[000:00:00;00] in its modern form, our country was formed, multi-confessional, multinational, imperial, but a completely different empire than the european empire, colonial, a completely different type of empire, you know, an empire that absorbed new territory, began to date it immediately, usually, not to pull out all the values ​​from there, an empire that was incredibly tolerant of other peoples, its subjects, on an equal basis, not a single ethnic group disappeared, no, they all just grew, moreover, they all grew significantly in terms of numbers, this is a very interesting time with very interesting, bright, beautiful people, well, in conclusion, i’ll ask you, but it’s clear where this will be completed, such a difficult question, where by the constituent assembly or the second world war, or maybe by i would

really like to be honest, complete this before nicholas ii, because then a very painful time begins, of course. i really wouldn’t want these books to cause a bad mood or negative emotions, that they would cause discord, yes, that they would cause discord, i would like people to read them we understood that, firstly, everything has already happened, secondly, we need to learn a lot from our ancestors, and thirdly, the meaning of history is not to step on the same rake again, this will be what is called, then , what i call the positivist view of history. this is a positivist, or maybe, as you rightly said, a positive view , well, sober, calm, leading to some kind of agreement, but is it right to think that love for the native ashes, love for the attack coffins, what to rest on? from time immemorial,

by the will of god himself, the self-sufficiency of man, his greatness, this is the only correct, greatest words, this is the only correct attitude towards your history, thank you very much, vladimir rastislavovich for the conversation, in our podcast, in conclusion i always say my slogan or express myself in a foreign slogan, read with pleasure, dear friends, see you again. hello, my name is alexey varlamov, i am a writer and rector of a literary institute, today we will have a podcast dedicated to alexey nikolaevich tolstoy. ah, alexei tolstoy is one of the most amazing, fascinating, paradoxical figures in the history

of russian literature. there is such an anecdote about him that somewhere in the late twenties , early thirties, his house in tsarskoye selo, in the children's village, it was called, the footman comes and says: your excellency, it’s time for a party meeting. in fact , there is something wrong with this anecdote: alexei tolstoy was never a communist and did not attend any party meetings. but nevertheless, the dizzying fate of this man, who immediately after the revolution was the cruelest... critic of the bolsheviks, who, according to bunin, he offered to gouge out their eyes with a rusty bayonet, and a few years later he made such a dizzying feast and became one of the most devout soviet writers, the pillars of socialist realism, this biography still causes controversy, and the most important question is, is he really count tolstoy, and he really fat, could a man with such a surname, with such a title

be capable of such treachery, i must say that when the young guard publishing house offered me to write a biography alexei tolstoy, i had a very negative attitude towards this idea, i was extremely unsympathetic to this character, but then i decided for myself that my job was to carry out what was offered to me, then i felt like a professional writer for the first time, here is a hero, write everything about him , whatever you want, i was sure that it would be a satirical pamphlet. that this would be such a session of exposure, i even sounded like this all the time, and the lines of boris chichebabin, a wonderful poet, who wrote like this, i’m filled with sadness, i’m sorry scoundrels like alexei tolstoy and valentin kotaev, such a scoundrel alexei tolstoy, then there is an excellent one, for those who haven’t read it, i highly recommend reading the memoir of ivan alekseevich bunin, which is called the third

tolstoy, in it... my hero is also shown very impartially , very ironically , bunin himself begins with the same topic, but was he a fat count, and... he never talked about his father. for bunin it was very strange, how can a count, how can a russian aristocrat not be proud of his pedigree and not tell about your ancestors, because well, this is such an obligatory part of the biography of the history of every russian nobleman. in fact, the story of the origin of alexei tolstoy, the appearance of his light, is worthy of a separate novel. so, his father's name was. count, it must be said that all the fat ones, all the countess, are all relatives, he was a military man, but very gambling, such hooligan behavior, who for all his tricks was kicked out of the guard, forbidden to live in st. petersburg, and he

