The author of the lines about how we mourn Stalin. A whole person with a contradictory destiny. The book “Fikryat Tabeev. Thanks to fate and despite it"

THE BOOK WELL SHOWS THE SCALE OF THIS PERSONALITY

Shamil Ageev- curator of the project, book “Fikryat Tabeev. Thanks to and despite fate,” Chairman of the Board of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Republic of Tatarstan, Doctor of Economic Sciences:

It is with great pleasure that I congratulate Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich on his anniversary. We have known him for a long time, since those ancient times when we flew on a plane together, sat opposite each other, and I read a book... In 1974, when I was the first secretary of the Kazan city committee of the Komsomol, it was Tabeev who instructed me to start building the Youth Center. At that time, only a foundation and three floors were built in it. But I completed the MC two years later - they built it practically without a penny of money! Later, we crossed paths with Tabeev many times - both at KAMAZ, and when he was ambassador to Afghanistan, and when he worked in the Russian government... Under Tabeev, there was a special situation in the republic - everyone boldly expressed their opinion, he was not afraid of anything or anyone. And he wasn’t afraid to gather smart people around him. That’s why today so many people always gather for his anniversaries...

Today the celebrations will take place at the permanent mission of Tatarstan in Moscow. President of the Republic of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov was invited to them. The TAIF group always congratulates Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich very warmly. General Director of OJSC Tatneft Shafagat Takhautdinov will definitely be at the anniversary - he knows very well how much Tabeev has done for the development of the oil industry in Tatarstan. By the way, Takhautdinov helped a lot with the release of the book “Fikryat Tabeev. Thanks to fate and despite it.”

One of the reasons why we undertook the publication of this book is that citizens, especially young people, should know about the leaders of the republic who bore enormous responsibility, including Fikryat Tabeev. Leading a region is very difficult work. The right decisions leaders return a hundredfold, but the wrong ones...

I am very glad that the book turned out to be warm, sincere, rich interesting facts, including those that not everyone knows about. I myself found a lot of new things for myself in this book. I really liked Tabeev’s reverent attitude towards Kazan University, where he graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology. Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich’s love for his alma mater remains to this day; he always helped his native university. He also really loved KAI, because the fighting guys came from there. He always supported scientists... I believed that in every area of ​​science we should be no worse than the world class!

I would especially like to note the chapter about Tabeev’s wife, Dina Mukhamedovna. All her life she was a friend and support to Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich, she knew how to create family comfort. But at the same time she became an outstanding scientist, professor of medicine...

Without interruption, I read about the Afghan period of Tabeev’s life - a colossally difficult period! How many friends he made there and how many enemies he made... Because, as always, he thought, first of all, about the business, and not about himself...

The book shows well the scale of this personality, what a great organizer he is, at the same time with an eye to the new, with an excellent vision of the future... I want to emphasize that Tabeev, being in very high positions, did not rot anyone - most important quality for a leader who has such broad powers.

To introduce Tatarstan residents to this very an interesting book, we decided to distribute half of the circulation - a thousand copies - to schools, other educational institutions, libraries... I especially recommend reading this book to leaders and political figures, as well as to those young people who dream of becoming leaders.

THE DAY IN THE COUNTRY BEGAN WITH THE NAME OF STALIN AND IT ENDS WITH IT

...For the USSR and its citizens, the biggest shock was the death in March 1953 of the “father of all nations” Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. In those days mournful poems were published Konstantina Simonov:

There are no words to describe them
All the intolerance of grief and sadness.
There are no words to tell,
How we mourn for you, Comrade Stalin...

I, like many, stood in the guard of honor at the portrait of Stalin at the funeral meeting on the occasion of his death. In those days I was in Kazan. But my young wife went with her friends to Moscow to say goodbye to Joseph Vissarionovich, leaving our infant son in the care of his mother. Glory to Allah, she didn’t get caught in the terrible stampede at the funeral. I was against the trip, and this is one of the few times when she ignored my opinion. Here is a picture of the attitude towards Stalin in that period.

We grew up in the country that he led; without mentioning his name, it was impossible to imagine a single celebration, not a single important article, and so on. Back then, even in front of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow there was a monument to Stalin, made in full height. The day in the country began with his name and ended with him.

Of course, we didn’t know much back then—about the Gulag and the like. But a certain tension in the social atmosphere was clearly felt. Back in my childhood, in the late 1930s, there was a period when my father was a participant Civil War, the chairman of the village council - leaving for work, he told his mother: they say, I don’t know if I’ll return home today. Sometimes they said goodbye, as in last time. Although my father was a non-party member. Needless to say, in the early 1950s it was completely unthinkable in the scientific community to imagine a brave man who dared to publicly criticize Stalin’s economic considerations regarding the future social order. So the harm he caused to the development of the humanities is obvious.

“STALIN ACCEPTED RUSSIA WITH THE POW AND LEFT IT WITH ATOMIC WEAPONS”

Disputes about Stalin have not stopped to this day. It is difficult, for example, to deny the assessment allegedly expressed in his address Winston Churchill: “Stalin took Russia with a plow and left it with atomic weapons.”

I can say one thing about myself: I am not one of the Stalinists, although I recognize the magnitude of this man’s personality, his exceptional role in our victory over fascism. It is very difficult to separate his merits and his deeds, which are criminal in nature. And today, when archives from the Stalin era continue to be opened, one cannot cease to be amazed at the inexplicable cruelty of many of Stalin’s instructions. I read somewhere that Konstantin Simonov- a person quite close to Stalin, a member of the Central Committee of the party, earlier than others began to get acquainted with documents about Stalin’s direct participation in the story of the “killer doctors.” And I was shocked. When he told his fellow writers about this Alexander Fadeev And Alexandru Korneychuk, they couldn't believe it terrible truth about Stalin. Imagine now how much force the participants of the 20th Party Congress experienced during their speech Nikita Khrushchev. Stalin has a very big, terrible sin...

