of rejection of the socialist revolution,” his conviction that “the October Revolution, the Civil War and the subsequent social changes associated with them brought nothing but suffering to the people, and the Russian intelligentsia was destroyed either physically or morally".

On December 1, Pasternak’s name already appears in the note of the Department of Culture of the CPSU Central Committee “On some issues of modern literature and on facts of wrong attitudes among some writers.” The note stated that this work, submitted to the magazine “New World” and to Gosizdat, “is imbued with hatred of the Soviet system.” In the same note, among the “unprincipled, ideologically harmful works” the novel by V. Dudintsev “Not by Bread Alone”, poems by R. Gamzatov, E. Yevtushenko and others were mentioned.

The Central Committee of the CPSU still harbored hopes that Pasternak, after the “conversations” held with him, would seriously rework the novel and stop its publication in Italy, so on January 7, 1957, Goslitizdat entered into an agreement with the author on the publication of Doctor Zhivago. The editor-in-chief of Goslitizdat, Puzikov, recalled the background to the signing of the agreement. At Goslitizdat, the work of editors began to “cure” Doctor Zhivago, although Pasternak frankly wrote to the editor-in-chief: “Not only do I not long for the appearance of “Zhivago” in that altered form, which will distort or hide the main essence of my thoughts, but I do not believe in the implementation this publication and rejoice at every obstacle.” Under pressure from the authorities, Pasternak agreed to send a telegram to Feltrinelli with a request not to publish the novel until September 1, the date of publication of the novel in Moscow.

Frenchwoman Jacqueline de Prouillard, who came for an internship at Moscow University, obtained permission from Pasternak to familiarize herself with the manuscript of the novel and offered her help in translating it into French for publication in the Gallimard publishing house. Pasternak wrote a power of attorney to Jacqueline de Prouillard to handle the publication of his novel abroad.

In July, the first publication of two chapters and poems appeared in the Polish magazine Opinii, translated by the magazine's editor, poet Severin Pollyak. As soon as information about this reached the CPSU Central Committee at the end of August, on the instructions of the Secretary of the Central Committee Suslov, the Department of Culture of the CPSU Central Committee prepared a telegram to the Soviet ambassador, in which the “Polish comrades” were asked to stop publication and prepare critical speeches in the party press. Even earlier, the Secretariat of the Writers' Union was given instructions to “take action.”

Pasternak described this story in a letter dated August 21 to Nina Tabidze, the widow of the executed Georgian poet Titian Tabidze: “There were several terrible days here. Something happened to me in areas inaccessible to me. Apparently, Khrushchev was shown a selection of all the most unacceptable things in the novel. In addition (besides the fact that I gave the manuscript abroad), several circumstances occurred that were received here with great irritation. Togliatti suggested that Feltrinelli return the manuscript and refuse to publish the novel. He replied that he would rather leave the party than break with me, and indeed he did so. There were several other complications unknown to me that increased the noise.

As always, O.V. took the first blows. [Ivinskaya]. She was summoned to the Central Committee and then to Surkov. Then they held a secret extended meeting of the Secretariat of the Presidium of the SSP on my occasion, which I was supposed to attend and did not go, a meeting of the nature of 1937, with angry cries that this phenomenon was unprecedented, and demands for reprisals […]. The next day O.V. arranged for me to have a conversation with Polikarpov at the Central Committee. This is the letter I sent him through her earlier, in the morning:

[…] The only reason why I have nothing to repent of in life is the affair. I wrote what I thought, and to this day I remain with these thoughts. Maybe it's a mistake that I didn't hide it from others. I assure you, I would have hidden it if it had been written weaker. But he turned out to be stronger than my dreams, the power is given from above, and, thus, his further fate is not in my will. I won't interfere with it. If the truth that I know must be redeemed by suffering, this is not new, and I am ready to accept any.

P[olikarpov] said that he regretted reading such a letter and asked O.V. tear it apart before his eyes. Then I spoke with P., the next day after this conversation I spoke with Surkov. It was very easy to talk. They spoke to me very seriously and sternly, but politely and with great respect, without touching the substance at all, that is, my right to see and think as I see it, and without challenging anything, but only asked that I help prevent the appearance of the book, then “I have to entrust negotiations with Feltrinelli to Goslitizdat, and sent a request for the return of the manuscript for revision.”

The pressure on the writer intensified from different sides. Olga Ivinskaya begged Sergio d'Angelo to influence Pasternak to sign the required Feltrinelli telegram. Their efforts were ultimately crowned with success. He signed the text of the telegram drawn up in the Central Committee. At the same time, through the young Italian Slavist Vittorio Strada, who came to the Moscow Youth Festival and students, he told Feltrinelli to ignore the telegram and prepare the publication of the novel.

The Italian translator of the novel, Pietro Cveteremich, came to Moscow, and in an internal review for Feltrinelli, he assessed the novel as “a phenomenon of that Russian literature that lives outside the state, outside organized forces, outside official ideas. Pasternak’s voice sounds the same as the voices of Pushkin, Gogol, and Blok sounded in their time. Not publishing such a book means committing a crime against culture.”