went to his homeland, that is, to the volga , to his hometown samara, and there in samara this a violent landowner met a girl whose last name was turgenev, she was not in any... related relationship with ivan turgeev, but nevertheless, tolstoy and turgeva, they connected, it was an explosive mixture, she was like that, not even turgenev a girl, and such a super russian idealist, who married this hooligan and brawler because she wanted to correct him, such a marriage, a noble, great act, such a sacrifice on her part, none of this worked out, because the count continued act the same here... the husband treated this arrogantly, mockingly, she did not meet any understanding in the family, and then she made a dear

friend, whose name was alexei apollonovich bastrom, he was from the russified swedes, he was not even a nobleman, he was such a landowner - one-palace, in today's language. a farmer, he had a small farm in the volga region, but periodically he came to samara, somewhere at some literary meeting, literary seminar, which were there then, he met this young writing woman, they had an idea, at first a spiritual romance, they both loved literature and could talk for hours about poetry and prose, then this romance turned into such a more serious relationship, at some point alexandra leontyevna, she was such a girl. brave, desperate, she simply left her husband, left her children and went to alexei palonovich. but it must be said that in this situation, count nikolai alexandrovich tolstoy, her husband, the father of her children, behaved unexpectedly nobly. he

took all the blame for what happened on himself, that somewhere he was such a stormy person, only to her caused her suffering, began to beg her to return, the children were crying, he was sad without her, he promised her two things: the first that he promised her that he would publish her novel restless heart for his money, the second that she would return home only as a mother her children, but not as the wife of her husband, she agreed with this and returned, and then it turned out that the count fulfilled the first part of his promise, the novel was published and reviled by the criticism department of the journal otechestvennye zapiski, and as for... the second part, then execute its graph he couldn’t, he loved his wife very much, and what happened next, if you remember the novel saga ofarsaytahso, there is a similar situation, there is such a not very nice character named soames, he has a

beautiful young wife, whose name is irene, irene too a romance arises, a lover, then at some point, soames, as orsay says, entered his wife’s bedroom and restored ownership of her. something similar happened in samara in 1882 and this is how the future soviet classic was conceived, that is, the future writer was born, if you call things in their own names, as a result of marital rape, after which the countess left home, left home and discovered that she was pregnant, and - she wrote to bostrom that, uh, take me to you, if you accept me, we will live together happily, if not , i will understand you. nobility competed with nobility, he accepted it, they began to live, get along, make good, on his farm in the volga region, where alexey nikolaevich was actually

born. and the most interesting thing is in the story of his childhood, his growing up, his youth, that years before 13:14 he knew nothing about this, that is, he simply grew up on this farm with christian boys, with christian girls, and he later said and quite rightly said that if none of this had happened, he would would not have turned out to be the writer he became, and this is purely true , but the problem was that the child did not have any documents, that is, he had a metric certificate, which was nevertheless issued after his birth, and when he was baptized, naturally, but further, in order for a noble child to go to school in a gymnasium, he had to have a document proving membership in the nobility , which was issued by the noble assembly, and here the countess, when she became concerned about this problem, she was faced with the insurmountable circumstance that count nikolai

alexandrovich tolstoy, her ex-husband is the father of the child, he categorically refused to admit the boy that he had no other children, and besides those who were born before, and the situation was a dead end, the situation was generally unclear what to do, and alexandra leontyevna thought that then maybe the child would be recognized by her second husband; by the way, he was not her legal husband, because after the divorce she remained in eternal celibacy, such were the laws of the russian empire in this regard, if spouses were divorced due to adultery, adultery , then the one of the spouses who was not guilty of adultery could marry or get married a second time, and the one who was guilty remained in eternal celibacy, since she was guilty, it means she remained that way, her marriage with bastrom was purely civil character, but she nevertheless still thought that maybe... the child would be adopted by bastrom, but bastrom was not a nobleman,