Stalin's death and then arrest Lavrentiy Beria in June 1953 meant the end of an era and the country’s entry into a new phase of its history...

IT WAS NOT ACCEPTED TO REFUSE THE PARTY BOSS'S OFFERS

Summer 1960 Semyon Ignatiev (since 1957 - first secretary of the Tatar regional committee of the CPSU -ed.) decided to retire, although he was only 55 years old. The issue of selecting a candidate for the role of first secretary of the Tatar regional committee was discussed in the CPSU Central Committee. Among the main contenders was Salikh Batyev, who at that time held the post of second secretary of the regional committee...

According to Tabeev, Salih Galimzyanovich knew the republic very well and could rightfully apply for the post of first secretary of the regional committee. But it turned out differently.

Returning from Moscow, Semyon Denisovich informed Tabeev that, while in the Central Committee of the CPSU, he proposed him, Tabeev, to the post of the main party leader of Tataria. For 32-year-old Fikryat, this news was as flattering as it was shocking. But it was not accepted in those circles to refuse the proposals of the party boss, especially in advance - after all, everything was finally to be decided by the plenum.

Assessing that situation today, Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich believes that Ignatiev played an excellent chess combination for the republic, combining at its helm the assertiveness of youth in the person of him, Tabeev, and wisdom, as well as the necessary political conservatism in the person of Batyev, who, also on Ignatiev’s recommendation, took the post Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the TASSR.

And then the day came, October 28, 1960. The Columned Hall of the Kazan House of Officers (now the Kazan City Hall) brought together the top communists of the republic. Today, more than half a century later, it is difficult to explain to the modern reader the full importance and principle of the event that took place. The change of the first party leader of the republic meant approximately the same thing as today - a change of the regional governor or the president of the same Tatarstan. Add to this a certain instability in the position of leaders of all ranks that took place during Khrushchev's times. And in general, society was still at a crossroads: some were afraid to recklessly mention the names of Stalin and Beria, others hoped for a return to the old order, others wanted radical changes.

THE MAIN THINGS WERE MAINLY DECIDED BACKGROUND

Tension grew in the corridors of the regional committee in anticipation of the plenum. The party elite of the republic, in today’s words, assessed the ratings of possible contenders, as well as the likelihood of placing another “Varangian” at the top of the republican power. The sprouts of democracy that appeared in the country changed little in the party ranks. As before, the main thing was mainly decided behind the scenes, and the plenum was intended only to approve the decision made “at the top.” But this time everything went differently.

Regional plenums, as a rule, were attended by distinguished guests from Moscow. This time to hold a plenum on liberation Semyon Ignatiev came from the post of first secretary of the republican regional committee and the election of its new leader Petr Nikolaevich Pospelov - member of the RSDLP in 1916, Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of the Stalin Prize of the first degree, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, candidate member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. In short, a serious political heavyweight, previously known for his devotion to Stalin and who easily changed his point of view on him upon coming to power Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev.

After the agenda was announced, Pospelov was given the floor. According to a long-established scheme, he delivered the prescribed speech, then informed the audience about Ignatiev’s release at his request from his position, thanked him on behalf of the Central Committee of the party for the work done, and at this point he left the high podium.

There was silence in the hall. After a pause that seemed very long, Ignatiev, who was sitting in the presidium of the plenum but at the right hand of the Moscow guest, stood up. His face with large, as if carved out features did not betray a shadow of excitement. He thanked the communists of the republic for three years collaboration, wished Tataria further success. And somehow, without transition, he asked, addressing the audience, who the communists of the republic would like to see as the first secretary of the regional committee.

From such a sharp turn towards democracy, people were literally at a loss. But what about the usual recommendation from above, why did Pospelov remain silent? Or maybe there is some kind of catch in all this, a test? In a word, none of those present even thought of saying anything.

Obviously, understanding the situation perfectly, Semyon Denisovich, in a more relaxed form, again invited people to name the person most worthy of becoming his successor. Voices of people talking to each other rustled around the hall, then several people shouted out at once: “Tabeeva!”

“Okay, there is one candidate,” said Ignatiev. “What other proposals will there be?”

There were no other offers. After this, according to the regulations, it would be necessary to introduce the candidate to the audience, give him a description, and the floor to speak. But they shouted from the audience that nothing of this needed to be done in the case of Fikryat Tabeev. Then Ignatiev invited the plenum participants to vote for a single candidate. The open vote demonstrated a forest of hands.

Unanimously,” Ignatiev concluded.

KHRUSHCHEV WANTED TO PART UP WITH THE SHADOWS OF STALIN'S PAST

Of course, one must understand that such non-standard conduct of the plenum was not a spontaneous phenomenon. Candidates for the post of first secretary of the regional committee of the republic, which was becoming the oil “breadwinner” of the Union, were not really discussed high level, their biographies and dossiers were examined literally under a magnifying glass both on Old Square and on Lubyanka. All the pros and cons were weighed. But... In this case, obviously, Khrushchev’s attitude towards rejuvenating the composition of party and economic personnel played a decisive role. He wanted to part with the shadows of Stalin's past and create his own team, a team of people devoted to him.