The Central Committee did not abandon attempts to stop the publication. The All-Union Association “International Book” and trade representatives of the USSR in France and England were involved in this. Alexey Surkov was sent to Milan in October 1957 to negotiate with Feltrinelli and Pasternak’s next “letter”. Fyodor Panferov, who was undergoing treatment at Oxford, made acquaintance with Pasternak's sisters and intimidated them with the serious consequences that the publication of the novel in the Collins publishing house could cause.

Pasternak wrote to Jacqueline de Prouillard on November 3: “How happy I am that neither Gallimard nor Collins allowed themselves to be fooled by the false telegrams that they forced me to sign, threatening me with arrest, outlawing and depriving me of my livelihood, and which I signed only because I was sure (and my confidence did not deceive me) that not a single soul in the world would believe these false texts, compiled not by me, but by government officials, and imposed on me. […] Have you ever seen such touching concern for the perfection of a work and copyright? And with what idiotic meanness was all this done? Under vile pressure, I was forced to protest against the violence and illegality of being valued, recognized, translated and published in the West. How impatiently I look forward to the book!”

In November 1957, the novel was published. The release of the novel created a storm of foreign publications. The Western press began to discuss the possibility of nominating Pasternak for the Nobel Prize. Albert Camus wrote to Pasternak on June 9, 1958 that in him he had found the Russia that nourishes him and gives him strength. The writer sent an edition of his “Swedish Speeches”, in one of which he mentioned the “great Pasternak”, and later, as a Nobel laureate, he supported Pasternak’s nomination for the 1958 Nobel Prize.

But so far the lack of publication of the novel in the original language seemed an insurmountable obstacle to such promotion. Here, unexpected help came from the Dutch publishing house Mouton, which began publishing the novel in Russian in August 1958. Considering the publication illegal, Feltrinelli demanded that his publishing house be stamped on the title page. Only 50 copies were printed (Feltrinelli, having sent them to publishing houses, secured worldwide copyright). Thus, legal obstacles to Pasternak’s candidacy were removed.

Pasternak had a presentiment of how the story with the publication of the novel might end for him. On September 6, 1958, he wrote to Jacqueline de Proillard: “You must develop your attitude towards those changes beyond our control to which our plans, the most seemingly accurate and unchangeable, are sometimes subjected. With each such change, cries are renewed about my terrible crime, low betrayal, that I need to be expelled from the Writers' Union, outlawed... I am only afraid that sooner or later I will be dragged into something that I could, perhaps, endure , if only I were given another five or six years of healthy life.”

On Old Square they prepared for this event in advance. On October 23, Pasternak received a telegram from the Secretary of the Nobel Foundation A. Oesterling about awarding him the prize and sent a telegram in which he thanked the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation: “Endlessly grateful, touched, proud, surprised, embarrassed.” On the same day, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, following a note from Suslov, adopted a resolution “On the slanderous novel by B. Pasternak,” in which the awarding of the prize was recognized as “an act hostile to our country and an instrument of international reaction aimed at inciting the Cold War.” Pravda published Zaslavsky’s feuilleton “The Hype of Reactionary Propaganda Around a Literary Weed” and an editorial “A Provocative Attack of International Reaction.”

One of the points of the campaign was Suslov’s proposal: “...through the writer K. Fedin, explain to Pasternak the situation that has arisen as a result of his being awarded the Nobel Prize, and advise Pasternak to reject the prize and make a corresponding statement in the press.” Negotiations with Pasternak did not bring results, and a meeting of the board of the Writers' Union was scheduled with the agenda “On the actions of a member of the USSR Writers' Union B. Pasternak, incompatible with the title of a Soviet writer.”

On October 25, a meeting of the party group of the presidium of the Union of Writers took place, on the 27th - a joint meeting of the presidium of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR, the bureau of the Organizing Committee of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR and the presidium of the board of the Moscow branch of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR.

The Central Committee report on the meeting scrupulously reported which of the writers was absent and for what reason. It was reported that Korneychuk, Tvardovsky, Sholokhov, Lavrenev, Gladkov, Marshak, Tychina were absent due to illness. For an unknown reason, writer Leonid Leonov and playwright Nikolai Pogodin avoided participating in this “event.” It was emphasized that Vsevolod Ivanov, who said he was ill, did not come to the meeting.

Nikolai Gribachev and Sergei Mikhalkov, either on their own initiative or at a prompting from above, declared the need to expel Pasternak from the country. The decision of the comrades in the literary workshop was a foregone conclusion. Pressure from the authorities and betrayal by friends caused the writer a nervous breakdown. In this state, Pasternak sent two telegrams. One to the Nobel Committee: “Due to the importance that the award awarded to me has received in the society to which I belong, I must refuse it; do not take my voluntary refusal as an insult.” Another - to the Central Committee: “Thank you for sending the doctor twice. Refused the award. I ask you to restore Ivinskaya’s sources of income in Goslitizdat. Parsnip".

The story of how and by whom Pasternak’s letters to Khrushchev and the Pravda newspaper were written, demonstrating the writer’s humiliation and the triumph of power, is covered in sufficient detail.

