Ilya Grigorievich Erenburg REREADING CHEKHOV 1In Yasnaya Polyana at Tolstoy’s grave, you involuntarily think about pride and humility. Lev Nikolaevich bequeathed that neither a monument nor a plaque with his name should be placed on his grave. This was dictated by the belief in the need for spiritual

Paul Josselin

Erenburg Ilya Grigorievich– poet, prose writer, translator, publicist, public figure

Born on January 14 (26 n.s.), 1891 in Kyiv in the family of an engineer. Five years later, the family moved to Moscow, where his father, G. G. Erenburg, for some time served as director of the Khamovnichesky Brewery. Ilya studied at the 1st Moscow Gymnasium, from the sixth grade of which he was expelled for revolutionary activities. He was an active participant in the student Bolshevik organization; among his comrades in the organization were N.I. Bukharin and G. Ya Sokolnikov. In January 1908 he was arrested, in August of the same year he was released pending trial under police supervision, and in December, at the request of his father, he received permission to travel abroad for treatment on bail.

He settled in Paris, where he met with V.I. Lenin, A.V. Lunacharsky and other prominent Bolsheviks. A short time worked in Vienna under the supervision of L.D. Trotsky, then returned to Paris, where he began to write poetry and retired from revolutionary activities. For some time he lived in a civil marriage with Ekaterina Schmidt (later the wife of his friend T.I. Sorokin), they had a daughter, Irina (Irina Erenburg, 1911–1997, writer, translator, was married to the writer B.M. Lapin, who died in 1941).

In 1910, at his own expense, he published the first book of poetry (which was called “Poems”), then he published books of poetry almost every year. These collections were noticed by critics and famous poets(in particular, V.Ya. Bryusov). During these years, Ehrenburg met and became friends with many subsequently famous writers, poets (M.A. Voloshin, A.N. Tolstoy, G. Apollinaire) and artists (F. Léger, A. Modigliani, P. Picasso, D. Rivera) , he was a regular at the cafes “Closerie de Lisle” and “Rotunda” on the Boulevard Montparnasse.

After the outbreak of World War I, Ehrenburg tried to join the French army as a foreign volunteer, but was declared unfit for health reasons. His patriotic fervor quickly faded, and he began to write critical poems about the war. At the same time, his journalistic activity began: in 1915–1916 he published articles and essays in the Morning of Russia newspaper (Moscow), and in 1916–1917 in the Birzhevye Vedomosti newspaper (Petrograd).

In July 1917, Ehrenburg returned to Russia. He did not accept the October Revolution and wrote sharply critical poems and articles. After a short arrest in September 1918, he left for Kyiv, which was alternately captured by Petliurists, Reds and Whites. There Ehrenburg married the artist Lyubov Kozintseva, the older sister of the future film director G.M. Kozintsev, with whom he lived until the end of his life. After the next capture of Kyiv by the Whites, in November 1919 they went to Koktebel to M.A. Voloshin.

In January 1920, Ehrenburg wrote the poem “Russia”, where in his characteristic manner he recognized the revolution:

“Not in the foam of the sea, not in the blue of heaven,

On the dark rot, washed with our blood,

A new, great age is being born.”

In the fall of 1920, he and his wife returned to Moscow through independent Georgia. Here he was arrested, but was soon released on the guarantee of N.I. Bukharin. In Moscow he worked as the head of the children's section of the Theater Department of the People's Commissariat for Education (the department was headed by V.E. Meyerhold).

In March 1921, Ehrenburg received permission to travel abroad on an “artistic trip” and went to Paris with his wife, retaining his Soviet passport. From that moment until 1940, he lived most of the time in the West, but often came to the USSR, gave lectures, and participated in the First Congress of USSR Writers in 1934; Most of the works he wrote were published in the USSR.

Soon after his arrival, he was expelled from France for pro-Soviet propaganda. In the summer of 1921 in Belgium, he wrote his first novel, “The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito...” (published in 1922), in which he mercilessly satirized both bourgeois society and the World War it unleashed, as well as the bureaucratic and repressive Soviet system. Many fragments of the novel turned out to be prophetic. One of the chapters was dedicated to V.I. Lenin, whom Ehrenburg likened to the Grand Inquisitor F.M. Dostoevsky. However, Lenin liked the novel.

In 1921–1924, Ehrenburg lived mainly in Berlin; after the “Left Bloc” came to power in France in 1924, he received permission to live in France, and from that time on he lived mainly in Paris. Until 1923, he continued to write and publish poetry, then completely switched to prose.

In the 1920s, he wrote more than two dozen books, in which a critical (and often sharply satirical) view of both bourgeois and Soviet society prevailed. The novels “Trust D.E. The History of the Death of Europe” (1923), “The Love of Jeanne Ney” (1924) and the story “Summer of 1925” (1926) are devoted to criticism of the first. In the collection of stories “Untrue Stories” (1922), Ehrenburg continued to criticize the bureaucratization and repressive nature of the Soviet regime; in the novels “The Life and Death of Nikolai Kurbov” (1923), “Rvach” (1924) and the story “In Protochny Lane” (1927) he critically describes life during the NEP. In some works, especially in the collection of short stories “Thirteen Pipes” (1923), a critical focus is combined with an attempt at a philosophical understanding of life. Although many of his works were positively assessed by a number of Soviet writers and critics, the prevailing view among Soviet critics was that Ehrenburg was a “nihilist,” a “cynic,” and “a representative of the new bourgeois wing of literature.”

In 1928, Ehrenburg wrote the novel “The Turbulent Life of Lazik Roitschwanets,” whose hero was nicknamed “the Jewish Schweik” by critics. The novel again satirically depicts both bourgeois and Soviet society, while at the same time the work is permeated with Jewish philosophical parables. The novel could not be published in the USSR; it was published in our country only in 1989. The failure to publish the novel in the USSR greatly contributed to the turning point in the writer’s work.

During the Great Depression, Ehrenburg created a series of novels and essays under the general title “Chronicle of our days” (“United Front”, “10 HP”, “Dream Factory”, etc.), in which he described in artistic form the mechanisms driving capitalist production.

In 1932, Ehrenburg became a Paris correspondent for the Izvestia newspaper. In the same year, he visited Kuznetsk and other “five-year construction projects”; The result of this trip was the novel “The Second Day” (1933). Trying not to embellish reality with all its complexities and problems, Ehrenburg nevertheless wrote a completely “Soviet” novel about the enthusiasm of the “builders of a new life,” and after this novel he was actually accepted into the ranks of Soviet writers. Soviet criticism received the novel ambiguously, but positive assessments prevailed. After a trip to the north of the country in 1934, Ehrenburg wrote the novel Without Taking a Breath (1935), which was extremely favorably received by Soviet critics, but the author himself considered it unsuccessful.

The fascists’ coming to power in Germany in 1933 finally made Ehrenburg “Soviet.” He was one of the organizers of the International Congresses of Writers for the Defense of Culture, which were held in 1935 in Paris and in 1937 in Madrid. He wrote several cycles of anti-fascist essays, articles and pamphlets, described the fight against fascism in France, Austria, Spain and other European countries, where he visited as a correspondent.

During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, Ehrenburg spent most of his time in this country and wrote many articles and essays, as well as the novel “What a Man Needs” (1937). In addition to his journalistic work, he also carried out a number of diplomatic assignments. In 1938, after a fifteen-year break, Ehrenburg returned to poetry and continued to write poetry until the end of his life.

Ehrenburg managed to avoid participating in the campaign to defame “enemies of the people,” which was largely facilitated by his absence from the USSR for most of the period of repression. However, he was in Moscow from December 1937 to April 1938, was present at the trial of the “right-Trotskyist bloc” (where one of the accused was his friend N.I. Bukharin), but refused to write about this trial.

After the capture of France by the Germans in 1940, Ehrenburg finally returned to the USSR. He began writing the novel “The Fall of Paris,” in which he showed France in 1936–1940 and denounced the French elite that led the country to defeat. However, due to its anti-fascist orientation, the novel encountered difficulties in publication (Ehrenburg’s articles stopped being published back in 1939, before the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). The first part of the novel was published in early 1941, but problems arose with the publication of the second. However, on April 24, 1941, Ehrenburg received a call from I.V. Stalin approved the first part of the novel and, in response to the fear expressed by the writer that the continuation would not be published, joked: “And you write, we will try to push through the third part.” Ehrenburg himself took this call as a warning about the inevitability of war between the USSR and Nazi Germany. The completion of work on the novel and its full publication occurred in 1942. In the same year, the novel was awarded the Stalin Prize.

Since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, Ehrenburg has been a correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. During the war years, he wrote more than one and a half thousand articles, which were published not only in Krasnaya Zvezda, but also in other newspapers - central and divisional, as well as abroad. These articles inspired the fighters, instilled in them hatred of the enemy, and provided moral support during difficult periods. The articles and their author were extremely popular: there is evidence that newspaper sheets with Ehrenburg’s articles (unlike all others) were forbidden to be used for smoking. Articles written for foreign readers, which contributed to supporting the USSR in the world, were also important. At the same time, Ehrenburg continued to write and publish poetry and poems. However, the publication of his articles stopped after the publication of an article by G.F. on April 14, 1945 in the Pravda newspaper. Alexandrov “Comrade Ehrenburg simplifies”, where he was accused of inciting hatred towards the German people.

In 1946–1947, Ehrenburg wrote the epic novel “The Tempest,” which covered the events of World War II in France, Germany, the USSR and several other countries. The novel met with a mixed reaction from critics; in particular, the author was accused of making the French look prettier Soviet people. Nevertheless, in 1948 the novel was awarded the Stalin Prize.

When the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) was created in 1942, Ehrenburg became an active member. In 1943, he headed the literary commission of the JAC to prepare the “Black Book,” which was supposed to contain facts about the extermination of Jews by the Germans. In 1945, due to a conflict with the leadership of the JAC, he resigned from the commission, and this commission was headed by V.S. Grossman. However, in 1948, the publication of the “Black Book” was banned, and its collection was scattered; the manuscript, however, survived and was first published in Russian in Jerusalem in 1980. In 1948, Ehrenburg, on instructions from the party leadership, wrote an article for the Pravda newspaper “About one letter,” in which he opposed the emigration of Jews to Israel (and in fact indirectly warned Soviet Jews against rash actions at the start of the anti-Semitic campaign); at the same time he denounced anti-Semitism. In November 1948, the JAC was liquidated, and a process began against its leaders, which ended only in 1952. Ehrenburg appeared in the case file, but his arrest was not authorized by I.V. Stalin.