Due to age, the candidacy of Batyev, who was 17 years older than Tabeev, was apparently rejected. But what is 49 years? For a politician this is his prime age. However, Salikh Galimzyanovich proved this. From 1960 to 1983, holding the post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the TASSR, and also being Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR, he made a significant contribution to the development of Kazan and the republic. His special merit is his work at the head of the commission for the rehabilitation of political prisoners and the release of victims of political repression, including the rehabilitation of the poet Musa Jalil and awarding him the title of Hero Soviet Union. It is no coincidence that in 2011, the President of the Republic of Tatarstan, the State Councilor of the Republic of Tatarstan, and the Presidium of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan proposed to perpetuate the memory of Salikh Batyev by naming one of the new streets of Kazan after him.

At the same time, it was clear that it would not be easy for such a young secretary as Tabeev to establish himself in his role. And this democratic nomination should have been a kind of advance of confidence for him: they themselves, they say, proposed, they themselves chose! And the same Salikh Batyev became one of those who at first lent a friendly shoulder to the young first secretary. Since that time, hand in hand, Tabeev and Batyev have worked for the benefit of the peoples of Tatarstan for almost 20 years. Even half a century later, Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich remembered with gratitude this intelligent, modest and hardworking man.

To be continued.

We, the writers who were editing Pravda at that time - I firmly remember that it was Fadeev, Korneychuk, I - I don’t remember exactly whether Surkov and Tvardovsky were with us - went to the Pravda editorial office. In addition to everything that seemed to completely fill my head in these hours, those events and changes; besides the fact that the very nature of the meeting and the appointments made at it indicated that Stalin was about to die, I had another feeling that I tried to get rid of and could not: I had the feeling that those who appeared From there, from the back room, in the presidium, people, old members of the Politburo, came out with some kind of hidden, not expressed outwardly, but felt in them, feeling of relief. It somehow broke through in their faces, perhaps with the exception of Molotov’s face, which was motionless, as if petrified. As for Malenkov and Beria, who spoke from the podium, both of them spoke lively, energetically, and in a businesslike manner.
About twenty minutes later we were at Pravda and sitting in Shepilov’s office.

The conversation was somewhat muffled; none of us really wanted to talk. They talked about the need to think about having famous writers write a number of articles in Pravda on various topics, that this was necessary, that it was necessary to draw up a plan for such articles, and so on and so forth. But all this was said as if it was necessary to talk about it, but it is said a little earlier than necessary, because although the new composition of the Presidium of the Central Committee and the Secretariat was determined, although the Council of Ministers was formed with Malenkov at the head, although Voroshilov became Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council - all this is true, but in order to write, you need some kind of certainty about what writers should write, and what they want from them. There was no certainty because Stalin was still alive or it was believed that he was still alive. So about forty minutes passed during this conversation, and I don’t know how much longer it would have dragged on - sluggish and vague - when the turntable began to ring. Shepilov picked up the phone, said into it several times: “Yes, yes,” and, returning to the table at which we were sitting, said: “They called that Comrade Stalin has died.”

And despite everything that happened before - the meeting after which we came here, the decisions that were made, still something in us, at least in me, shuddered at that moment. Something in life has ended. Something else, still unknown, began. It didn’t start when, in connection with this and that, it turned out to be necessary to appoint Malenkov as Chairman of the Council of Ministers during Stalin’s lifetime and he was appointed by him - not then, but now, after this call.
Without stopping at Pravda, I went home. The Literary Newspaper was published only the day after tomorrow, the seventh, and when I returned home, I called my deputy, Boris Sergeevich Rurikov, that I would arrive in two hours, locked myself in my room and began writing poetry. I wrote the first two stanzas and suddenly, unexpectedly for myself, sitting at the table, I burst into tears. I might not admit it now, because I don’t like anyone’s tears - neither strangers nor my own - but, without this, it would probably be difficult even to explain to myself the extent of the shock. I cried not from grief, not from pity for the deceased, these were not sentimental tears, these were tears of shock. Something had turned upside down in my life, the shock from this upheaval was so enormous that it had to manifest itself somehow physically, in this case as a spasm of sobs that pounded me for several minutes. Then I finished writing the poems, took them to Pravda and went to Literaturnaya Gazeta to tell Rurikov about what happened in the Kremlin. Tomorrow we had to produce an issue of the newspaper, and he needed to know this - the sooner the better.

In front of me now lies a stack of materials and documents from those March days that were put together then, in 1953. Everything is stuffed into one folder that has been lying around for many years: the mourning armband with which he stood on the guard of honor, and the pass to Red Square with the overprint “passage everywhere”; a transcript of one of the two writers' funeral meetings, at which I spoke along with many others, and a clipping from a newspaper report about another writers' meeting, where I read my, bad, despite the sobs, poems; a stack of newspapers from those days - Pravda, Izvestia, Literaturka and others.

Then, years later, different writers wrote different things about Stalin.

At the same time they spoke, in general, close to each other - Tikhonov, Surkov, Ehrenburg.
Everything said then is very similar. There may be some difference in the vocabulary, and even then not too noticeable. The verses also have strikingly similar notes. “Best of all - this is not surprising, given the measure of talent,” Tvardovsky wrote after all; more restrained, more precise. Almost everyone surprisingly agreed on one thing:
In this hour of greatest sorrow
I won't find those words

So that they fully express

Our nationwide misfortune...
This is Tvardovsky.
There are no words to convey them
All the unbearable pain and sadness,
There are no words to tell,

How we mourn for you, comrade

Stalin!
And this is Simonov.
My heart bleeds...
Our dear, our dear!

Grabbing your headboard

And even though we cannot be consoled in our sorrow,
But he, the Teacher, always taught us:
Don't lose heart, don't hang your head,
No matter what trouble comes.