despite all the democratic beliefs of her beliefs, she still believed that it would be better for her son to be a count and earl thick. in the end, i won’t bore you with the details, she managed to achieve this, and at 17:18 alexey nikolaevich acquired a surname, acquired the title of count, but why am i dwelling on this story, because there was no other count in history who had christian childhood, which had this experience. this that very case when a child from rags to prince, such a pawn that became a queen, he graduates from an engineering institute, i don’t remember the exact name, maybe a mining institute, in general he graduates from some technical institute in st. petersburg, receives a respectable technical profession, and he is an engineer, but his soul does not lie in the exact sciences, his soul does not lie in technology, he fluctuates between painting and poetry, he begins as a poet, even when he shows his poems as a poet, they

say, he’d better do painting, when he shows his paintings to artists, they send him to the poetry workshop and say: better - write poetry, but he was very persistent, he was very strong-willed, he really knew how to study, gradually he begins to make a literary career, which, by the way, contributes to his very open, very sociable, and a wonderful character, which allows him to make profitable acquaintances and friends in the literary environment. of course, if he didn’t have talent, just the ability to make friends with someone, nothing would have come of him, but nevertheless, here is that very happy occasion when writing talent, poetic talent, dramatic talent , he was famous and rich in all of this, is complemented by this excellent knowledge of human nature, the ability to build his relationships with the outside world, and, say, among it

friends were voloshin and gomilyov, who subsequently arranged a duel, and alexei tolstoy in this duel was a second on voloshin’s side; he saw his task as taking long steps, which means measuring out as much distance as possible between them so as not to god forbid they didn’t hit each other, but they didn’t, gomilev missed, voloshin didn’t shoot, but why am i still telling about this story, but because a few months later, alexey tolstoy. will be the wedding of gumilyov and akhmatova, that is, his ability to be friends with a variety of people - this really was his enormous human talent. we continue, this is the podcast alexey tolstoy, with you the writer and rector of the literary institute, alexey varlamov. it must be said that alexei tolstoy’s attitude to the february revolution is like most russian intellectuals were like that.

quite calm, it must be said that he did not like the last russian tsar, and he believed that the tsar was weak, that the tsar was to blame for the fact that russia was being haunted by military failures , therefore, when the february revolution took place, especially with its original democratic folk ferment , he reacted to this quite favorably, the only thing was that he had such a sign, he lived in moscow, the sign was thick in his apartment, which could be understood in two ways, either count thick, or grzh... this dexterity also , of course, reflects his character, but the october revolution also takes place, which in moscow was much more brutal and bloody than in petrograd. there was such a real civil war here. and i must say that tolstoy at that moment was most likely confused. he initially did not have a negative, such a sharply categorical attitude, negative, towards the bolsheviks. he rather saw the bolsheviks

as something like a pack of tit wolves, which is called upon to destroy everything in russia relaxed, everything unnecessary, everything sick, everything. russia will develop and move forward. and that’s why i say, when the revolution happened, at first he took such a wait-and-see position, unlike his friend ivan bunin, they were really very friendly and were neighbors in moscow, if bunin took such a categorical position of rejection of soviet power, bolshevism, damned days , then for tolstoy the conflict with the bolsheviks begins in february 198, when, in order to save the revolution and for the sake of saving his own skin, lenin concludes the obscene, as he himself called, peace of bresse with the germans, this is the point of no return for tolstoy, this is what he cannot forgive the bolsheviks, because in his eyes this is a betrayal of the national

interests of russia and this is a very important thing for him, returning to bunin's memoirs, bunin portrays tolstoy as a person. absolutely unprincipled, talented, talented with his belly, this is the definition of fyodor salagub, and bunin in general absolutely agrees with him, this sanguine person has no ideas, this epicurean, this a person for whom the main thing in life is to have pleasure, there cannot be any ideas from bunin’s point of view, this is not so , alexei tolstoy, of course, had ideas, and his main idea is really a patriotic idea, it’s really a state idea, that’s why he. .. killed nicholas ii, believing that he did not correspond to the role that the russian sovereign should play, so he hated lenin, when he saw this with the stroke of a pen, they gave away hundreds of thousands, there are tens of thousands of square

kilometers of russian territory that was drenched in blood, for which millions of russian soldiers gave their lives, during the first world war, to just take it and give it away, he could not forgive the bolsheviks for this, from that moment his acute and ideological ideological conflict with the bolshevik authorities began, in fact, this is the reason for that that in 1918 he, together with his family, leaves, leaves soviet russia , ends up first in ukraine, first in kharkov, then in odessa, then one of the first russian emigrants, from odessa, he goes to constantinople and beyond ends up in paris, and in fact, why this story is still very important, because he describes in one of his works in tolstoy’s diaries in his memoirs about him there is this path of russian emigrants who go from odessa to constantinople, a bitter path, russian migrants , exiles, losers of their country, losers of history , go into exile, they cry