Nevertheless, Ehrenburg was no longer published in February 1949, and in March the deputy. head Department of Propaganda and Agitation of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks F.M. Golovenchenko publicly announced that “cosmopolitan No. 1 Ilya Ehrenburg has been arrested.” In response, Ehrenburg wrote a letter to I.V. Stalin, after which they began to publish him again, and Golovenchenko was removed from work in the Central Committee. In April 1949, Ehrenburg became one of the organizers of the 1st World Peace Congress, and from 1950 he was vice-president of the World Peace Council. His activities greatly contributed to the creation of a positive image of the USSR in the eyes of the Western intelligentsia.

In 1950–1952, Ehrenburg wrote the novel The Ninth Wave, which in form was a continuation of The Tempest. The novel took place in the USSR, USA, Korea, France, and other European countries. The main content of the novel was the “struggle for peace,” which was the writer’s main occupation in those years. The novel was unconditionally positively assessed by Soviet criticism, and the author himself considered it unsuccessful.

At the end of 1952, Ehrenburg was the first Soviet person to be awarded the Stalin Prize “For Strengthening Peace Between Nations.” This event practically coincided with the exposure of the “killer doctors.” Soon after this, on the instructions of I.V. Stalin prepared a “Letter to the editor of the newspaper Pravda,” which was to be signed by several dozen eminent Jews. It, in addition to curses against the “murderers in white coats,” contained the statement that “a certain part of the Jewish population of our country has not yet overcome bourgeois-nationalist sentiments.” In essence, this letter was supposed to serve as justification for the deportation of Jews to remote areas. Ehrenburg was one of the few who refused to sign this letter. Instead, on February 3, 1953, he wrote a letter to Stalin, convincing him that the publication of the “Letter to the Editor of the Pravda newspaper” would cause irreparable harm to the “peace movement.” Later, in a conversation with Pravda editor-in-chief D.T. Shepilov, he insisted that the letter be given to Stalin. After reading Ehrenburg's letter, Stalin changed his position. Was prepared new text“Letters to the editor of the newspaper Pravda, where not only were there no accusations against Soviet Jews, but also emphasized the friendship between the Russian and Jewish peoples, and all the pathos was directed against “international imperialism” and the “reactionary leaders of Israel.” Ehrenburg was forced to sign this letter, but it was not published (probably Stalin's death prevented it).

In 1954, Ehrenburg wrote the story “The Thaw,” in which he tried to convey his feelings about the “thawing” of human hearts and relationships between people. The story lacked any serious criticism of the Stalinist regime, but its rejection and hope for positive changes were felt “between the lines.” The story was sharply criticized. Many literary critics later considered the Thaw to be weak in literary terms, but recognized its important role in awakening society. It is no coincidence that this period Soviet history received the name “Khrushchev’s thaw”.

Ehrenburg devoted a lot of effort to familiarizing Russian readers with Western culture. Back in the 1910s, he began to translate French poets into Russian: medieval (F. Villon, P. Ronsard, I. Du Bellay), symbolists (P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud) and his contemporaries (G. Apollinaire, F. . Jamm), as well as medieval Spanish poets. Later he translated poems by Latin American poets (P. Neruda, N. Guillen). In the 1920s, Ehrenburg promoted advanced Western art (literature, painting, cinema) in his lectures. In 1956, he achieved the holding of the first exhibition of P. Picasso in Moscow.

In 1955–1957, Ehrenburg wrote a series of literary critical essays on French art under the general title “French Notebooks.” These essays and a number of other articles by Ehrenburg devoted to art were, on instructions from the Department of Culture of the CPSU Central Committee, subjected to devastating criticism in the Soviet press.

Ehrenburg consistently supported talented writers and artists. In 1962, at an exhibition in Manege, he allowed himself to openly argue with N.S. Khrushchev, defending artists. After this, he was subjected to severe criticism not only in the press, but also from Khrushchev and the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee L.F. Ilyicheva. IN Once again Ehrenburg was no longer published for some time. In 1966, Ehrenburg, along with a number of other writers, signed a letter in defense of A.D. Sinyavsky and Yu.M. Daniel.

At the end of the 1950s, Ehrenburg began work on a book of memoirs, “People. Years. Life". Published in the 1960s, it included six parts; the seventh part (unfinished) was published only in 1987. The book describes a significant number of events of the first half of the 20th century, gives literary portraits of many outstanding personalities: scientists (A. Einstein, F. Joliot-Curie), Russian writers and poets (I.E. Babel, K.D. Balmont, A. Bely, V.Ya. Bryusov, M.A. Voloshin, V.S. Grossman, S.P. Gudzenko, S.A. Yesenin, M.E. Koltsov, O.E. Mandelstam, V.V. Mayakovsky, B. L. Pasternak, A. M. Remizov, A. N. Tolstoy, Yu. N. Tynyanov, A. A. Fadeev, M. I. Tsvetaeva), foreign writers and poets (G. Apollinaire, J.R. Bloch, R. Desnos, A. Gide, M. Zalka, P. Istrati, A. Machado y Ruiz, V. Nezval, P. Neruda, J. Roth, E Toller, Y. Tuvim, E. Hemingway, N. Hikmet, P. Eluard), artists (P.P. Konchalovsky, R.R. Falk, F. Léger, A. Marquet, A. Matisse, A. Modigliani, P. Picasso, D. Rivera), directors (V.L. Durov, V.E. Meyerhold, A.Ya. Tairov), Soviet diplomats (A.M. Kollontai, M.M. Litvinov, Ya.Z. Surits , K.A. Umansky), French politicians (I. Farge, E. Herriot), etc.

The publication of the memoirs took place in a difficult struggle with editors and censors. Ehrenburg did not deny that his book was subjective and defended his right to subjective assessments of people and events. He described, among other things, those events and those people whom it was not customary to mention in the Soviet press of that time. The memoirs were subjected to sharp criticism from both sides - both by representatives of conservative forces and by those who hoped to see “the whole truth” in them. Ehrenburg admitted that he was not writing “the whole truth,” but justified himself by saying that at least part of the truth would immediately be known to millions of people. Indeed, his memoirs played an important role in the formation of the worldview of the “sixties”.

Biography Note:

Ehrenburg turned to science fiction only in the early period of his creativity. The writer became famous for his action-packed satirical novel, close to the absurdist SF “The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disciples” (1922), the action of which unfolds in post-war Europe and post-revolutionary Russia (both are brought to the extreme grotesque and fantastic); at the center of the novel is the image of the messiah, the “Great Provocateur” Julio Jurenito; the essence of his teaching is the idea of ​​“hatred of the present,” which deserves to be destroyed to the ground. Critics reproached Ehrenburg for directing his pathos of denial against Soviet Russia, which, despite the author’s repeated assurances to the contrary, today seems fair.

The idea of ​​​​the destruction of the old world is literally realized in another novel by Ehrenburg, which definitely belongs to SF - “Trust D.E. The History of the Death of Europe" (1923); Trust "D.E." created by an American financial tycoon (Destruction of Europe - “Destruction of Europe”) is intended to eliminate the “competitor” and the breeding ground of the revolutionary “infection” from the face of the Earth. The writer not only prophetically saw future fascist aggression in the near future, but also the ease with which it would be possible to drag the peoples of Europe into a bloody massacre.

The curious early story “Uskomchel” (1922 - Germany; 1990 - USSR), which anticipated the central idea of ​​“The Heart of a Dog” by M. Bulgakov and subsequently formed the basis of E. Zozulya’s unfinished novel “Workshop of Men”: all attempts, can also be attributed to Ehrenburg’s SF the creation of the “Improved Communist Man” inevitably leads to the emergence of a moral monster.

Fiction also includes stories from the “Thirteen Pipes” cycle - “Sixth”, “Ninth”, “Eleventh”, “Twelfth”.

ERENBURG Ilya Grigorievich (1891, Kyiv, - 1967, Moscow), Russian writer, publicist, Soviet public figure.

Ehrenburg's father, a mechanic, broke with the Orthodox family in his youth, but, "... being an unbeliever, he condemned the Jews who, in order to ease their lot, converted to Orthodoxy...". Mother, Anna (Hannah) Arenstein (1857–1918), although she received a secular education, observed Jewish traditions. In 1896, the family moved to Moscow, where Ehrenburg’s father received the position of manager at a brewery. Having entered the prestigious First Moscow Gymnasium, Ehrenburg for the first time encountered manifestations of anti-Semitism from his classmates, which he later repeatedly recalled (“Autobiography”, 1926; “Book for Adults”, 1936; “People, Years, Life”, book 1) , 1960). In 1907, Ehrenburg was expelled from the sixth grade of the gymnasium for participating in the work of the Social Democratic (Bolshevik) youth organization (together with his schoolmate N. Bukharin). In 1908 he was arrested, served in prison for eight months, and was released on bail.

In December 1908 he emigrated, lived mainly in Paris, where he continued revolutionary work, but by 1910 he moved away from political life. In 1909–10 Ehrenburg published the satirical magazines “Quiet Family” and “ Former people"(sketches, poems, parodies, cartoons and caricatures on the life of the Russian Social Democratic colony in Paris, including V. Lenin). Influenced by his meeting with Elizaveta Polonskaya, he began to write poetry; his first poem was published in the St. Petersburg magazine “Northern Dawns” (1910, No. 5). In the same year, the collection “Poems” was published in Paris, and then other collections: “I Live” (St. Petersburg, 1911), “Dandelions” (1912), “Everyday Life” (1913), “Children’s” (1914; the last three - Paris), assessed by critics (V. Bryusov, M. Voloshin, N. Gumilev), and later by Ehrenburg himself as student and stylized. But already in 1913, V. Korolenko recommended that A. Gornfeld publish some of Ehrenburg’s poems in the magazine “Russian Wealth”. At the same time, Ehrenburg was engaged in translations (F. Jamme “Poems and Prose”, M., 1913; prose translated by Catherine Schmidt; “Poets of France. 1870–1913”, Paris, 1914; F. Villon “Excerpts from the “Big Testament”, ballads and various poems", M., 1916). A passion for the European Middle Ages, F. Jamme and other Catholic writers, friendship with M. Jacob led Ehrenburg to the decision to convert to Catholicism and go to a Benedictine monastery, but after experiencing a spiritual crisis (the poem “The Tale of the Life of a Certain Nadenka and the Prophetic Signs Revealed to Her” , Paris, 1916) he did not convert to Christianity.