And this is Isakovsky.

It seems that we wrote these poems about Stalin in a very similar way. Olga Berggolts, who was imprisoned in 1937, Tvardovsky is the son of a dispossessed man, Simonov is a noble scion and an old rural communist, Mikhail Isakovsky. We could add to this other lines from other poems of people with the same varied biographies associated with different turns of the individual’s destinies in Stalin’s era. Nevertheless, the similarity of the poems was born not from the obligation to write them - they were prayed not to be written, but from a deep inner feeling of the enormity of the loss, the enormity of what happened. We had more to come long years

in order to try to figure out what kind of loss it was, and whether it would have been better or worse - I’m not afraid to ask myself this rather cruel question - for all of us and for the country, if this loss had occurred not then, but even later . All this had to be sorted out, especially after the 20th Congress, but also before it.

Now, having once again leafed through the newspapers of those days, I want to return to my thoughts about when Stalin finally died - we were immediately prepared for this, or he died before the joint meeting convened, making new appointments, or he died indeed, when Shepilov’s Pravda rang in our presence, at about ten o’clock in the evening on March 5th. I don’t want to speculate on material inaccessible to other people, but I read the resolution of the joint meeting of the Central Committee, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Council, which appeared the day after the announcement of Stalin’s death, I see that the preamble does not mention Stalin’s death, the death it was said the day before in an address to all party members and all workers of the Soviet Union, and the preamble of the resolution was written in such a way that it is unknown on what day this joint meeting took place - whether it preceded Stalin’s death or took place after his death. I will quote this preamble, it is very interesting from this point of view.
"Central Committee Communist Party Soviet Union, Council of Ministers USSR, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in this difficult time for our
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The party and the country consider time to be the most important task of the party and government - to ensure uninterrupted and correct leadership of the entire life of the country, which in turn requires the greatest unity of leadership, the prevention of any confusion and panic, in order to thus unconditionally ensure the successful implementation of the developed our party and government policies - both in the internal affairs of our country and in international affairs. Based on this and in order to prevent any interruptions in the management of the activities of state and party bodies, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Council recognize it as necessary to carry out a number of measures to organize the party and state leadership.”
On the reverse side of this page of Pravda, where this is printed, a decree was published on the installation of Stalin’s sarcophagus next to Lenin’s sarcophagus, a decree on the construction of a pantheon, a decree on mourning on the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth of March. There is also a notice to the commission for organizing the funeral about access to the Hall of Columns and the time of the funeral, the first report from the Hall of Columns “At the coffin of I.V. Stalin." But in the preamble of the resolution on measures “to organize the party and state leadership,” there is no mention of Stalin’s name, nor any mention of whether he is still alive or dead.
Logic forces us to assume that everything was as it was taught to us, that is, the joint meeting was convened when Stalin was in an absolutely hopeless state, his death was expected from minute to minute. The resolution was worked out and ready to the last comma and period; its publication, apparently, was not going to be postponed if Stalin was dying for another one, two or several days. And maybe they would have published it not even on the seventh, but on the sixth, immediately after the plenum, next to the hopeless bulletin. But Stalin died almost immediately after the end of the meeting, and therefore it was decided to first publish an appeal to the party and people about Stalin’s death, and the next day - a resolution on personnel
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authorities and their partial reorganization. Logic allows for this possibility, although it does not completely exclude various other assumptions.
And now I will return to my notes from 1953, or rather, to that last entry, which talks about the Hall of Columns and Stalin’s funeral: “Although I was told by phone that I needed to come to the Hall of Columns around three o’clock in the afternoon, with great difficulty I only got there around five. Approach Hall of Columns
I will add to the entry at that time that I lived at that time on the corner of Pushkinskaya Square, but I was never able to walk down either Gorky Street, Dmitrovka, or Petrovka. On Trubnaya Square we encountered in a crowd the then Minister of Forestry Georgy Mikhailovich Orlov, with whom we knew each other because we had fought on the pages of Literaturnaya Gazeta over paper issues. Then we walked together down Neglinnaya and, despite our Central Committee IDs, we barely made it through the silent chaos that reigned on the streets of Moscow: we crawled under the trucks blocking Neglinnaya, then climbed over the trucks that again blocked it, and found ourselves so squeezed on all sides, that they could not take the documents out of their pockets, they moved with the crowd of people, first forward, then backward, and got out of the crush and crush only at the very end, somewhere at the back of the Maly Theater. I don’t know how it is at other times, but in those two hours that we made our way, the crowd was not angry with the crush, not angry, but bitterly silent, although at the same time so powerful in the single tenacity of its movement there, closer to the Hall of Columns, that The police behaved at a loss before the silent and united tenacity of this movement.
Back to the post: “In the room behind the presidium, people were getting bandages on their sleeves. Some went to the guard of honor, others returned from it. Probably about an hour passed like this. Finally, it was our turn. I stood next to people I didn’t know, some two women. We went out with them and stood on the right at the head of the room. I turned my head and, just standing there, I saw the face of Stalin lying in the coffin. His face was very calm, not at all thinner or changed. Hair in Lately
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he began to thin out a little (this could be seen when he walked during meetings and, passing close to you, turned sideways). But now it was imperceptible, the hair lay calmly, thrown back, and went into the pillow. After, when we, taking turns, began to walk around the coffin, I saw Stalin’s face on the right, on the other side, and again I thought that this face had not changed at all, had not lost weight, and that it was very calm, not at all old, but still young. Later, having returned from the Hall of Columns, I thought that people who had not seen Stalin, or those who saw him only from afar and knew him from portraits mainly of the war and pre-war years, now there, in the Hall of Columns, when they suddenly saw him close, it could seem that he had aged, that illness had changed his face. But in reality this was not so, the illness did not change anything in his face. His hands lay calmly on top of his gray jacket.