But the propaganda campaign of curses against the “literary Vlasovite” has already gained momentum. Fellow writers, scientists and housewives, workers and students unanimously condemned Pasternak and proposed to try him as a traitor to his homeland. But the most surreal image was born from the imagination of the secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee, Semichastny, the future chairman of the KGB. At Khrushchev's prompting, he, stating that Pasternak could go abroad, compared the poet to a pig that shits where it eats.

Rumors about the impending deportation reached Pasternak. He discussed this possibility with people close to him - with his wife Z.N. Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya. Rough drafts of Pasternak’s letter have been preserved, thanking the authorities for permission to leave with his family and asking them to release O.V. with him. Ivinskaya with children. The writer’s son writes that Z.N. Pasternak refused to leave. The KGB later informed the Central Committee that Ivinskaya “several times expressed a desire to travel abroad with Pasternak.”

On January 11, 1959, Pasternak sent a letter to the All-Union Directorate for Copyright Protection. In it, he asked for clarification on whether he would be given work, as stated in official statements, “because otherwise [...] he would have to look for another way to support his existence” (they were talking about the possibility of receiving part of foreign fees).

At this time, the famous poem “Nobel Prize” was written:

This poem became the reason for a new aggravation of relations with the authorities. The autograph of the poem was intended for Jacqueline de Prouillard and given to the English correspondent Anthony Browne, who published it in the Daily Mail newspaper.

As the writer’s son recalls, on March 14, straight from a walk, Pasternak was picked up by a government car and taken to the Prosecutor General’s Office. Prosecutor General Rudenko, sending the interrogation protocol to the Presidium of the Central Committee, specifically emphasized: “During the interrogation, Pasternak behaved cowardly. It seems to me that he will draw the necessary conclusions from the criminal warning.” The prosecutor's office demanded a written commitment from the writer to stop all meetings with foreigners and transfer of his works abroad, and, possibly, to stop his foreign correspondence altogether. According to his son’s recollections, Pasternak told his relatives about the interrogation: “I said that I could only sign that I had read their demand, but I could not take on any obligations. Why should I behave rudely with people who love me, and crumble in front of those who are rude to me?

On March 30, 1959, Pasternak wrote to Jacqueline de Proillard: “My poor dear friend, I need to tell you two things that have decisively changed my current situation, making it even more difficult and aggravating. I was warned about the dire consequences that awaited me if anything like the Ent incident happened again. Brown. Friends advise me to completely abandon the joy of correspondence that I conduct and not to accept anyone.

I tried to follow this for two weeks. But this deprivation destroys everything, leaving nothing. Such abstinence distorts all the constituent elements of existence, air, earth, sun, human relationships. I consciously began to hate everything that I had hitherto loved unconsciously and out of habit.”

In the next letter (April 19, 1959), he wrote: “You do not know enough to what extent hostility towards me has reached this winter. You will have to take my word for it, I have no right and it is beneath my dignity to describe to you in what ways and to what extent my calling, earnings and even life were and remain under threat.”

In one of his letters to Jacqueline de Prouillard, he shared his premonition: “...I have so little left to live!” The poet's heart stopped on May 30, 1960.

Pasternak’s death was announced by a tiny announcement on the last page of the Literary Gazette: “The Board of the USSR Literary Fund announces the death of the writer, member of the Literary Fund, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, which occurred on May 30 of this year. at the 71st year of life after a serious, long illness, and expresses condolences to the family of the deceased.” And here the government remained true to itself. But it was not possible to hide the time and place of the funeral. A sketch of the funeral is given by a note from the Department of Culture of the CPSU Central Committee dated May 4, but in many ways, especially in the estimate of the number of mourners, it diverges from the collected memories. Although no loud speeches were made at the funeral, they went down in history as evidence of the civic courage of those who came to the cemetery in Peredelkino.

The published documents were identified in the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI). Some of the documents were provided by the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation.

For the first time, documents from the funds of the CPSU Central Committee saw the light of day in a separate publication published in Paris by the Gallimard publishing house in the early 1990s. At the same time, the still unrealized publication of the collection by the Feltrinelli publishing house in Italy was planned. Some of the documents were published in Russian in periodicals.

All documents were collected together for the first time and published in Russian by the ROSSPEN publishing house in 2001. This publication is based on this publication. For publication, the text of the documents was re-verified, additional commentary was prepared, and an introductory article was written. The text of documents in publications is usually transmitted in full. If the document is mainly devoted to another topic, then part of the text of the document is omitted during publication and is indicated by periods in square brackets. Resolutions, notes, certificates are located after the text of the document, before the legend. Several resolutions were identified not on the documents themselves, but on the records cards that were created in the General Department of the Central Committee for each document arriving at Old Square. The headings for the documents are given by the compilers; if the text of the document was used, it is placed in quotation marks. The legend indicates the archival code, authenticity or copy number. Previous publications are also noted, with the exception of publications in newspapers and in the collection “And behind me is the sound of the chase...”, on the basis of which this publication was prepared.

Introductory article by V.Yu. Afiani. Preparation of the publication by V.Yu. Afiani, T.V. Dormacheva, I.N. Shevchuk.