First World War with its victims and destruction, had a strong impact on Ehrenburg, exacerbated his conflict with reality, and strengthened his inherent sentiments of skepticism and criticism. The collection “Poems about the Eves” (Moscow, 1916, severely disfigured by censorship) is permeated with a sharp rejection of the war, “perishing Europe,” the expectation of the collapse of the old world, the premonition of an impending cataclysm, and popular uprisings. Ehrenburg called the year 1916 a “violent eve.” The collection was highly appreciated by V. Bryusov (“for Ehrenburg, poetry is not fun and, of course, not a craft, but a matter of life...”), M. Voloshin and others.

In 1915–17 Ehrenburg was a correspondent for the newspapers Morning of Russia (M.) and Birzhevye Vedomosti (P.). War correspondence from these years was later included in the book of essays “The Face of War” (Sofia, 1920).

In July 1917, Ehrenburg returned to Russia with a group of political emigrants. In September 1917, the Minister of War of the Provisional Government A. Kerensky appointed Ehrenburg as assistant military commissar of the Caucasian Military District, but Ehrenburg did not have time to go to the front. Ehrenburg did not accept the October coup even in the winter of 1917–18. in the Moscow newspapers “Monday of People’s Power”, “Life”, “Vozrozhdenie” he published articles containing sharp criticism of the Bolsheviks (including V. Lenin, L. Kamenev, G. Zinoviev, etc.) and their policies. His perception of the “vileness and abomination” of the revolution was reflected in the book of poems “Prayer for Russia” (M., 1918), in which the past of Russia, the domes of its churches were mourned, and October 1917 was called a disaster. Ehrenburg was eager to leave Russia as soon as possible, “in order to save Russia for himself, the internal opportunity to live in it.” However, at the end of 1918 he ended up in Kyiv, where he experienced a leapfrog of changes in power, a bloody Jewish pogrom carried out by A. Denikin’s army, and other horrors of the civil war. Here he married the artist Lyubov Kozintseva (1900–1970; sister of G. Kozintsev). In 1919, in Kyiv, Ehrenburg published a novel in verse “In the Stars” (illustrations by D. Rivera), a book of poems “At the Hour of Death”, and in Gomel - a collection of poems “Fire”. At the end of 1919 he moved to Crimea, and in the spring of 1920 to independent Georgia. With the help of the Soviet consul, in August 1920 he went to Moscow. He was soon arrested by the Cheka and accused of being an agent of Wrangel, but was then released. He worked in the theater department of the People's Commissariat of Education and directed children's theaters of the RSFSR. In 1920, his books of poetry “In Paradise” and “Spanish Songs” (both handwritten and reproduced in small editions) were published in Moscow. With the support of N. Bukharin, Erenburg received a Soviet foreign passport, a assignment on a creative trip, and in April 1921 he left Russia.

At first he lived in Paris, but the French authorities did not allow him to live in the country, and he went to Belgium, and in the fall of 1921 to Berlin, where he lived until 1924. During this period, Ehrenburg published collections of poems “Thoughts” (Riga, 1921 ), “Eves” (Berlin, 1921), “Foreign Thoughts” (M., 1922), “Devastating Love” (Berlin, 1922), “Animal Warmth” (Berlin, 1923). These collections summed up the upheavals experienced and described the birth of “another, great century,” in relation to which the poet felt “delight and horror,” likening the revolution to a bloody tornado and comparing it with “devastating love” and a “purifying fire.” In 1922 in Berlin, he published the philosophical and satirical novel “The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Students...”. This work combines journalism with poetry, irony with skepticism. The world standing on the brink of an abyss, the chaos of war and revolution, is contrasted with the iron, inhumane discipline of the post-revolutionary society of Soviet Russia. This is especially evident in the chapter “The Grand Inquisitor Beyond the Legend,” which grotesquely describes Julio Jurenito’s conversation with V. Lenin in the Kremlin (by the way, the latter praised the novel).

In Berlin, Ehrenburg collaborated in the magazines “Russian Book” (1921) and “New Russian Book” (1921–23), as well as in 1922–23. together with E. Lissitzky, he published the international magazine of contemporary art “Thing” (Russian, German, French languages). In 1922, Ehrenburg published the book “Still It Turns” (a manifesto in defense of constructivism in art). In the same year, “Six Stories about Easy Endings” and a collection of short stories “Untrue Stories” (one of the stories was praised by I. Stalin), dedicated to revolutionary and post-revolutionary changes, were published. Then the mystery “Heart of Gold”, the tragedy “The Wind” (1922), the novels “The Life and Death of Nikolai Kurbov”, “Trust D.E.” were published. (both 1923), “The Love of Jeanne Ney” (1924), a collection of short stories “Thirteen Pipes” (1923), the main motives of which are the conflict of duty and feelings, the opposition of man to society and criticism of capitalism, bourgeois morality, and the collapse of European culture.

In 1924, Ehrenburg visited Moscow, where he published the book “Jack of Diamonds and Company” and gave lectures, and in the summer of the same year he settled in Paris. The socio-psychological novels “Rvach” (1925) and “In Protochny Lane” (1927) show the contradictions of the NEP period. In 1928, the novel “The Turbulent Life of Lazik Roytshvanets” was published in Paris about the life, adventures and death of a tailor from Gomel, whom Western critics called the “Jewish Schweik.” Following the vicissitudes of his hero's life, Ehrenburg, with mockery and sarcasm, touches on all the main institutions of Soviet life: the bureaucracy and the court, economics and literature. The novel was not published in the Soviet Union until 1989.

During this period, Ehrenburg published collections of articles, travel essays, and journalistic books, in which there is a premonition of the onset of the era of reaction, fascism, and bestial nationalism (“White Coal, or Werther’s Tears,” 1928; “Visa of Time,” 1929, etc.). In August 1932, Ehrenburg, after a six-year absence, visited Soviet Union, where he visited the construction of the Moscow-Donbass highway and other grandiose construction projects of the first five-year plan. In the same year, Ehrenburg was appointed permanent foreign correspondent of the Izvestia newspaper. Under the impression of this trip, Ehrenburg wrote the novel “The Second Day,” which he published in Paris in 1933, and in Moscow in 1934. A novel lacking clarity storyline, dedicated to the construction of a metallurgical plant in Kuznetsk. This book marked Ehrenburg’s turn to Soviet issues and ideology, a revision of the position of his previous skeptical attitude towards the Soviet experiment and the problem of creating a new man. It is no coincidence that the time of a radical change in the writer’s views (early 1930s) coincided with the establishment of the Nazi regime in Germany. With the coming to power of A. Hitler (1933), anti-Nazi and sometimes anti-German motives began to sound more and more clearly in Ehrenburg’s essays. This position combines hatred of fascism in general and Nazism in particular and its attitude towards German national character, about which he wrote quite critically in “The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito.” Based on the conviction that the Nazi regime posed a danger to all neighboring states, Ehrenburg in September 1934 turned to Stalin with a proposal to expand the International Organization of Revolutionary Writers and turn it into an association of broad circles of intellectuals whose goal was to fight fascism and support the Soviet Union. Stalin reacted positively to Ehrenburg's proposal. In 1934, Ehrenburg, despite the fact that he lived in France, participated in the 1st Congress of Soviet Writers, where he played one of the central roles. Returning to Paris, Ehrenburg completed the novel “Without Taking a Breath” (M., 1935), dedicated to socialist construction and written within the framework of socialist realism, which is obligatory for Soviet writers. During these years, Ehrenburg acted not only as a publicist, journalist (collection "Borders of the Night", 1936) and prose writer (memoirs "Book for Adults", 1936; collection of stories "Beyond the Truce", 1937; novel "What a Man Needs", 1937 ), but was also an inspirer and active participant in anti-fascist congresses of writers in defense of culture (Paris, 1935, Madrid, 1937).

During the Spanish Civil War, Ehrenburg was a war correspondent for the newspaper Izvestia (1936–39, intermittently). At the end of 1938, when a short-term propaganda campaign against the anti-Semitism of the “German fascists” was organized in the USSR after Kristallnacht, Ehrenburg, under the pseudonym Paul Josselin, actively participated in it. In March 1939, Ehrenburg, after the defeat of the Republicans in Spain, returned to Paris and continued to send correspondence castigating Nazism. However, already in April he was informed from the editorial office of Izvestia that, although he continued to be on the editorial staff, his correspondence would not be published, and his book on the Spanish Civil War would also not be published. All this was associated with a change in Soviet policy associated with the preparation of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact (August 1939). In March 1940, the collection of poems “Fidelity” sent by Ehrenburg to the publishing house was delayed by censorship. When Paris was occupied by German troops in June 1940, Ehrenburg was sent to Moscow with the help of the Soviet embassy through Germany. In September 1940, Ehrenburg began work on the novel “The Fall of Paris” - about the reasons that led to the defeat and occupation of France. In January 1941, the first part of the novel, with censored edits, began to be published in the Znamya magazine. The writer's position changed radically after a call from Stalin (April 24, 1941), who expressed satisfaction with the novel and promised support for its further publication (separate edition 1942; Stalin Prize, 1942). On April 30, 1941, the collection “Loyalty” was published.

From the first day of the Soviet-German war, Ehrenburg was published in the newspapers “Red Star”, “Pravda”, “Izvestia” (the first publication after the break - June 26, 1941), “Trud” and others, as well as in the front-line press. Ehrenburg's military journalism gained national and international fame. His sharp, revealing articles appealed to the conscience of peoples, strengthened courage, hatred of the enemy, and faith in victory. On the fronts and in partisan detachments there was a written law in effect - part of the newspaper with orders from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and portraits of Politburo members was not allowed to be published, but there was also an unwritten law - Ehrenburg's articles were also not accepted for publication. Only a small part of Ehrenburg’s military journalism was included in the three-volume book “War” (M., 1942; the fourth volume was not allowed for publication in 1945), as well as in a collection of articles intended for the foreign press (“Chronicle of Courage”, second additional ed. - M., 1983). In 1942, Ehrenburg became a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and accepted Active participation in the work of the Literary Commission of the Committee. At the height of public recognition, Ehrenburg was again subjected to temporary disgrace when, at the end of the war, Soviet politics has changed in relation to Germany. On April 14, 1945, the newspaper Pravda published an article by the head of the propaganda department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, G. Alexandrov, “Comrade Ehrenburg is simplifying,” in which the writer was accused of inciting hatred of the German people without taking into account the fact that there are progressive elements in them.