Those hands are for ordinary people
millions of hearths were lit.
Those hands always heard
the beating pulse of the whole earth.
Those hands destroyed the frost...
And the spring waters flowed.
And how many deserts have blossomed
and cultivated fields around
The warmth of his father's hands,
the warmth of his father's hands!

He carried the banner of Lenin
through the great pass, -
And a terrible death sentence
signed to poverty and slavery.
He is for millions on earth
gave freedom, life and happiness.
And how many sad hearts
warmed me and saved me from torment
The warmth of his father's hands,
the warmth of his father's hands!

Under the sun of his genius
man has received his sight forever
From the Black Continent
to the Ganges and Chinese rivers.
Three words - Stalin, Brotherhood, Peace -
Our century is written on the banner.
And I drew strength to fight,
everywhere, any of our distant friends
In the warmth of his father's hands,
in the warmth of his father's hands.

Don't say that the cloud suddenly
the face of the sun was hidden from us,
Although there are tears in our eyes
the world darkened at this moment...
He is at the heart of the party!
he is in us,
among the people - eternal and great!
And will live in the fate of people,
while the Earth makes a circle,
The warmth of his father's hands,
the warmth of his father's hands!

Samed Vurgun. Translated from Azerbaijani Vladimir Derzhavin.
March 15, 1953, Pravda, USSR*

At the hour of farewell

At the hour of farewell - over silent Moscow,
Seeing off Stalin to immortality,
Aircraft speed waves
They flew by, outpacing the sound.

At the hour of farewell - factories, factories
(Their beeps sounded for three minutes)
The dome of the sky was announced
Voices of grief and sadness.

At the hour of farewell - in the frosty air,
As a sign of our irrevocable loss,
Rolled sadly and menacingly
Thirtyfold gun thunder.

And now, when at the Mausoleum
We are already reading the word STALIN,
We cherish his posthumous dream,
I didn’t stop feeling alive.

The troops will be paraded here.
The conversation will sound multilingual...
Sleep peacefully, great Stalin, next to you
With my great teacher.

We swore before the Mausoleum,
In mournful moments, in the hour of farewell,
We swore that we could transform
The power of sorrow into the power of creation.

That shoulder to shoulder, even closer
We will unite like a living wall.
Inseparable from their Party,
Giving everything to her, even life.

Parting

A mournful march sounds in the Hall of Columns.
Everywhere your name is on lips.
With eyes forever closed
You are lying there, covered in fresh flowers.

You are gone. You fell asleep forever.
The heart fell silent. The chest is motionless.
We stand on the guard of honor.
Accompanying you on your final journey.

We're moving in slow motion
There is no end to it, no end.
We look in deep mourning
On the features of your beloved face.

We look, but we see you alive.
We feel the flame of your eyes.
Your life, any word you say -
A guide to action for us.

Always with us

He is in love and national happiness,
He is our great friend and father -
Alive in any noble impulse
Our hearts tempered by him!

He is in doing things big and small.
Dearly beloved and dear.
He is on banners, on scarlet banners,
Raised high above the country!

He led the Fatherland along Lenin's path,
The people were led by a great man!
With him we entered the era of communism,
In Stalin's invincible age.

Motherland, dear Fatherland.
Every day yours was illuminated by it...
Let the party of steel lead us!
Stalin is with us everywhere!
He is eternal!

In the Hall of Columns

For the first time my girl cries
Not at all childish, heavy tears,
And I can't console her
Raising it above his head in the Hall of Columns.

You encountered grief so early.
How in early childhood I - in that distant January.
We, peering into the strict features,
We say goodbye to the leader in deep silence.

Comrade Stalin is sleeping among the flowers.
Our father's dream is majestic, calm:
The leader is confident that he is solid, like a monolith,
The Soviet people are workers and warriors.

Stalin and the people are always united,
The Stalinist people's bright genius is immortal.
He, together with Lenin, led us and is leading us,
He laid out the path for many generations.

Even if my girl is very small,
But just like me, she learned from childhood:
The Party gave us everything bright.
The Fatherland and the world have been handed over to us as an inheritance.

Faithful to Lenin's holy cause,
Faithful to Stalin's holy cause,
The path to communism is illuminated by their eternal glory.
How much we have to do in life,
To be worthy of your majestic era!

UNITY

When we passed near the coffin,
Saying goodbye to him silently for the last time.
We remembered the great power
The one who is quiet and motionless now,

About how he lived, the best on the planet.
Who always won, in any struggle,
About the one who thought about everyone in the world
And I thought too little about myself.

And grief brings people’s hearts together.
How joyful the hour cannot bring closer,
And all the people intertwine their hands tightly,
Going on Stalin's watch.

You will lead us from yesterday's victories
To the great dawns of tomorrow's victories,
You, Party of the immortal and fearless.
Our Stalinist Central Committee!

FIVE MINUTES

When the Leader's comrades carried him in
To the granite mausoleum for burial,
People everywhere native land
Stopped traffic for five minutes.

In five minutes
In our souls they rise
Great events of this life.
Horns and volleys of funeral salutes,
Like a hurricane, rushing across the Fatherland...

Sea vessels, trains on the way.
Machines in the field and factory workshops
They reverently say “Sorry!”
Leader, father, teacher of nations.

And the army he led
Through victories from the Volga to Berlin,
And the children of the schools created by his care
Merged together in one impulse.