, they pray, they drink, they suffer, they play cards, what does alexey tolstoy do, he works. he sits on a typewriter and writes, here this, by the way, also reflected his powerful, mighty character, he, you know, sometimes reminds me of scarlett o haharu from the novel by margaret mitchell, gone with the wind and by the way, the parallel is not without meaning, because of course, what happened in russia in the seventeenth year, partly similar to what happened then in america, but this is the death, the destruction of the old world, the birth of a new civilization and a strong man, as you remember, scarly toha says, my family will never go hungry, this is very important for alexei tolstoy, no matter what, my family is not will go hungry, but he always had a large family, he had children, he had one wife, then another wife, well, he really was a very good, very loyal family man, and the interests of the family were very important to him, so here he is

first ends up in constantinople, then he ends up in marseilles, then in paris , and in fact alexei tolstoy is one of the first representatives of the first wave of russian emigration , and he essentially gives the first major work of this famous future literature of the russian emigration, and that’s what will bunin, aldanov, merishkovsky, agipius, nabokov, gazdanov, it all started with alexei tolstoy’s story nikita’s childhood , an absolutely wonderful story, which, by the way, describes his very peasant childhood on a trans-volga farm in sosnovka, why he wrote this story, because one day his... little son nikita, father, future father of the writer tatyana nikitishna tolstoy, but this is also such a powerful tolstoy root in the history of russian literature, which... and so nikita did not know what a snowdrift was, like this snowdrift, he wrote a story

about childhood, about winter, about snowdrifts, about stars, about happiness, about the estate, about the people who live there, just a cool story, so that russian children who are temporarily in exile, he never considered himself an emigrant, always believed that this everything will end quickly, they will return to their homeland, so that when the children arrive at their homeland, they recognize it, so that they do not lose their russianness, do not lose... this sense of their homeland, writes this wonderful story about nikita’s childhood. and then, as we know, events in russian history went differently than everyone expected, and it was not the whites who won, with whom alexei tolstoy sympathized, and many russian emigrants , but the reds who won, and of course, for the majority of emigrants, this became a national catastrophe, it became a personal catastrophe that caused horror, hatred, tears, despair. i thirst for revenge, whatever, but there was a small number of people, not very large, and alexei tolstoy was one of them, who looked

at things a little differently, and what was especially important for our count was that he saw that these people suddenly began to restore the country, yes, they began to return, albeit not completely, but nevertheless, they began to return these lost territories of the russian empire, and they began to emerge there, began to give birth. a new country, it was a foreign country to him, like most emigrants, he was absolutely never carried away by any ideas , communist or soviet, he never sympathized with lenin and so on, but nevertheless, a country arose there, here two things seem to be important moment, the first moment is that he really is not psychologically could be an immigrant, the second very important point is a dispute that arose in the russian emigration at the very beginning of 1921, because, as we all remember, especially those of

us who studied the history of the cpsu in the soviet years, these are the current students, maybe a little worse, he remembers this whole story, in 1921 in russia there was the so-called kronstadt rebellion, the kronstadt uprising, but it was an extremely dangerous uprising for the bolsheviks, because they rose up against them... not some half-baked nobles, merchants, white guards, priests and so on further, and their sailor brothers rose up, with very dangerous slogans for the bolsheviks, for soviet power without communists, for advice without communists, and if the soviet power has not yet become boring, moreover, well, how beautiful are the advice, the russian word, then the communists are already were here, and therefore lenin , a brilliantly smart man, of course, a politician, he... understood well that this slogan could, like a virus, yes, embrace the whole country, the whole country