At the end of 1945, Ehrenburg visited Germany, published reports from the Nuremberg trials, and also visited several other Eastern European states (collections “Roads of Europe” and “Roads of Europe”, both - M., 1946). In 1946, a collection of war poems, “Tree,” was published. In the summer of 1946, Ehrenburg was sent to the United States with an official delegation. The articles about America were sharply critical and were written in the spirit of the beginning cold war(“In America”, M., 1947). Even during the war days, the idea of ​​a multi-faceted novel “The Tempest” arose (1946–47; Stalin Prize, 1948). Pre-war conflicts, world war and other events of this tragic era are revealed in the novel through the fates of individual people. The novel “The Ninth Wave” (1951–52, separate edition - 1953) is plot-related with The Tempest. Since 1948, Ehrenburg took an active part in the international pro-Soviet Movement for the Defense of Peace (vice-president of the World Peace Council, laureate of the international Stalin Prize “For Strengthening Peace Among Nations”, 1952, etc.).

Best of the day

Four quarters of the way.

First creative achievements

Western European intermezzo

Before the war

At the beginning of the Second World War

It is difficult to find in the history of Russian culture of the last century a more controversial figure than Ilya Grigorievich Erenburg - a writer, publicist, public figure, a person simultaneously associated with the most diverse cultural, intellectual, political, moral (or immoral) circles, opposite in their very essence. A poet by vocation, the author of beautiful lyrical poems, he became widely known not for his poetic work, but for his novels and stories, which were actively discussed by critics and lovers of Russian prose already in the 20s, both in the USSR and in emigration. Prose pushed aside Ehrenburg's poetry so much that it was simply almost forgotten. A prolific and subtle prose writer, he eventually focused his attention on journalism. Ehrenburg's articles became masterpieces of this genre, while in his own artistic works he increasingly felt the pressure of modernity, political topicality and, as a consequence, a lack of time. Here's just one example. German troops entered Paris on June 14, 1940, and already in September Ehrenburg began writing the novel “The Fall of Paris,” the first part of which was published in the spring of 1941. Quite natural haste did not allow Ehrenburg’s novels to rest and “mature.” A peculiar mixture of genres arose: vivid artistic journalism in articles, essayism and journalistic style in fictional prose. In the eyes of some readers and critics this was a flaw, in the eyes of others it was an important advantage.

A man who brilliantly knew and appreciated literary and artistic modernity, was perfectly familiar with Western world, his norms and values, he, despite his undisguised European cultural preferences and his Jewishness, received from Soviet authorities official permission to stay for a long time Western Europe at the height of the Cold War, the rise of Great Russian chauvinism and the persecution of Jews in the USSR. He managed to get away unscathed during all the campaigns of Stalin’s hunt for the intelligentsia, including the “Great Terror” of the second half of the 30s and the anti-Semitic campaign associated with the persecution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the “Doctors’ Plot” after the war. Moreover, this Jew and cosmopolitan, due to his convictions and artistic tastes, received the International Stalin Peace Prize at the very height of the unbridled anti-Semitic campaign in the USSR associated with the arrest of doctors.

Being under the invisible and very dangerous patronage of the “genius of all times and peoples,” he never became a Stalinist in the full sense of the word; he dared not to utter servile and shameful praises of the dictator. It is unlikely that David Samoilov was completely fair when he called Ehrenburg “the extreme western flank of Stalinism.” After all, just a few months after the death of the dictator, he wrote the story “The Thaw,” the name of which entered not only the everyday vocabulary, but also into the toolkit of social scientists around the world of different directions as a definition of the new period of development into which the country had entered. This definition continues to this day - half a century later.

Ehrenburg’s creative activity was crowned by his memoirs “People, Years, Life” - a true chronicle of the era, an honest, albeit subjective story about his experiences, an extremely valuable source for understanding the human comedy called history, which is read with unflagging interest.

Vladimir Vysotsky has a poem-song “Rope Walker” with the words:

Look, here he is walking without insurance.

Tilt a little to the right - it will fall, disappear!

A slight tilt to the left - it still can’t be saved...

But he must really need to get through

Four quarters of the way.

What Vysotsky said could be applied to the huge number of people who survived Stalin’s tyranny. But they treated Ehrenburg in a special way.

One of the mysteries of Ehrenburg is that he was able to occupy such a high position in the official Soviet establishment without completely renouncing, and moreover, repeatedly emphasizing his Jewishness. Not only retaining his father's surname, but also never using pseudonyms, he, however, Russified his first and patronymic (he was registered at birth as Eliyahu Hirshevich), but this was done when there was still no smell of official anti-Semitism in the USSR (not there was then the USSR itself!), and only with the goal of facilitating communication.

Name, creativity, social activity Ehrenburg - in the memory of several generations Soviet citizens 20-60s. Ehrenburg was more closely connected with the tragic fate of Jews during the Second World War, with their survival during the open rampant Soviet anti-Semitism, and with the cowardly, disguised persecution of the bearers of the “fifth point” after the passing of the bloody dictator into oblivion than any other Soviet Jewish public figure. that relatively recent era. This connection will be discussed below, after short story about the life and work of Ehrenburg until the end of the 30s.

First creative achievements

Eliyahu Ehrenburg was born in Kyiv on January 14 (27), 1891 in the family of a mechanic, who five years later moved to Moscow, where he received the position of manager of a brewery. They managed to get the boy into the First Gymnasium, which was considered one of the best in the ancient capital. He was the only Jew in his class and immediately felt what anti-Semitism was. He felt the hostility of many of his classmates, but at the same time their strong everyday and cultural influence. Summer trips to his grandfather in Kyiv, in a purely Jewish environment, to some extent supported the spirit of his ancestors, but gradually the Kyiv holidays became “travels to a foreign world,” as he wrote decades later in his memoirs. Trips to Kyiv turned out to be increasingly rare also because Ilya’s mother, who went to Germany for treatment, began to take him with her, and here he greedily absorbed new, Western European impressions. Influenced by three different cultural worlds- Russian, Jewish, Western European - Ilya became a cosmopolitan and a rebel.

The high school student joined the Bolsheviks, was expelled from school, and was briefly arrested several times. An undeniable influence on him during these years was exerted by his schoolmate Nikolai Bukharin, who later became one of the most prominent Bolsheviks, who, while fully retaining all the disgusting features of this caste, was at the same time much more educated than other party bosses.

In the end, his father obtained permission for young Ilya to travel abroad, and in 1908 he first found himself in Paris, which remained his favorite city throughout his life. Ilya became a regular in the Latin Quarter, where he met many artists, musicians, and writers who rebelled against conservative art. Among them were those who soon became world famous, such as Amedeo Modigliani and Diego Rivera.

Ilya began to write poetry, tried to find a religious doctrine acceptable to himself (he even thought about entering a monastery), but soon abandoned this. In 1910, Ehrenburg's first collection of poetry was published in Paris, followed by almost every year in Russia, new volumes of poems were published that attracted the attention of critics. During the First World War, the poet began to collaborate in the Russian press. On behalf of the newspapers Birzhevye Vedomosti and Morning of Russia, he went to Western Front. He developed a persistent aversion to military bloodshed in general, which many years later would make itself felt again, albeit with a completely different moral and ideological overtones, during the Soviet-German war and after its end. Ilya Erenburg returned to Russia after the February Revolution, in July 1917. He became close to a young resident of Petrograd, Ekaterina, and soon became the father of a charming daughter, Irina, but never married her mother. Ilya tried to observe the fateful events in Russia as if from the outside, but he perceived the Bolshevik revolution purely negatively, called it a disaster for Russia, and tried to emigrate. Nothing came of this idea, and in 1918 Ehrenburg went to Poltava, where his mother was dying. After her death, in search of at least a partially calm place, he moved to Kyiv, where many of his relatives lived.

But Ukraine during the civil war was by no means a quiet haven. Kyiv often changed hands: Hetman Skoropadsky was replaced by the Petliurists, then the Bolsheviks, in 1919 the power of Denikin’s Volunteer Army was established, which was again replaced by the Bolsheviks, in 1920 the city was briefly occupied by the Poles. Each time a change of power was accompanied by robberies, murders, violence, and beatings. Bloody pogroms against Jews were frequent. In the Kiev Life newspaper, Ehrenburg wrote: “If Jewish blood were healing, Russia would now be a flourishing country. But blood does not heal, it only infects the air with anger and discord.”

In Kyiv, Ehrenburg married the artist Lyubov Kozintseva, whose work later greatly influenced his artistic tastes. With great difficulty, in 1920, Ilya and Lyubov moved to Moscow, and at the beginning of the next year, with the help of Bukharin, who had already become one of the strongest in this world, he obtained a semi-fictitious assignment on a business trip abroad, and with it a foreign passport.

Western European intermezzo

Finding himself again in Western Europe (France, Belgium, Germany), Ehrenburg first tried his hand at prose writing. artistic creativity. Already in 1922, he published his first novel, the title of which would take perhaps ten lines, but which is known by the first words of its title “The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito.” This philosophical work combined journalism with poetry, human relations were considered against the backdrop of general world chaos, the heroes were original masks, representing either a certain people or a social class. Among the heroes was a person named Ilya Ehrenburg, who embodied the Jewish world.

One passage from Jurenito horribly predicted the coming Holocaust two decades later. The novel said: “In the near future, ceremonial sessions for the destruction of the Jewish tribe will take place in Budapest, Kyiv, Jaffa, Algeria and many other places. The program will include, in addition to the traditional pogroms beloved by the respected public, also restoration in the spirit of the era: burning Jews, burying them alive in the ground, sprinkling fields with Jewish blood and new techniques, such as “evacuation”, “cleansing from suspicious elements”, etc. ., etc. The place and time will be announced separately. The entrance is free". It just takes me aback - it seems that Ehrenburg read the Wannsee Protocol on the “final solution” of the Jewish question more than twenty years before it arose! Some critics consider "Jurenito" the best prose a work of art Ehrenburg, the pinnacle of his work.