And this roll call throughout the country -
Rivers and seas, cities and fields -
Tells us without words how strong we are
Unity of feelings, thoughts and will!

Immortality of the leader

Great grief befell the Soviet people:
Our teacher, leader and father closed his eyes.
After all, we are his party! He lives in each of us,
Lives in our thoughts, deeds and beating hearts!

After all, just like Lenin, you have seen the light through the centuries.
You clearly saw the features of the coming world.
You led us into the future. Got up every morning
It’s as if you are the sun above our Motherland.

O our great leader, your immortal name
Any golden brick of our construction sites rings.
You gave us strength, and it will not be taken away from us.
Your inspiration, Stalin, burns in all of us!

The people saw you as the embodiment of Lenin,
And the people were right, for Lenin’s wise testament
You did it valiantly! Lenin will not die for centuries.
You are immortal too. The world does not believe that Stalin does not exist!

You are alive! And under the banner of our party they march
Those new people who are now building communism.
You look into their hearts and see: they live in their hearts
Lenin himself, Stalin himself, their cause, their eternal life!

Gafur Ghulyam. Translated from Uzbek Leonid Martynov.
March 13, 1953, Pravda, USSR*

STALIN

Stalin!
Our dear, our dear!
Grabbing your headboard
The Motherland is crying over you.

The Motherland cries without erasing
tears streaming down your face,
swearing all my life
To the commander,
To the leader,
To my father.

Everything that you and I started -
Let's finish as you intended:
may the Earth shine with beauty,
making your dreams come true!

You wanted with every breath
the man only breathed in joy...
May your era mature,
stretching from century to century!

Our dear, you are with us, with us.
You live and breathe in every heart.
Our luminous banner,
our glory, our soul.

A SOLDIER'S FAREWELL

Who would lift the heavy burden of loss from the soul?
Who would order the acute pain to subside?..
My heroes, old soldiers,
They go, they go to the Hall of Columns.

I saw them on the Volga and on the Vistula.
In their military glory, in military labor,
I read holy thoughts in their hearts
About the Motherland, about the World, about the Leader.

For them, their whole life was contained in the word - STALIN.
For them, his order was law.
The soldiers are coming...
Sad in a haze of tears
The look of these sorrow-deep eyes.

The soldiers are coming...
Requiem flows
The sadness of the trumpets that sang the victory.
And a song about father and commander
The silence of compressed lips will not break.

Faded buttonholes on an overcoat.
There are medals on the chest and gray hair on the temples.
He saw death. He heard the whistle of shrapnel.
- For Stalin! - shouting and fighting with hostility.

The soldier's face is gloomy and stern.
In the soldier's eyes there is the same steely shine.
And a word suddenly flies from your lips like a rustle;
- Why did you leave us, dear?..

Native! Darling! We are at war with losses
We're used to it. But in this cruel hour
We, your warriors, don’t believe our eyes,
We don't believe that you left us.

We don’t believe that you won’t get up again...
Get up! Give us your eagle gaze.
Here - the Marshal of Poland is crying in front of the coffin,
Your soldier who never cried.

Here is a sentry, not hardened in fire,
How the youngest son looked into your face.
Here are Vasilevsky, Zhukov and Budyonny,
Grieving, they carry an honor guard.

The silent pain of loss burns our hearts.
But, remembering previous battles,
We swear allegiance again, your soldiers,
Your illustrious marshals.

We swear by our military glory,
What if the trumpet is blown again?
We will all raise it like a shield over the state
The steel of loyalty tested in struggle.

We will melt steel into courage
Its immeasurable sadness.
We will decorate with labor,
glorify us with a feat
That land that protects your love.

The flag over your Kremlin flows scarlet.
The soldiers are coming...
Their steps are clear.
Comrade Stalin!
Grief did not crush us.
We are with your party!
With your Central Committee!

Let's fulfill Stalin's covenant

We know - to a person is immutable
Death comes when the hour comes.
And yet it was impossible to imagine.
That Stalin will not be among us.

And we are bitter, and there is no limit anywhere,
There is no end to human sorrow.
That he died, the earth became orphaned,
The people lost a friend and a father.

Everything that people called happiness.
It was given to us by His hands.
And no matter how many tears are shed for him,
You can't mourn him anyway.

And even though we are unable to hold back our sobs,
Having seen his own in the Leader’s coffin, -
But if we gave up.
They would be unworthy of him.

And even though we cannot be consoled in our sorrow,
But he, the Teacher, always taught us:
Don't lose heart, don't hang your head.
No matter what trouble comes.

No, even in sorrow we are not defenseless -
Sons of the people, sons of Stalin
We firmly remember what we need to do,
What a peak we must reach!

And we swear to the party today,
That there is no hesitation in our hearts,
That we are ready for work and heroism,
That we will fulfill Stalin's covenant!

Comrade Stalin

When could we stand up, Comrade Stalin,
You wouldn't blame us for crying.
After all, our hearts became stronger from tears.
We did not lower our eyes even in trouble.

And everything that you, having foreseen, outlined,
Let's implement it and enter communism.
At your grave, Comrade Stalin,
We swear on your name.

And Comrade Stalin will live forever

No one can fully believe -
After all, the misfortune is so immeasurably great, -
That the one whose life cannot be measured by centuries,
Will never smile again.

Comrade Stalin! Having met grief with my heart,
Words cannot express people's feelings.
The only one in the entire endless world.
How we need to hear your voice!

And if my wish came true:
So that at least for a moment you remain in service,
Any of us would give our breath to you
And your blood. And your life.

My father left, filling my hearts with pain,
He won't say a word to anyone again.
But your genius, your steel will
He left it to his people.