would rise up against the bolsheviks and exterminate them, therefore, by the way, lenin, he brutally suppressed brutally suppressed the kronshtat uprising, but after that the policy immediately changed, the internal policy of the soviet state, the surplus appropriation system was abolished and, in fact , new economic policy began, a new economic policy and a new page in the history of soviet russia, which helped lenin, like the peace of bresse had once done, to save the revolution, to save the young republic, that is, but this became obvious later, then, at that moment , when the sailors in konstatt rebelled, then the russian emigrants who were attentive, they , too, like him, they dreamed of returning, they dreamed of revenge, they closely followed what was happening in russia at home, so they began to think how they could help this rebel people, and among the emigrants conversations began that it was necessary to invite the entente, it was necessary to invite england there

, france, the united states of america, so that they would again intervene in this russian civil strife, in this internal russian conflict and help throw off the bolsheviks, but again, as rational and sober-minded people, they understood that just like that, no entente, no england and france will not help, which means they need to pay with something, whatever they can ... russian migrants sitting in paris, beggars, poor russian emigrants will pay, they are the only ones who can pay, they can promise, well, for example, to give it to the french odessa, and give murmansk to the british, promise vladivostok to the americans, they were not national traitors, they perfectly understood that this was a very cruel price, but there were two evils, one evil was the bolsheviks, the other evil was territorial concessions, so that ...it was necessary to overthrow the bolsheviks go pay this price, not forever, then we’ll come to an agreement, then we’ll return it, but now

the situation is hopeless and in order to... break the course of russian history, it is necessary to do this. and alexei tolstoy’s divergence from the russian emigration begins precisely at this moment, when he hears these conversations, because he catches in them the familiar notes of the brez world, to trade russian land for the sake of his political interests, no matter what, red or white, bolshevik or anti-bolshevik. russian land for alexey tolstoy is a shrine, it is not. it cannot be sold, it cannot be given away, it cannot be given to anyone. and then this very conflict began, as a result of which he broke away from the russian emigration and moved from paris to berlin, why to berlin?

because, berlin, germany, which, as we know, means in 1918 after the defeat... in the first world war , its own revolution took place, the kaiser was overthrown, and so germany became the first country that precisely in 1921, when in in general, it became clear to everyone that the soviet power survived, strengthened, germany entered into first trade, then diplomatic relations with the soviet union and germany berlin became a city where both white and red russians met, because it was whole. andrei bely and many others, they came to berlin, and berlin became such a bridge between emigration. it was there that alexei tolstoy went, it was there that he began publishing the famous newspaper the day before. so, the newspaper the day before - it was such

a brilliant, cunning project, which consisted in... propaganda influence the consciousness of russian emigrants, why this was important, because well, now we, i can say about myself, perceive russian immigration very romantically, very idealistically, russian exiles created the greatest masterpieces of literature, culture, science, technology, this is all true, but this is not the whole truth, and the first , especially the first years of emigration, they were painfully difficult, when people with an excellent education could not find something to do, when the countesses went, well, maybe not as a prostitute, but as a servant, when officers had to become lackeys and waiters, we remember all this, there , for example, in bulgakov’s play beck, they had a difficult situation, and the soviet government had its own task, because the civil war

, immigration, knocked out qualified personnel, drove out specialists, teachers and the authorities was interested in returning them, but the newspaper the day before was just conceived by the kremlin as a seemingly independent newspaper, but which showed successes, achievements, at least the absence of war and terror on the territory of soviet russia and it was a literary supplement, which was headed by alexey tolstoy, and he saw his task as publishing both those writers who were in exile in paris or somewhere else, and those who... were in soviet russia, that is he really wanted to unite them, this has always been characteristic of him, to unite, to try on the most different sides, so when he begins to publish this newspaper, then at that moment the immigration rebelled against him, because everyone was not fools, everyone understood perfectly well that they were against and what he was aiming for, it was clear to everyone that he