The writer continued to create new stories, poems, and essays. In 1923, the novel “The Life and Death of Nikolai Kurbov” appeared, the hero of which loses his individuality, turns into a cog in the revolutionary mechanism and commits suicide as a result of the conflict between his romantic devotion to a woman and the harsh duties of a security officer. Thus, Ehrenburg contributed to the artistic study of totalitarianism, following the example of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel “We”.

In 1924, I. Ehrenburg visited the USSR, where he gave lectures on literature and Western European culture. In the same year, he left for Paris, which actually remained his permanent place of residence until 1940. Only occasionally, while retaining Soviet citizenship, did he visit Moscow and other cities of the USSR. One after another, new books appeared - novels, collections of articles and even historical journalism - the book “Conspiracy of Equals”, dedicated to the conspiracy in France in late XVIII century, organized by the utopian communist Gracchus Babeuf.

Many of Ehrenburg’s works contained Jewish motifs. The essay “A Fly in the Ointment,” published in 1927, attracted attention, in which he praised skepticism as the most important engine of cultural development of society. Jews are skeptics, carrying the spirit of eternal doubt and search. That is why their contribution to world culture is so great, the writer reasoned. Jews were also the heroes of his next novels - “In Protochny Lane” and “The Stormy Life of Lazik Roiteshvanets”. It is interesting that the adventures of Lazik, his movements across the territory of the USSR were the background that allowed Ehrenburg not just to go over with a critical pen, but to mockingly ridicule the most diverse bearers of Soviet realities - bureaucrats, judicial officials who commit reprisals to please the political situation, and finally, writers and literary critics, concerned about their own survival and striving for enrichment.

Pro-Soviet turn

Around the turn of the 20s and 30s, fundamentally new features emerged in the social and aesthetic positions of Ilya Erenburg, and over the next decade they became stable. Ultimately, they boiled down to the fact that, while maintaining a certain spiritual and political autonomy, without embarking on the path of praising “socialist construction” and especially the Soviet autocrat Stalin, Ehrenburg began to approve, albeit with reservations, the policy of the power structures of the USSR, primarily on international arena. There is no doubt that this was by no means connected with violent bloody collectivization, and certainly not with the escalation of a regime of fear and obedience, which was increasingly being introduced into all spheres of life. The writer found opportunities to focus his attention on those aspects that corresponded to his feelings and beliefs, ignoring others that aroused his hostility or disgust. Life taught him deft diplomacy and evasion.

Ehrenburg watched with deep concern how the Nazis were striving for power in Germany, how timidly the democratic parties retreated before their pressure, how the population of this great country, which gave the world cultural treasures, is increasingly at the mercy of the forces of darkness, the Middle Ages, and rabid anti-Semitism. If we add to this that with Russian emigration in Western Europe, Ehrenburg never closed his doors, and the continuation of his characteristic restrained critical line towards the USSR could close the road to his homeland, to which he gravitated, then the writer’s choice becomes even more understandable. True, we, apparently, will not fully know all the internal motives of his decision. This topic, unlike others, is almost not touched upon in the memoirs “People, Years, Life.” In the early 30s, the writer’s novels “The United Front” and “Dream Factory” were published, in which Western capital was criticized, and then, after visiting the USSR in 1932, etc. the novel “The Second Day”, dedicated to Soviet reality, which now appeared in a much nobler guise than in previous works.

The Nazis' rise to power in Germany in January 1933 completed Ehrenburg's transformation, turning him into a Soviet writer, a bearer of “socialist realism,” although he continued to live in Paris.

His new orientation is documented in a letter to Stalin dated September 13, 1934 from Odessa. The letter proposed to change the nature of the pro-Soviet and pro-communist International Organization of Revolutionary Writers (IORP), turning it into an association of wide circles of foreign creative intelligentsia who opposed fascism and in support of the USSR. Note that, following communist propaganda, Ehrenburg understood the term “fascism” very broadly, subsuming under this rubric not only the Italian regime of Mussolini, but also German National Socialism and other right-wing nationalist movements. In the letter, attention is drawn not only to its essence, but also to some speech patterns, and the very nature of the argumentation. The letter had to look respectful, but not groveling, businesslike, but without unnecessary details. Having proven himself to be a good psychologist, Ehrenburg hoped that it was precisely this style that Stalin would like, on whose patronage he clearly counted. And there was certainly a risk. After all, the letter was written not from abroad, but within the country. Quite simply, the “leader” could close the border for the writer - just as at the same time he closed the border back to England for Academician Kapitsa.

“I hesitated for a long time whether I should write you this letter, your time is valuable not only to you, but to all of us. If I nevertheless decided to write to you, it is because without your participation the question of organizing the literatures of the West and America that are close to us can hardly be resolved.” Having named the names of about 30 foreign writers who could join the projected organization, Ehrenburg concluded his letter with the words: “Forgive me, dear Joseph Vissarionovich, that I took up so much of your time, but it seems to me that in addition to our literary field, such an organization will now be have general political military significance.”

The effect of the letter was apparently even more significant than the writer expected. While recovering his health in the south at this time, Stalin continued to delve into the affairs of his domain, working with tentacles extended far beyond its borders. While on vacation, he read Ehrenburg’s letter, and already on September 23 wrote to Kaganovich, who was managing affairs in Moscow during the “leader’s” vacation: “Read Comrade Ehrenburg’s letter. He is right. It is necessary to eliminate the traditions of RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers - G.Ch.) in MORP. It's necessary. Take on this matter together with Zhdanov. It would be good to expand the scope of the MORP: (a) the fight against fascism, (b) active defense of the USSR and put Comrade Ehrenburg at the head of the MORP. This is a big deal. Pay attention to this." In other words, Stalin repeated the proposals made by Ehrenburg, called him a comrade and decided to entrust him, a non-party writer, with a high, essentially not only a party, but also an international post. A few days later, Kaganovich’s servile answer followed: “I completely agree with your proposal about the MORP and Ehrenburg.” Ehrenburg's name was mentioned in a positive context in subsequent letters.

In the same year, Ehrenburg was included in the Presidium of the Board of the Union of Soviet Writers. As for the reorganization of the pro-communist MORP into a broader association under the leadership of Ehrenburg, nothing came of it - Western writers did not want to harness themselves to the cart that the Soviet coachman clearly wanted to drive. However, it was Ehrenburg who initiated two international congresses of writers in defense of culture, which took place in 1935 and 1937. in Paris and Madrid and were strongly anti-Nazi.

Before the war

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Ehrenburg went to that country as a war correspondent for the Soviet newspaper Izvestia. He spent almost three years among the Spanish Republicans. Like Pravda correspondent Mikhail Koltsov, he showed courage, composure, and determination. Both journalists could often be seen at the forefront, talking with Spanish fighters and soldiers of the International Brigades who had come to fight the rebels, Italian and German invaders. Ehrenburg quickly took possession Spanish, so much so that he could even communicate with peasants in remote areas of the country.

The passionate style of correspondence, permeated with hatred of reaction, fascism and Nazism, vivid images and reliable facts, brilliant language - all this brought Ehrenburg not just to the front row of Soviet journalism, but turned him into foreign correspondent No. 1, whose influence was felt throughout Western Europe. Europe. His articles were reprinted under large headlines by the most authoritative publications in many countries.

Ehrenburg left Spain in early March 1939, literally a few days before the troops of the rebel General Franco entered Madrid. The Spanish cycle, both thematically, genre-wise, and stylistically, largely predetermined the nature of Ehrenburg’s journalism during the Soviet-German war.

When in November 1938 a wave of devastating Jewish pogroms took place in Germany, called “Kristallnacht,” Ehrenburg, although he wrote almost exclusively about Spain at that time, raised his voice by publishing vivid articles in Izvestia “The Anti-Semitic Fury of the German fascists” and “Legislation of pogromists”.

Ehrenburg returned to Paris, already enjoying international fame. But immediately upon arrival, he received an official message through the Soviet embassy that, although he remained on the staff of Izvestia and would receive a salary, his articles would no longer be published, and the book about Spain that had been typed would not be published. This information, of course, greatly upset the writer, but did not surprise him at all. The XVIII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) has just taken place, at which Stalin uttered several phrases in his report that sounded like platitudes to many, but were interpreted unequivocally by experienced political observers, including Ehrenburg - the Soviet dictator was offering reconciliation to his German brother Hitler . When, at the beginning of May 1939, a message appeared about the removal of the Jew M.M. Litvinov from the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and the appointment of part-time head of government V.M. Molotov to this post, it became completely clear to Ehrenburg that a Stalin-Hitler deal was being prepared, which took place on August 23 in the form of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact. Like everyone except a handful of bosses in Berlin and Moscow, Ehrenburg had no idea about the additional secret protocol that had been signed at the same time, dividing eastern Europe into the German and Soviet spheres, but subsequent events convinced him that the matter was by no means limited to the peace pact alone.

At the beginning of the Second World War

The beginning of the Second World War found Ilya Ehrenburg in France. Realizing that, under the actual conditions, anti-Hitler prose could not count on publication in the USSR, he nevertheless began to prepare material for a new novel, this time dedicated to the pre-war and military France, French Nazism and the fight against it. So far, however, these were just rough sketches. Active and always busy, Ilya Grigorievich now suddenly found himself out of work for a whole year. He watched with horror the unfolding of joint aggressive actions of Germany and the USSR against Poland, further acts of seizure of independent European countries by both predators.

When German tank columns entered empty Paris on June 14, 1940, it was declared open city, Ehrenburg saw with his own eyes those whom he considered the greatest enemies of humanity. Although he was a Jew, he had no troubles - Ehrenburg was an official who had a passport from a state that was still friendly to Germany. For almost a month and a half he observed the behavior of the invaders in the defeated French capital. At the end of July, he traveled by train to the USSR, thus having the opportunity, at least from the window of the carriage, to see Germany, shuddering in the enthusiastic orgasm of the winner.

Official Moscow seemed to be in a peaceful mood, but behind this external calm one could feel hidden nervousness, fears that the successes of “our sworn friends” were too great and unexpected. The words about Ehrenburg’s “sworn friends,” as he later wrote, were spoken repeatedly by many people in the Soviet capital. In September 1940, the idea of ​​a new novel, which was called “The Fall of Paris,” began to be realized. The novel was submitted in parts to the Znamya magazine, but the writer’s editors warned that the “authorities” or “higher circles” disapproved of his plan. It was a time that he later called “partial disgrace.”