We followed him among the stormy springs.
He was without sleep or rest in the Kremlin
Since he took an oath to Lenin
And Lenin remained on earth.

He opened it for us, he brought it closer to us.
And there is no more beautiful and straighter path.
And Comrade Stalin will live forever
In the affairs of his mighty sons.

COMMUNISM COMMUNIST

How to believe in scary words meaning?!
There is grief in them, misfortune and misfortune.
Frozen in sadness, in sorrowful excitement
Our villages, our cities.

Do not wipe away the tears from your face.
There are no words of consolation...
I would give everything so that death would be over.
To turn her off the path!

Good, good ones closed
Stalin's birthmark...
The flags are bowed low, low,
A bitter tear obscured my gaze!

The country froze in mid-sentence,
Only snow flies outside the windows...
The whole country, the people at the head
Stands on mourning guard.

The whole country - both adults and children,
The Party and the Young Komsomol.
All whom in the centuries to come
The commander of Communism led!

We stand - let our tears flow!
And today, as always, strong
Children of the Party,
soldiers of the revolution,
Sons of the great Stalin!

In difficult times, in difficult times,
Remembering the wise Stalinist covenant -
We are united in steel unity,
And there is no one more united than us in the whole world!

Sleep, our dear,
our beloved father, -
The pain in my heart is as deep as the sea!..
We stand unwavering in our ranks -
Stalin is with us!
With us - for centuries!

Stalin is with us

We will forever remember that number
That sad day at the beginning of the year,
That difficult day in the history of the people,
In which grief shook us all.

No! We haven't understood everything yet
The whole being did not realize everything...
Comrade Stalin gave his life for us,
And today he is not with us...

When could we give it to him?
Your heartbeat and breathing,
We, as one, would come to him in the Kremlin,
Overcoming any distances!

The whole weight fell on us
Unexpected, unexpected grief -
It is everywhere: in every glance,
It is reflected in all hearts now.

Native party! Uniting our ranks,
We bow our banner over the Leader
And we say: “The Great Stalin is with us!”
And we say: “The Great Stalin is alive!”

ABOUT STALIN

When he says his word,
Every time it seems to us that it
And our thought was born
And now it was ready to pour out.

At that moment we seemed unaware
In the most innocent of our delusions,
That only he, the living genius with us,
I could open and say this word.

But is this really a fallacy?
After all, the word of our truth is unvarnished
We really wanted to express.
We are with him. And he is one of us.

And that is your true happiness,
What, maybe, a private of the privates,
You are involved in Stalin's genius,
And you are forever alive among the living.

There are most people like me in the world.
That we didn’t meet him in the Kremlin hall,
Haven't seen him up close
And we didn’t hear voices in the wild.

But everyone probably feels the same way as me
He is close with equal spiritual closeness,
It's like he's alone with you
Talks about life every day,
About the future, about peace and war...

And everything is in it for you, like a relative
It’s familiar and familiar to the smallest detail.
And that conversation lasts day after day -
He is with you, you are with him, like at home.
No matter what, the two of you are always together.
And so any other of the majority
He sees himself in the highest position of that council.
We all have equal rights to this, -
He lives for us in this world.

Features of the portrait of a dear one,
Relatives to each of us:
The face of an elderly soldier
With a kind smile and stern eyes.
Of those soldiers who came
Into the fire of war from the reserves,
That they took their sons into battle
And in a bitter hour they lost them.
And a long service imprint -
Wrinkles memorial speech
To match the fatigue of the downhill,
These dear father's shoulders.
But those softened by sadness.
Eyes are always lit
And near day and far away,
What he can see best of all.

Eyes lowered to the receiver.
Familiar to people all over the world.
And these busy hands
That they matched a match with a pipe.
They are strong and lean,
And the thread curls with a strict vein.
In a difficult age, the fate of the state
And they had to make peace.

Mustache like a hanging shadow
The face below is darkened.
What a word for a moment
Is it hidden from us under it?
Advice? Order? Is the reproach severe?
Bitter tone of disapproval?
Or with a wise and cheerful joke
Will he look up now?

HOW YOU LEARNED

There are no words to convey them
All the unbearable pain and sadness,
There are no words to tell,
How we mourn for you, Comrade Stalin!

The people mourn that you left us,
The earth itself mourns, all gray with grief,
And yet we will meet this difficult hour,
As you taught, tirelessly.

Whatever befalls us - in labor or in battles -
In Stalin's way - with deeds, not words,
Friends for pride and enemies for fear
Let us prove how we were raised by you!

Just unite stronger for the fight,
We will work without sparing effort
And not afraid of anything in the world,
As Lenin taught us, - as you taught.

We will not bow our heads to anything,
It’s not for nothing that you led us to victories.
We will be fearless, as you taught,
Calm and firm, as you taught.

And our iron Stalinist Central Committee,
to whom you entrusted the people,
Towards the victory of communism for centuries (Special archive)
(Special archive)
(Special archive)
(Special archive)
(Special archive)

on the birthday of Konstantin Simonov

“Tanks near the village of Korpecha are standing in the mud, and the rain is still pouring...”

How etched into my memory since school years- this is how it remains in memory:

Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region,

How the endless, angry rains fell,

How tired women carried krinkas to us,

Holding them to my chest like children from the rain...

Written in the fall of '41. Perhaps the most tragic time of the Great Patriotic War. The author is the war correspondent of the Pravda newspaper Konstantin (Kirill) Mikhailovich Simonov.

The bullets still have mercy on you and me.
But, having believed three times that life is all over,
I was still proud of the sweetest one,
For the bitter land where I was born...