as if he was corrupting the russian emigration, and other people could follow his path , so it was... the emigrants told him, they were the ones who said no, they were the ones who banned other emigrant writers, well, there was their own union of writers, exile, so to speak, it was they they said whoever gets published in this newspaper will be cursed, so in the end, in general , nothing really came of this project, but why else is this very important why do i remember bunin all the time, because essentially the matter is between alexei tolstoy and ivan alekseevich bunin, a very important worldview dispute ensued, which has... to do with the history of russia. alexey tolstoy explained his position very simply: there was a civil war. my sympathies were on the side of the whites, but the reds won. this is the choice of my people. the right choice is the wrong choice. not my decision. i am a russian person, i do not want and will not live in exile , and i am returning my country, to which we

are all to blame for having plunged it into the abyss of this russian unrest. and i invite you, brothers and sisters, to return with me, and this a storm-worn russian ship, battered by storms, crying out for new life. it’s very interesting that when this was published in this same newspaper the day before in the newspaper, news in moscow was reprinted when i wrote such a letter, its manifesto was published, at that moment, bunin and merishkovsky received a scholarship from the french government, so that god forbid they did not return, so that god forbid they did not follow the path of alexei tolstoy, i think they would have, however, even without this scholarship they would not have followed anywhere, because bunin, of course, a convinced enemy of what is happening in soviet russia. and here is the dispute between bunin and tolstoy, it is really very important. bunin would later write such a brilliant article called the mission of russian emigration.

and in this article, bunin will actually define and express what is the meaning of what happened in russia. and the meaning of this pabunin is that russia no longer exists, the entity that arose on this territory is not russia. for bunin , the last straw was the renaming of petrograd to leningrad, this is how bunin wrote in this article it was possible to endure batu, batu khan, the tatar mol invasion, but you cannot accept lenin, therefore there is no more russia, soviet russia is aksumaron, this is something that cannot be, if it is soviet, then it is not russia, real russia is either in exile, and as if they preserve the spirit of this real russia. russian emigrants, or like the city of kitish, it sank to the bottom and is somewhere deep underground, so budin does not accept either the soviet calendar or soviet spelling, not to mention, of course,

soviet ideas. as for alexei tolstoy, this bunin thought sounds strange to him: russia no longer exists, which means it no longer exists, but where is it going, and the people who live there, who speak russian, and these russian, russian sky, russian land. russian faces, children who are born there, who are they? and this dispute, this is what, how to treat russia, what to consider as your homeland, it is really such an important dispute, in the end, alexei tolstoy decides to return to his homeland, i repeat, quite a lot not idealizing what is happening there, but i believe that it is the duty of a russian person to live in his native country, so he returns to the soviet union, emigration is perceived as a betrayal, and they say that he sold out to the bolsheviks, in fact this is all nonsense, he returned to soviet russia, as he entered a cage with a tiger, who was he in the eyes of the bolsheviks?

in the eyes of the bolsheviks, he was, therefore, a former count, an aristocrat, a white guard, who yes, changed his beliefs, but who believes people who changes his beliefs, moreover, that’s all probably last year he took from petrograd a group of prominent russian philosophers and public figures who did not agree with what was happening in their native country, but what is less known is that this steamboat made a return flight a year later, well, maybe not this particular one parokh, in any case there was a parokh that brought those people back to their homeland, they were invented in much the same way as alexei tolstoy, yes, that is, those who believed that they should live in their own country, no matter what, all these people were shot, not immediately on

the shore, no, they were just taken into account, stalin really didn’t trust the defectors, alexey tolstoy was the only one who survived, but i would like to end with something a little different; in exile, in addition to nikita’s childhood, alexey tolstoy wrote a book, which of course everyone knows. which was filmed more than once, the novel walking through the mocks, which means there was a novel walking through the torments, has two editions , namely the first part, which is now called the sisters, but initially it was called walking helped, which means there was an emigrant part, which was published in berlin and there was a part that was subsequently republished in soviet union, and bunin, by the way, wrote that tolstoy , such a cunning, such a cunning opportunist, he changed it to please the bolsheviks, in fact this is not so, bunin simply did not compare these two editions, there are differences between them, including ideological ones differences, but they are not so great they do not change, well, the main idea that is