But already at the beginning of 1941, it was replaced at first by, so to speak, “restrained mercy,” and after it official recognition. The mood in the Kremlin offices gradually changed, although with backlashes, the attitude towards Germany worsened. Molotov's recent November visit to Berlin did not produce results. Stalin either spoke out in favor of containing Hitler, or expressed a desire to join the aggressive bloc of Germany, Italy and Japan. The editors of the Znamya magazine were notified by the Central Committee that they could begin publishing The Fall of Paris. When Stalin called Ehrenburg on April 24 and expressed satisfaction with what he had read, Ilya Grigorievich instantly turned into one of the patriarchs of Soviet literature. True, a separate edition of “The Fall of Paris” was published after Germany’s attack on the USSR, but from April 24 all publishing houses reopened their doors to Ehrenburg. His poetry collection “Loyalty” was hastily published, which, in particular, included poems dedicated to the tragic fate of European Jewry.

Emboldened, Ehrenburg began to make critical remarks about Germany, in particular the opinion that it was preparing an attack on the USSR. But this time the official circles clearly did not like his opinions. Ehrenburg was told the anti-Semitic judgment of “one very high-ranking official”: “People of a certain nationality do not like our foreign policy. It's clear. But let them save their feelings for those at home.” In his memoirs, Ehrenburg wrote that he did not know whose words these were, but most likely he hid the authorship. It can be assumed that V.M. Molotov was meant, since it was he who was the main conductor of Stalin’s foreign policy. This assumption is supported by the fact that just at this time Ehrenburg asked to see Molotov in order to tell him his thoughts on the prospects of war, but instead of the “stone ass”, as Molotov was called even in high partyocratic circles, he was received by Deputy People's Commissar S.A. Lozovsky. Already an elderly Jew, once a Menshevik, who later went over to the side of the Bolsheviks, Lozovsky, who miraculously escaped execution during the “Great Terror” (he will be the main defendant in a closed trial in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and will be shot only a few months before Stalin’s death ), was not a figure who could in any way influence the nature of Soviet foreign policy. After listening to Ehrenburg’s arguments, he said dispassionately: “I personally am interested in this... But you know that we have a different policy.”

It is difficult to find in the history of Russian culture of the last century a more controversial figure than Ilya Grigorievich Erenburg - a writer, publicist, public figure, a person simultaneously associated with the most diverse cultural, intellectual, political, moral (or immoral) circles, opposite in their very essence. A poet by vocation, the author of beautiful lyrical poems, he became widely known not for his poetic work, but for his novels and stories, which were actively discussed by critics and lovers of Russian prose already in the 20s, both in the USSR and in emigration. Prose pushed aside Ehrenburg's poetry so much that it was simply almost forgotten. A prolific and subtle prose writer, he eventually focused his attention on journalism. Ehrenburg's articles became masterpieces of this genre, while in his own artistic works he increasingly felt the pressure of modernity, political topicality and, as a consequence, a lack of time. Here's just one example. German troops entered Paris on June 14, 1940, and already in September Ehrenburg began writing the novel “The Fall of Paris,” the first part of which was published in the spring of 1941. Quite natural haste did not allow Ehrenburg’s novels to rest and “mature.” A peculiar mixture of genres arose: vivid artistic journalism in articles, essayism and journalistic style in fictional prose. In the eyes of some readers and critics this was a flaw, in the eyes of others it was an important advantage.

A man who brilliantly knew and appreciated the literary and artistic modernity, was perfectly familiar with the Western world, its norms and values, he, despite his undisguised European cultural preferences and his Jewishness, received official permission from the Soviet authorities to stay in Western Europe for a long time in the midst of the cold weather. war, fanning Great Russian chauvinism and persecution of Jews in the USSR. He managed to get away unscathed during all the campaigns of Stalin’s hunt for the intelligentsia, including the “Great Terror” of the second half of the 30s and the anti-Semitic campaign associated with the persecution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the “Doctors’ Plot” after the war. Moreover, this Jew and cosmopolitan, due to his convictions and artistic tastes, received the International Stalin Peace Prize at the very height of the unbridled anti-Semitic campaign in the USSR associated with the arrest of doctors.

Being under the invisible and very dangerous patronage of the “genius of all times and peoples,” he never became a Stalinist in the full sense of the word; he dared not to utter servile and shameful praises of the dictator. It is unlikely that David Samoilov was completely fair when he called Ehrenburg “the extreme western flank of Stalinism.” After all, just a few months after the death of the dictator, he wrote the story “The Thaw,” the name of which entered not only the everyday vocabulary, but also into the toolkit of social scientists around the world of different directions as a definition of the new period of development into which the country had entered. This definition continues to this day - half a century later.

Ehrenburg’s creative activity was crowned by his memoirs “People, Years, Life” - a true chronicle of the era, an honest, albeit subjective story about his experiences, an extremely valuable source for understanding the human comedy called history, which is read with unflagging interest.

Vladimir Vysotsky has a poem-song “Rope Walker” with the words:

Look, here he is walking without insurance.

Tilt a little to the right - it will fall, disappear!

A slight tilt to the left - it still can’t be saved...

But he must really need to get through

Four quarters of the way.

What Vysotsky said could be applied to the huge number of people who survived Stalin’s tyranny. But they treated Ehrenburg in a special way.

One of the mysteries of Ehrenburg is that he was able to occupy such a high position in the official Soviet establishment without completely renouncing, and moreover, repeatedly emphasizing his Jewishness. Not only retaining his father's surname, but also never using pseudonyms, he, however, Russified his first and patronymic (he was registered at birth as Eliyahu Hirshevich), but this was done when there was still no smell of official anti-Semitism in the USSR (not there was then the USSR itself!), and only with the goal of facilitating communication.

The name, creativity, and social activities of Ehrenburg are in the memory of several generations of Soviet citizens of the 20-60s. Ehrenburg was more closely connected with the tragic fate of Jews during the Second World War, with their survival during the open rampant Soviet anti-Semitism, and with the cowardly, disguised persecution of the bearers of the “fifth point” after the passing of the bloody dictator into oblivion than any other Soviet Jewish public figure. that relatively recent era. This connection will be discussed below, after a brief story about the life and work of Ehrenburg until the end of the 30s.

First creative achievements

Eliyahu Ehrenburg was born in Kyiv on January 14 (27), 1891 in the family of a mechanic, who five years later moved to Moscow, where he received the position of manager of a brewery. They managed to get the boy into the First Gymnasium, which was considered one of the best in the ancient capital. He was the only Jew in his class and immediately felt what anti-Semitism was. He felt the hostility of many of his classmates, but at the same time their strong everyday and cultural influence. Summer trips to his grandfather in Kyiv, in a purely Jewish environment, to some extent supported the spirit of his ancestors, but gradually the Kyiv holidays became “travels to a foreign world,” as he wrote decades later in his memoirs. Trips to Kyiv turned out to be increasingly rare also because Ilya’s mother, who went to Germany for treatment, began to take him with her, and here he greedily absorbed new, Western European impressions. Under the influence of three different cultural worlds - Russian, Jewish, Western European - Ilya became cosmopolitan and rebel.

The high school student joined the Bolsheviks, was expelled from school, and was briefly arrested several times. An undeniable influence on him during these years was exerted by his schoolmate Nikolai Bukharin, who later became one of the most prominent Bolsheviks, who, while fully retaining all the disgusting features of this caste, was at the same time much more educated than other party bosses.

In the end, his father obtained permission for young Ilya to travel abroad, and in 1908 he first found himself in Paris, which remained his favorite city throughout his life. Ilya became a regular in the Latin Quarter, where he met many artists, musicians, and writers who rebelled against conservative art. Among them were those who soon became world famous, such as Amedeo Modigliani and Diego Rivera.

Ilya began to write poetry, tried to find a religious doctrine acceptable to himself (he even thought about entering a monastery), but soon abandoned this. In 1910, Ehrenburg's first collection of poetry was published in Paris, followed by almost every year in Russia, new volumes of poems were published that attracted the attention of critics. During the First World War, the poet began to collaborate in the Russian press. On behalf of the newspapers Birzhevye Vedomosti and Morning of Russia, he traveled to the Western Front. He developed a persistent aversion to military bloodshed in general, which many years later would make itself felt again, albeit with a completely different moral and ideological overtones, during the Soviet-German war and after its end. Ilya Erenburg returned to Russia after the February Revolution, in July 1917. He became close to a young resident of Petrograd, Ekaterina, and soon became the father of a charming daughter, Irina, but never married her mother. Ilya tried to observe the fateful events in Russia as if from the outside, but he perceived the Bolshevik revolution purely negatively, called it a disaster for Russia, and tried to emigrate. Nothing came of this idea, and in 1918 Ehrenburg went to Poltava, where his mother was dying. After her death, in search of at least a partially calm place, he moved to Kyiv, where many of his relatives lived.

But Ukraine during the civil war was by no means a quiet haven. Kyiv often changed hands: Hetman Skoropadsky was replaced by the Petliurists, then the Bolsheviks, in 1919 the power of Denikin’s Volunteer Army was established, which was again replaced by the Bolsheviks, in 1920 the city was briefly occupied by the Poles. Each time a change of power was accompanied by robberies, murders, violence, and beatings. Bloody pogroms against Jews were frequent. In the Kiev Life newspaper, Ehrenburg wrote: “If Jewish blood were healing, Russia would now be a flourishing country. But blood does not heal, it only infects the air with anger and discord.”

In Kyiv, Ehrenburg married the artist Lyubov Kozintseva, whose work later greatly influenced his artistic tastes. With great difficulty, in 1920, Ilya and Lyubov moved to Moscow, and at the beginning of the next year, with the help of Bukharin, who had already become one of the strongest in this world, he obtained a semi-fictitious assignment on a business trip abroad, and with it a foreign passport.

Western European intermezzo

Finding himself again in Western Europe (France, Belgium, Germany), Ehrenburg first tried his hand at prose fiction. Already in 1922, he published his first novel, the title of which would take perhaps ten lines, but which is known by the first words of its title “The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito.” This philosophical work combined journalism with poetry, human relationships were considered against the backdrop of general world chaos, the heroes were original masks, representing either a certain people or a social stratum. Among the heroes was a person named Ilya Ehrenburg, who embodied the Jewish world.