That war ended seventy years ago - and it’s still impossible to read these lines without trembling in your voice. This is called simple and pretentious, but in this particular case it is a completely fair word: MASTERPIECE. A masterpiece because it was written with TALENT.

Yes, time does not create idols for itself. The most typical confirmation of this is him, Konstantin Simonov. During times Soviet power- not just the most famous, but a cult writer. Not just the then literary “general”, not just favored by the authorities, but himself - practically a symbol of THAT power (Only Stalin, not counting others, awards - SIX! Which of the writers - and not only writers! - could boast SO MANY SUCH awards ?!). Deputy of the Supreme Council, editor-in-chief first of Novy Mir, then of Literaturnaya Gazeta, deputy general secretary of the board of the Writers' Union, member of the presidium of the Soviet Peace Committee, member of the Stalin Prize committee, and te de, and te pe...

On the other hand, a tough literary official, although not furious, is still a persecutor of Akhmatova, Zoshchenko, the so-called “cosmopolitans”... It was his signature that was on the letter of the editorial board of the “New World”, which rejected Boris Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago”.

- A classic figure to exemplify the category of “genius and villainy”!- I tell my old friend, culturologist S.V. Konovalov.

I agree, but only partly. In that Soviet time there were very strict frameworks that determined the norm of behavior not only of “ordinary people”, but also of Personalities (and Simonov was, without a doubt, a Personality). Not even that: Personalities come first. Since you can’t expect any unexpected actions from “ordinary people”, but from Personalities - as many as you like. That's why they regulated it.

- In my opinion, you are disingenuous, Sergei Vladimirovich. Take, for example, the story I mentioned with Akhmatova and Zoshchenko. Didn’t Simonov act as a true villain in relation to them, for whom the “frameworks” you named were just an empty formality?

As for Zoshchenko, then - perhaps. As for Akhmatova... Anna Andreevna herself was, to put it mildly, not a gift at all. And she really loved to appear before her fans in the form of a kind of “offended virtue.” So you can still figure it out here.

- What about cosmopolitans?

What about “cosmopolitans”? Yes, Simonov, as they say, denounced them. The situation obliged. More precisely, he was forced to denounce. But for some reason we forget that at the same time he helped many of these same “cosmopolitans”: he got them jobs, solved housing issues, and finally, simply gave them money. How is that? And to be fair, let’s not make him into such a complete monster! The return to the reader of the novels of Ilf and Petrov, the publication of Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” and Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, the defense of Lily Brik, whom high-ranking “literary historians” decided to delete from Mayakovsky’s biography, the first complete translation of the plays of Arthur Miller and Eugene O 'Nila, the publication of Vyacheslav Kondratiev's first story "Sashka" - this is a far from complete list of Simonov's "herculean feats", only those that achieved their goal and only in the field of literature.

But there was also participation in the “punching” of performances at Sovremennik and the Taganka Theater, the first posthumous exhibition of Tatlin, the restoration of the exhibition “XX Years of Work” by Mayakovsky, participation in the cinematic fate of Alexei German and dozens of other filmmakers, artists, and writers. So, as you can see, he had a lot of merit. Only Simonov did not advertise them. In these cases he acted like a real man.

- A small digression: but Sholokhov did not “tread on” Akhmatova. On the contrary: he helped her release the collection! And he did not speak out against the “cosmopolitans”. And he even refused the very “sweet” post of General Secretary of the Writers’ Union!

What can I say? Cunning Cossack!

- Speaking about Simonov, it is impossible to avoid the topic of his attitude towards Stalin...

This attitude, in my opinion, very specifically characterizes the poem that Simonov wrote on the death of the “Leader and Teacher”:

There are no words to describe them
All the intolerance of grief and sadness.
There are no words to tell,
How we mourn for you, Comrade Stalin...

In my opinion, no explanation is required.

- But this attitude was still changing...

Yes, it changed throughout Konstantin Mikhailovich’s life - and I don’t see any shame or opportunism here! A NORMAL person has the right to change their points of view! And here it is appropriate to quote a passage from his article “Reflections on Stalin”:

“For some of the things that happened then, I bear a bitter share of my personal responsibility, which I spoke about and later wrote in print and about which I will also say in these notes when I write the chapter about the forty-ninth year. But, of course, I was not an anti-Semite...”

Please note: this was written in March 1979, less than six months before his death. That is, there was absolutely no need for Simonov to hide anything or make excuses for anything.

- And yet: who was Stalin for Simonov?

In short, he is undoubtedly a figure both great and terrible.

- Great and terrible... Do you think Simonov’s poetry remains in demand?

- Without a doubt. First of all, his war poems and poems. But besides poetry there is also prose. First of all, the trilogy “The Living and the Dead”, which has become a classic Russian literature about the Great Patriotic War.

But the plays have a sad fate. Their time has passed. And in conclusion - about the personal: I personally really like his diary entries - “Different days of the war.” I don’t know whether they are read and whether they will read them, but I do it with great pleasure. Great, sincere lyrics.

- Thank you, Serey Vladimirovich, for, as always, an interesting conversation!

In conclusion. No, no, I understand perfectly well: other times, other heroes, other role models and respect. The writers are also different, and not at all to say that they are the best... And socialist realism is no longer our creative direction at all. In our literature today, in my opinion, there are no trends AT ALL... Hence the bitter and shameful question: will we ever become smarter? Will we ever stop being Ivans, who don’t remember their kinship (but they forgot Simonov!)? What are you saying? "Hardly"? Well. It seems that this is our, excuse the indecent word, mentality...

Alexey Kurganov

All photos are taken from open Internet sources