One passage from Jurenito horribly predicted the coming Holocaust two decades later. The novel said: “In the near future, ceremonial sessions for the destruction of the Jewish tribe will take place in Budapest, Kyiv, Jaffa, Algeria and many other places. The program will include, in addition to the traditional pogroms beloved by the respected public, also restoration in the spirit of the era: burning Jews, burying them alive in the ground, sprinkling fields with Jewish blood and new techniques, such as “evacuation”, “cleansing from suspicious elements”, etc. ., etc. The place and time will be announced separately. The entrance is free". It just takes me aback - it seems that Ehrenburg read the Wannsee Protocol on the “final solution” of the Jewish question more than twenty years before it arose! Some critics consider “Jurenito” Ehrenburg’s best prose work of art, the pinnacle of his creativity.

The writer continued to create new stories, poems, and essays. In 1923, the novel “The Life and Death of Nikolai Kurbov” appeared, the hero of which loses his individuality, turns into a cog in the revolutionary mechanism and commits suicide as a result of the conflict between his romantic devotion to a woman and the harsh duties of a security officer. Thus, Ehrenburg contributed to the artistic study of totalitarianism, following the example of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel “We”.

In 1924, I. Ehrenburg visited the USSR, where he gave lectures on literature and Western European culture. In the same year, he left for Paris, which actually remained his permanent place of residence until 1940. Only occasionally, while retaining Soviet citizenship, did he visit Moscow and other cities of the USSR. One after another, new books appeared - novels, collections of articles, and even historical journalism - the book “Conspiracy of Equals”, dedicated to the conspiracy in France at the end of the 18th century, organized by the utopian communist Gracchus Babeuf.

Many of Ehrenburg’s works contained Jewish motifs. The essay “A Fly in the Ointment,” published in 1927, attracted attention, in which he praised skepticism as the most important engine of cultural development of society. Jews are skeptics, carrying the spirit of eternal doubt and search. That is why their contribution to world culture is so great, the writer reasoned. Jews were also the heroes of his next novels - “In Protochny Lane” and “The Stormy Life of Lazik Roiteshvanets”. It is interesting that the adventures of Lazik, his movements across the territory of the USSR were the background that allowed Ehrenburg not just to go through a critical pen, but to mockingly ridicule the most diverse bearers of Soviet realities - bureaucrats, judicial officials who commit reprisals to please the political situation, and finally, writers and literary critics concerned with their own survival and seeking to enrich themselves.

Pro-Soviet turn

Around the turn of the 20s and 30s, fundamentally new features emerged in the social and aesthetic positions of Ilya Erenburg, and over the next decade they became stable. Ultimately, they boiled down to the fact that, while maintaining a certain spiritual and political autonomy, without embarking on the path of praising “socialist construction” and especially the Soviet autocrat Stalin, Ehrenburg began to approve, albeit with reservations, the policy of the power structures of the USSR, primarily on international arena. There is no doubt that this was by no means connected with violent bloody collectivization, and certainly not with the escalation of a regime of fear and obedience, which was increasingly being introduced into all spheres of life. The writer found opportunities to focus attention on those aspects that corresponded to his feelings and

Ehrenburg by Ehrenburg
Shtarkman Anatoly 27.08.2007 12:43:24

"People, years, life." Ehrenburg according to Ehrenburg.

Many of my peers found themselves under the wheels of time. I survived - not because I was stronger or more perspicacious, but because there are times when a person’s fate resembles not a chess game played according to all the rules, but a lottery.

I would like to revive with loving eyes a few fossils of the past; and to bring oneself closer to the reader: any book is a confession, and a book of memories is a confession without trying to cover oneself with the shadows of fictional characters.

So it is in life... In search of the truth, people take two steps forward, one step back. Suffering, mistakes and the boredom of life throw them back, but the thirst for truth and stubborn will drive them forward and forward.

... And if a person changes his skin many times in one life, almost like suits, then he still does not change his heart - he has only one heart.

My father, being an unbeliever, condemned the Jews who converted to Orthodoxy to ease their lot, and from an early age I understood that one should not be ashamed of one’s origin.

...I could least imagine that in a book about my life I would have to devote so many bitter pages to an issue that at the beginning of the century seemed to me a relic doomed to death.

... Will, perhaps, has become a burdensome property.

I wrote “Jurenito” at the age of thirty, and spoke about that autumn when I was thirteen. I had never heard of Ecclesiastes at the time, but I was dying to throw more stones. The time of childhood was over - the fifth year was approaching.

The gymnasium instilled in me a sense of camaraderie; We never thought whether the offender was right or wrong, we covered him with a friendly answer: That's it! All!

They say that sometimes a person does not recognize himself in the mirror. It’s even more difficult to recognize yourself in the cloudy mirror of the past.”

In 1907 I longed to become a drummer and trumpet player in order to write in 1957 “in an orchestra there are not only trumpets and drums...”.

I spoke about reconciliation, but I spoke about it unapologetically.

I am least inclined now to try to justify or embellish my past. But here's the truth: I didn't dream of fame. Of course, I wanted my poems to be praised by one of those poets I liked; but it was even more important to read to someone what I had just written.

Many of my past thoughts now seem wrong, stupid, and funny to me. But why I started writing poetry seems right to me even now.

We rarely went to the theaters, not only because we had no money, but we had to act in a long, complicated play ourselves; I don’t know what to call it - a farce, a tragedy or a circus review; Perhaps the best definition for it is the one coined by Mayakovsky - “mystery - buffe”.

There are white nights when it is difficult to determine the origin of the light that causes excitement, anxiety, prevents sleep, and favors lovers - is it the evening dawn or the morning? The mixing of light in nature does not last long - half an hour, an hour. But history is in no hurry. I grew up in a combination of double light and lived in it all my life - until old age...

It’s amazing how any offense affects a person if it’s new! Then he gets used to it. And he gets used to absolutely everything: to poverty, to prison, to war.

No matter how hard "Birzhevye Vedomosti" tried to give my articles a decent character, it was felt that I hated the war.

I remembered his (Picasso’s) phrase: “Communism for me is closely connected with my whole life as an artist...”. The enemies of communism do not think about this connection. At times it seems mysterious even to some communists.

I'm still lucky! I have met some people in my life who defined the face of the century. I saw not only fog and storm, but also the shadows of people on the captain's bridge.

I lived poorly in Paris, and yet I love this city. I came here as a boy, but I knew then what to do, where to go. Now I'm twenty-six years old, I've learned a lot, but I don't understand anything anymore. Maybe I've lost my way?...

I was like a lamb that had strayed from the flock that De Bellay wrote about: after all, when I left Russia, I was not even eighteen years old. As a prepper, I was ready to learn to read and write; I asked everyone what was happening, but the only answer I heard was: “Nobody understands this...”

Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy puffed gloomily on his pipe and told me: “It’s a dirty trick, you can’t understand anything, everyone is crazy…”
Alexey Nikolaevich assured me that I looked like a Mexican convict.
Obviously, the “Mexican convict” turned out to be an ordinary Russian intellectual when checked... I am not saying this to repent or justify myself: I want to explain my condition in 1917-1918. Of course, now I see everything much more clearly, but there is nothing to be proud of here - everyone is strong in hindsight.

In 1821, the author of “Julio Jurinito” described the experiences of the character referred to in the novel as “Ilya Ehrenburg”: “I cursed my mediocre device; one of two things: it was necessary to insert other eyes or remove these useless hands. Nowadays, what’s under the window is not made with brains, not with fiction, not with rhymes, no, they make history with their hands...

I cannot say that I have always shunned politics, or more precisely, action: I started with underground work, then in adulthood, more than once I found myself a participant in events; in further parts of my memories political events will often obscure books or canvases. But in 1917 I found myself an observer, and it took me two years to understand the significance of the October Revolution. For history, two years is an insignificant period, but for human life this is a lot of troubled days, complex thoughts and simple human pain.

... At forty-six years old, the line of life was much clearer to me than at twenty-six... I knew that you need to be able to live with clenched teeth, that you cannot approach events as if they were dictating, doing nothing but emphasizing mistakes, that the path to the future not a well-worn highway.

There is a connection in the flow of forms, and classical examples are not scary for modern masters. You can learn from Pushkin and Poussin. The “Thing” (name of the magazine) of the past is in the past, it calls to make the modern in the modern...

Idols have become obsolete not only in religion, but also in art. Along with the veneration of icons, iconoclasm died. But can this make the desire to say something new in a new way disappear?
… It is more worthy to write one’s own in scribbles than to rewrite the scriptures of the past in calligraphy.
It seems to me that collective farmers, portrayed in the manner of the academic (Bolognese) school, can please few people and it is impossible to convey the rhythm of the second half of the twentieth century with that abundance subordinate clauses, which was brilliantly used by L.N. Tolstoy.

On Khreshchatyk I first heard the battle cry: “Beat the Jews, save Russia.” They killed a lot of Jews, but they did not save their own, old Russia.

I did not yet understand the full significance of the events, but, despite the various troubles of that time, I had fun

Our grandchildren will be surprised
Turning the pages of the textbook:
“Fourteenth... seventeenth, nineteenth...
How did they live?.. poor, poor!..”

There are memories that please, lift you up, you see impulses, kindness, valor. There are others... It is in vain that they say that time heals; of course, the wounds heal, but suddenly these old wounds begin to ache, and they die only with the person.

That winter I was sick and saw few people - many friends did not want to meet with me: some were afraid, and some were angry - friendship is friendship, politics is politics.

Seeing Moscow again, I was amazed. In 1924 I wrote: “I don’t know what will emerge from these youth – builders of communism or Americanized specialists; but I am a new tribe, heroic and mischievous, capable of studying soberly and cheerfully starving, starving not as in the student plays of Leonid Andreev, but seriously, moving from machine guns to tutorials and back again, a tribe cackling in the circus and menacing in grief, tearless and calloused , alien to love and art, devoted to the exact sciences, sports, cinema. His romanticism is not in the creation of otherworldly myths, but in a daring attempt to produce myths for real, serially - in factories; such romanticism is justified by October and sealed with the blood of seven revolutionary years.”
I was only ten to twelve years older than them, but the change of generations was sharp. My peers were Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Fedin, Mandelstam, Paustovsky, Babel, Tynyanov.

Recently I found in the library a half-decayed issue of a one-day literary newspaper"Lenin", published on the day of Vladimir Ilyich's funeral.
My old words about the significance of October, contrasting the difficult path of Russia with the spiritual impoverishment of the West, seem correct to me even now.

I was a young non-partisan writer; for some, a “fellow traveler,” for others, an “enemy,” but in reality, an ordinary Soviet intellectual who developed in the pre-revolutionary years. No matter how they scolded us, no matter how they looked askance at our early gray heads, we knew that the path Soviet people- our way.

It was hardly possible to foresee in 1924 that fascism, having migrated from semi-patriarchal Italy to well-organized Germany, would destroy 50 million souls and cripple the lives of several generations.

The hunchback Yuzik asks the old beggar:
“So why were you, a Latin teacher, thrown out onto the street? One of two things - either you are right or they are right.
- I was right. This is past tense. They're right - it's real. And children playing with rattles will be right: futurum...

The flowing lane did not at all resemble a rose garden. And I, being a bristly man, but really not a pig, was tormented by the dirt. I have often felt cold in the world; I was looking for cordiality, warmth. On the banks of the Moscow River in the summer, the ill-fated flowers of wastelands, trampled, littered with sewage, bloomed - buttercups, dandelions. And I wanted to depict these flowers.
There is no point in arguing with the past, but it is worth thinking about it - to check why the written pages so many times turned out to be paler, smaller than those that the author imagined in sleepless nights.

I understood all this not in 1926, but much later: a person studies until his death. P.494
In the book about my life, about the people I met, there are many sad, sometimes tragic endings. This is not the morbid fantasy of a lover of “black literature”, but the minimal decency of a witness. You can remake a film, you can persuade a writer to remake a novel. But you can’t repaint the era, it was big, but not pink...

At the age of 17, I diligently studied the first volume of Capital. Later, when I was writing Poems on Eves and working at night at the Vaugirard freight station, I began to hate capitalism; it was the hatred of the poet and the lumpen-proletarian.

The meaninglessness of the system. I'm glad I realized this and thought it through on the threshold of my thirties. One of the most bitter trials for me was the end of 1937, when I arrived straight from Teruel to Moscow.

In 1931 I felt that I was at odds with myself.

In 1931 I realized that the fate of a soldier is not the fate of a dreamer and that I need to take my place in the battle line. I did not give up what was dear to me, I did not renounce anything, but I knew: I would have to live, gritting my teeth, learning one of the most difficult sciences - silence.

In the summer and autumn of 1932, I traveled a lot around the Soviet Union.

I said that the metal of Kuznetsk helped our country defend itself during the years of the fascist invasion.

I called my story “The Second Day.” According to biblical legend, the world was created in six days. Having finished reading the last page, Babel said “it’s out.”

Arriving in the Soviet Union for several weeks, he immediately made friends with our directors, saying: “What kind of Lewis Milestone am I? I'm Lenya Milshtein from Chisinau.

I realized that Hitler's victory was not a lonely, isolated event. The working class was everywhere divided, exhausted by the fear of unemployment, confused, tired of both promises and newspaper squabbles.

In an article for Izvestia, I wrote: “Will our grandchildren understand what it meant to live at the same time as the Nazis? It’s unlikely that anger, shame, passion will remain on the yellow half-decayed leaves. But maybe on the high noon of another century, full of sun and greenery, silence will break in for a minute - this will be our voice.

Remembering some Moscow impressions, all these applause and sweeping accusations, I wrote in “The Book of Adults”: “I know that people are more complex, that I myself am more complex, that life did not begin yesterday and will not end tomorrow, but sometimes you need to be blind, to see."

"A Book for Adults" was first published; then they decided to release it as a separate publication; It was published for a long time - it was 1937, when the care of trees was left not to gardeners, but to lumberjacks. Entire pages with names that became objectionable were removed from the book.

Maybe in 1935 I started telling the story about my life too early: I didn’t know enough about both people and myself, sometimes I took the temporary, the accidental as the main thing. Basically, I still agree with the author of the “Book for Adults,” but the war in it is described not by a veteran, but by a middle-aged man of average experience who travels in a dark heated vehicle to the front and imagines the upcoming battles.

It’s difficult for me now to describe Spain in the distant spring (1936): I stayed in it for only two weeks, and then for two years I saw it bloody, tormented, I saw those nightmares of war that Goya never dreamed of; Heaven intervened in the strife of the earth; the peasants were still shooting from hunting rifles, and Picasso, creating Guernica, already had a presentiment of nuclear madness.

In Escalon, in Malpica, in the vicinity of Toledo, I saw peasants enthusiastically repeating: “Earth!” Old men riding donkeys raised their fists, girls carried kids, boys caressed old, tatty rifles.

The French Pyrenees have long seemed like a wall beyond which another continent begins. When the grandson of Louis 14 ascended the Spanish throne, the French king exclaimed, as if in delight: “The Pyrenees are no more!” The Pyrenees, however, remained. And in April 1936, I didn’t notice them: people also raised their fists, you could see them at the stations the same inscriptions “Death to fascism!”, and on the train the frightened inhabitants were having familiar conversations about the need to rein in the slackers.France was inspired by the example of Spain.
I rejoiced with everyone: after Spain - France! It is now clear that Hitler will not be able to bring Europe to its knees. Our cause is victorious - the revolution is going on the offensive." These thoughts have not yet been clouded by the loss of loved ones and friends, or by the trials on the threshold of which we stood. I remember the spring of 1936 as the last easy spring of my life.

During the first months of the Spanish War I devoted little time to my duties as a correspondent for Izvestia. I was repelled by the role of observer; I wanted to help the Spaniards with something.

The first to arrive in Madrid Soviet ambassador M. And Rosenberg…. Marcel Izrailevich has long been dead: he became one of the victims of tyranny. People were knocked out...

It is difficult to imagine the first year of the Spanish War without M.I. Koltsova. For the Spaniards, he was not only a famous journalist, but a political adviser. In his book “The Spanish Diary,” Mikhail Efimovich vaguely mentions the work of the fictional Mexican Miguel Martinis, who had more freedom of action than the Soviet journalist. One day he confessed to me: “You are the rarest species of our fauna - an “unshot sparrow.” In general, he was right - I became a shot one later.

The speeches of many Soviet writers surprised and alarmed the Spaniards, who told me: we thought that in the twentieth year of the revolution you had generals with the people. But it turns out that you have the same thing as we do...” I tried to reassure the Spaniards, although I myself did not understand anything.

An unpleasant story happened to me, which I could not unravel: in the spring of 1939, fees for Spanish writers were transferred from Moscow to my name - they were going to leave, some to Mexico, some to Chile. There were nine or ten writers, and this amounted to quite a large sum. When I declared my income for the past year, I, of course, did not indicate the money transferred to the Spaniards. In early 1940, the police raided the "Northern Europe" bank; checked the translations and office books. It turned out that I hid from the tax office fees to Spanish writers and money for a truck for Spain, purchased back in 1936. They demanded from me an amount that I had never held in my hands.

On May 24, I received a call from the Minister of Public Works, de Monzy, with whom I had previously met. De Monzy was one of the first Frenchmen to visit the Soviet Union... I asked why the government continues the war against the communists, why it turns the workers against itself - in military factories there are almost more spies than workers. De Monzy did not remain silent, he said that thirty thousand communists had been arrested, that the Minister of Justice, Socialist Serrol, refused to transfer them to the regime of political prisoners... We were silent. De Monzy put down the phone, stood up and, without looking at me, said: “If the Russians sell us planes, we can survive. Will the Soviet Union really benefit from the defeat of France? Hitler will go after you.... We ask for one thing: sell us planes. We decided to send Pierre Cote to Moscow. You know him - he’s your friend. Don’t think that everything went easily, many objected... But now I’m speaking to you not only on my own behalf. Inform Moscow... If they don’t sell us planes, through in a month or two the Germans will occupy France."

In March 1938, I listened anxiously to the elevator: then I wanted to live; Like many others, I had a suitcase ready with two changes of linen. In March 1949, I did not think about underwear, and I waited for the outcome almost indifferently. Maybe because I was no longer forty-seven, but fifty-eight—I had already gotten tired and old age was beginning. Or maybe because it was all a repetition, and after the war, after the victory over fascism, what happened was especially intolerable. We went to bed late - in the morning: the thought that they would come and wake us up was disgusting.

Everyone is strong in hindsight. In the spring of 1949 I did not understand anything. Now that we know something, it seems to me that Stalin knew how to disguise a lot. A. Fadeev told me that the campaign against the “group of anti-patriotic critics” was launched on the orders of Stalin. And a month or a month and a half later, Stalin gathered the editors and said: “Comrades, the disclosure of literary pseudonyms is unacceptable - it smells of anti-Semitism...”

A few years later, a journalist in Israel came out with sensational revelations. He claimed that while in prison he met the poet Fefer, who allegedly told him that I was guilty of massacres of Jewish writers. The slander was picked up by some Western newspapers. They had one argument: “Surviving means a traitor.”

Never in my life have I considered silence a virtue, and in talking about myself and my friends in this book, I admitted how difficult it was sometimes for us to remain silent.

When I look back, 1952 seems very long and at the same time dull; This probably has something to do with how I lived back then.

On January thirtieth the newspapers arrived at noon. I reluctantly opened Pravda. "Towards a new rise in the oil industry." Decline foreign trade France." Suddenly last page I saw: "Arrest of a group of pest doctors." TASS reported that a group of doctors who were responsible for the deaths of Zhdanov and Shcherbakov had been arrested. They admitted that they were going to kill Marshals Vasilevsky, Govorov, Konev and others. The newspaper said that most of those arrested were agents of the “international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization “Joint”, who received instructions through the doctor Shimeliovich and the “Jewish bourgeois nationalist Mikhoels.” The list of those arrested included famous doctors - three Russians, six Jews.

In the eyes of millions of readers, I was a writer who could go to Stalin and tell him that I disagreed with him about something. In fact, I was the same “wheel”, “cog” as my readers. I tried to protest. It was not my letter that decided the matter, but fate.

I’ll end with a confession: I hate indifference, curtains on the windows, the rigidity and cruelty of isolation.

They have criticized, and will continue to criticize, not so much my book as my life. But I can’t start my life again. I did not intend to lecture anyone, I did not set myself as an example. I talked about my frivolity too often, admitted my mistakes, to take on the role of an old reasoner. Moreover, I myself would willingly listen to a sage who could give answers to many questions that continue to torment me. I wanted to talk about the life I lived, about the people I met: this might help some readers think about something, understand something.